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Title: Dead and Alive
Series: Frankenstein #3
Author: Dean Koontz
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 372
Format: Digital Edition
Title: Dead and Alive
Series: Frankenstein #3
Author: Dean Koontz
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 372
Format: Digital Edition
Synopsis: |
Victor Helios'
empire is crumbling. His new humans are all going insane, or changing
in unexpected and uncontrolled ways. Murderous rampages, multiple
genetic reorganizations, it is not good news for Victor. Then he gets
a call from Wife #4, who he killed. Only she's not dead, but alive
and well in the dump and the creature that brought her back to life
wants to confront Victor and destroy him.
The two cops,
buddies slash romance partners, whose names I can't even remember,
are in touch with Deucalion and just drive around until it is time to
meet up at the Dump. They have a “spiritual” moment, witness the
end of the Victor and then get married, have a baby and start their
own detective agency.
Deucalion steps
through shadows, gets in touch with the freed new humans at the Dump
and witnesses the end of Victor.
Victor denies that
anything bad is happening, allows himself to be captured by the freed
new humans and then dies. This sends a signal to some satellites in
the sky which transmits a code and all the new humans, including the
Dump Monster, die. Even though the coded deathkey didn't work when
Victor spoke it earlier.
My Thoughts: |
This was a mess of a story. Everything was so rushed and completely
unbelievable. That is coming from within a story about Frankenstein
for goodness sake. And don't give me crap about “Frankenstein's
Monster”. Koontz might sidestep it by calling him Deucalion, but
since the series title is Frankenstein, yeah, I rest my case.
These books started out interesting, with Victor Helios being one bad
ass badguy. The newhumans were real threats and things looked grim at
the best. But Victor pretty much going insane and believing his own
reality instead of what was actually going on really wrecked the
whole villain vibe. I am hesitant to assign a motive to Koontz but I
wonder if he was simply trying to show how pride can blind and
ultimately destroy even the most brilliant being? I know that Koontz
is Catholic and the parallels with Satan are unmistakable, but am I
reading my own ideas into this? I simply don't know.
Cop1 and Cop2 have guns, guns and guns and super ammo and only get to
fight against two insane newhumans. Both of whom are naked. Cop2, the
male, makes a big deal about the newhuman woman being naked. It
didn't quite get into slimeball territory but it definitely didn't
fit with “The End of Humanity as We Know It”. If you're running
for your life, are you really going to notice how tight some woman's
butt is? Especially when that woman is covered in blood, running
faster than your car and trying to kill you with her barehands? If
so, you really, really, really need to check your priorities.
There are 2 more books in this series and I do plan on reading them.
I just hope they are standalones so that Koontz can pace himself a
little better. As a trilogy I wouldn't recommend this series but I'll
wait until the final book to see if this book was just the weak link
or indicative of the overall direction.
★★☆☆½
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