Customer Reviews

Dead and Alive: A Novel (Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, Book 3)

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Here's the short version of this review: This book was an incredible disappointment. Fans of the series thus far will no doubt be compelled to read this. And WHEN you hate it, please take solace in the fact that you're NOT ALONE.

Like everyone else, I waited patiently for Frankenstein Book 3. When I saw it in the store, I was shocked and overjoyed, as its appearance was completely unexpected. I violated speed laws to drive home, whereupon I immediately dug out books 1 and 2 and began to reread them. Now, I'd read Koontz's "admission of inability to collaborate", and it seemed very... defensive with a belligerent spin. When I saw he'd re-released the originals, sans the co-writers' credits, I was dismayed. Seemed like a real egotistical move. But hey, he's Koontz. I loved the guy. And then I read the first... what was it? 20 pages of the book? Paragraph upon paragraph of "Acclaim for Dean Koontz". The dude actually felt it necessary to reprint every good thing anyone has ever said about him, as if to say "Those co-writers were beneath me, and how DARE you rabble harass me for this book? Well now after 20 pages of accolades, you know with whom you're dealing. So here's your %$#!ing book; I hope you choke on it. Now I can get back to Odd Thomas 6" I felt kinda like an Erika, put in my place and crying on the floor.

Halfway through the book, I realized that the protagonists had spent half the book DRIVING AROUND TOWN. Literally, the fate of the world is ostensibly in their hands, and they're cruising Nawlins in a Honda. They weren't looking for anything or going anywhere in particular... not even evading the assassins who were secretly on their trail. They were just... cruisin'. It seemed as if the Desert Eagles and Urban Snipers received more character development. And Deucalion? He doesn't live up to the dazzling potential we all hoped for. In fact the major accomplishment that he, O'Connor, and Madison contributed was... they watched. Whilst armed with Deagles and Urban Snipers, who also looked on.

Koontz used Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to not write the book. So... he makes it rain in the book. "A storm is brewing", sure. But... I dunno. Sounds very excusey to me.

And JOCKO??? Are your SERIOUS?? Take the homeliness of Gollum, mix in the self esteem issues of Dobby from Harry Potter, and wrap it up in a Jar Jar Binks likeability factor. Horrible. And the Mother of All Deus Ex Machinas? Just... just... COME ON, DEAN?!!?! Really??

Koontz has long been my favorite writer. Lately, quite the opposite. He's churning out SO MANY BOOKS... and none that I've read in the past 10 years or so (save Frankenstein 1 and 2) entertained me in any meaningful way, or better yet, made me THINK like his older books used to. He's begun writing for the sake of writing. Quantity over any semblance of quality. I read one a while back (name escapes me) where they go through this whole hardcover saga, only to find out the Everyman Protagonist is actually an undercover Special Forces dude. it's like he said "Wow... we're at page 462... guess I better start wrapping this up". But I'm getting away from Frankenstein 3. Bitter, bitter disappointment. So incredibly sad and depressing for a lifelong Koontz fan.

I'm a little confused as to why many readers who loved the first 2 books, seem to hate this one. I found it very consistent with the other books in the series. I enjoyed the characters. Enjoyed watching Helios creations slowly self destructing. Even enjoyed Helios hubris refusing to see anything but victory.

I was a little put off at first when Jocko was introduced, but found quickly he grew on me. Reminds me very much of the humor Gene Wolfe injected into Book of the Long Sun with Oreb. Love that dry sense of humor and began to look forward to and expect it in Jocko's scenes.

The dectectives weren't the focus of this story and makes sense to me why they were kept on the sidelines. The story had moved past them as Helios creatures began to take fate into their own hands.

This series was never written as a deep serious drama. It was meant to be light-hearted fare and as that I enjoyed it very much.

I have been an avid reader/fan of Koontz for years. I waited patiently and impatiently for book 3. The first 2 books were brilliant. This 3rd was a total disappointment in the book, the characters and in Koontz. It's clear from reading book 3 that he was irritated at his fans for having to write it- several parts felt just like a slap in the face to his fans. Apparently he intended to slap us in the face and punish us for wanting him to write a book that he didn't want to write. The characters fell apart- they were barely recognizable from the first two books- had they been as shallow in the first two books, he wouldn't have gotten any requests for the third. The only part of the book that tried to come up to par was the mother of all gone wrongs.. that part hinted at koontz.. but he just blew that off in a rush to end the book. In retrospect- he SHOULD have collaborated on this book. When an author gets mad at his fans for wanting more, it's the end of the road. No more Dean Koontz books for me.

