Just Finished Reading…. Gold, Frankenstein and Myrrh

Frankenstein: Dead and Alive, by Dean Koontz

I meant to polish off this audiobook quickly in October in honor of Halloween, but it stayed alive on my iPhone, Frankenstein-like, in dribs and drabs, right through December. I finished listening yesterday while chopping firewood, and was astonished that the book—the end of the main trilogy of Dean Koontz’s clever post-technological update of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein legend—ends with a reference to Christmas. The brilliant, elusive and conflicted character Deucalion (the original Frankenstein monster, now joined by a whole breed of other people created from body parts of deceased humans) recovering in an abbey, where he’s considered “the best Santa Claus.”

 

More than that, this is a series about redemptions, reshaping of opinions about life and death, and a sort of divine justice (visited upon a misguided creator himself) wrapped up in horror-novel scenarios.

Not the Christmas revelation I suspected, but a welcome one. The first three Dean Koontz Frankenstein books are fun action-thrillers melded with social satire, scientific know-how, and far-reaching philosophy. Koontz has chosen to continue the series and the timing seems right for me to continue the plunge.