. . . to get something so poorly thought out and even more poorly written is a huge disappointment. Introducing a new important character 70 pages before the end? Bad form after so much plot and character development.

I was a huge fan of the first two books in the series and contacted both the publisher and Mr. Koontz directly to get some idea of when to expect this book, only to get silence in response. My excited anticipation was only matched by new Chricton books (God rest his soul, he couldn't pump them out like Koontz).

I could go on, but there are many others who have already done a good job of skewering this piece of trash on this site. I'm only posting to drop down the overall rating for this book.

Anybody want a free copy? It's yours for the asking.

Zzzzzzz... I had to force myself to finish this book. I loved the first 2 in this series so I had high hopes. Wow, were those dashed. I waited 3 or so years for the final book to come out and this was it? Ugh.

I don't want to give away plot points, you can read the description yourself, but the characters were boring, unbelievable, annoying, superficial and totally out of sync with the previous two books. The ending wasn't even really an ending. It was more of a mercy killing.

I've slowly been falling out of like with Dean Koontz, his earlier work is brilliant. This one is not. I would say skip it, but if you were a true fan of the first two, you'll want to snatch this one up and read it anyway. I can't stop you, but I can say I tried!

After waiting and waiting and waiting for this book to come out I am very disappointed. 80 pages in I just had to quit. It was total crap nonsense and a waste of time. Glad I didn't buy the book but borrowed it from my library. Way to phone it in, Dean.

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein
Dead and Alive, Book Three
Bantam Books, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-553-58790-6
352 pages
Mass Market
Thriller/Horror


Deucalion, the ancient, original creation of the crazed but brilliant mind of Victor Frankenstein is about to put an end to his creator. With the help of a couple of unusual detectives, an ensemble of quickly degenerating characters (part of Frankenstein's terribly flawed new race) and a strange cabal of resurrected Frankenstein cast-offs, he rushes toward his creator's final moments.

This final installment of Dean Koontz's Frankenstein trilogy is sometimes entertaining and is definitely unique. But it also disappoints. Like many readers, I was enthralled by Book One of this series. Deucalion is a marvelous and complex character Koontz uses to securely hook you. The second novel, although nowhere near as good as the first, still managed to be interesting enough that I picked up Dead and Alive when it came out in paperback. I probably shouldn't have done this. Koontz followed the same pattern as he did in Odd Thomas: a fantastic initial novel in an ongoing series that has subsequently disappointed and angered me with each new installment.

Deucalion is but a guest in the final novel. And the interesting police officers do nothing much but drive around and make quips. Frankenstein is the focus. As is Jocko, who readers of the second novel expect to be something new and terrible, but who ends up little more than a jester. And Werner, Frankenstein's security chief, is turned into a frightening monster of incredible power only to be dispatched easily and off-page.

The whole novel is like this. Taken as a separate work, Dead and Alive has its merits. As the conclusion of a trilogy? I say shame on you, Mr. Koontz.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009

On Dean Koontz's personal website is a blurb that half of all the fan mail he gets is in response to the release date of Frankenstein 3. I'm guessing he got tired of reading and receiving all of that and thus hastily through together this one, though can 4 years be described as "hastily"?

I have been a Koontz fan for over 20 years but his recent works have been abysmal. The first two Frankenstein books were brilliant and throwbacks, this was ridiculous. First some of what I found enjoyable: the book does move with a break neck pace. There are some interesting ideas and characters here, Jocko and Erika 5 are a good combination and I really like how they played off of one another. There are glimpses of the old style Koontz here.

However it isn't enough to carry the trilogy. For one, it has been 4 years and I would have like an Author's Note or at least a couple of pages of recap. Both of these are missing. Koontz has provided Author's Notes in books in the past. With half of his fan base eagerly awaiting this one I would have thought it wise to include one here.

The rest of the book is just ridiculous (with SPOILERS):

- The main characters (Deucalion and the cops) are barely in the book. I could say a good 80% are with Frankenstein, Jocko and the new monsters. All the descriptions of the police are them grabbing their weapons and hoping they can be useful against the new monsters but alas they never really need to use them.

- Chapters are written describing how powerful the monsters are. These are the greatest evils anyone can ever encounter. All the build up and how does it end? One of them is killed with an ordinary kitchen knife and the other is trapped in an explosion.

- Jocko was built up as a terrifying creation at the end of book 2. In book 3 he is the comic relief. Granted, I liked the character but it doesn't mesh with what we were previously told.

I could go on and on. It is worth reading to finish off the trilogy but alas it would have probably been better if the fans wrote the ending themselves.

I say that, because like the character in this novel, he's losing his grip and doesn't even seem to realize it.

I first read Koontz' fiction back in college, and while I wasn't blown away, I really enjoyed it. A lot of his stuff is a little to similar, and some of his themes he's always had a tendency to beat to death, but still, his books were entertaining. Several of his novels were absolutely great books with which to while away an evening. I can still reread those stories with pleasure from time to time. But something's happened in recent years. Maybe that god-awful toupee he wears nowadays is interfering with the blood circulating to his brain, but his recent novels have simply left me cold. I picked up the first book in this series because I needed a book to read on a long flight and there was nothing else I could find on short notice that looked interesting. I saw that it was the first of a series, but I decided to hold off purchasing the two others until I had a chance to see if this was any better than most of his recent work. Then I actually read the book and I thought it was great. I eagerly bought books two and three after reading the first. The old Koontz was back, or so it seemed. I now think it more likely that the book was rescued from mediocrity by Kevin J. Anderson, and Koontz' decision to eschew another collaboration is part of the reason this book is so dismal.

In Book One, Koontz and Anderson created some really interesting characters, and plunked them down in the center of a really good plot, wherein Frankenstein/Helios, who has managed to prolong his own life with the same science he has used to create artificial humans, intends to create a new and improved race with which to replace humanity. Deucalion (the original Frankenstein's monster) was very interesting, as was Victor Frankenstein (AKA Helios) himself. Erika Four, Victor's created wife was interesting also, as was her journey toward real humanity. There were missed notes too, even in that book, I have to say. The detectives Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison were pretty much drawn straight from the Dean Koontz stock character repertoire, and there wasn't much new or interesting about them, at least to me, but they were okay. The serial killer, Roy Pribeaux, was REALLY a Dean Koontz stock character, and seemed to serve very little purpose in the story. But overall, it was a great book.

Book two wasn't nearly as good, but was still entertaining, though the autistic "new human" Randall Six was poorly drawn, I thought, and like Pribeaux in the first book, seemed to serve little purpose in the story.

But the third book, frankly, is really a stinker, and makes me think I will most likely never pick up a new Koontz novel again. It's that bad. EVERYTHING descends into absurdity. EVERYTHING is crudely overdone. EVERYTHING becomes implausible. Even the characters, who had previously been interesting, became dull and two-dimensional. Victor became an absolute parody of a mad, evil genius trying to destroy the world. All that was missing was a caricature version of James Bond that he could dramatically reveal his master plan to, seconds before being killed. In every way, Koontz stretches things too far. It would have been great if Victor had been made simply arrogant and controlling, but Koontz had to make him unbelievably, cartoonishly megalomaniacal, to the point where he actually has to restrain himself from screaming hysterically at those who simply call things by names he doesn't like. Rather than wanting simply to replace humanity populate the world with a superior human, he must be shown to want to build the "perfect" ordered, regimented, machine-like, efficient society, right down to the very tiniest detail. Rather than being merely autocratic and tyrannical, he has to be made into a man who would stamp out every last vestige of individuality and freedom, with controls so thorough and rigid and infallible that Big Brother could only have wished for them in his wildest dreams. Rather than receive backing from shady and amoral sources, he has to be made financial beneficiary of ALL of the 20th century's worst monsters, each in turn: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Rather than being a domineering and abusive husband who possesses his wives, but is incapable of actual love, he has to be shown as an ogre so diabolical that he will kill a wife for even a single instance of willful impertinence. Rather than being a man who simply deals efficiently with any adversaries, having them dispassionately disposed of if need be, he is shown as being someone so spiteful and motivated by rage and petty animosity that he has them kidnapped and brought to him so he can torture them to death personally for merely daring to oppose even his most trivial desires (e.g. renovating and adding on to his historic mansion).

And Victor isn't the only beneficiary of this over the top treatment. The new human he is creating overact just as egregiously. Rather than merely envying the Old Race (as they call them) for having the freedom of action and depth of feeling that their maker has denied them, and rather than being just more cold-blooded and cruel as a result, Koontz makes them absolutely savage and demonic in their rage and hatred at real humans, so that EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM wants, literally above all other desires, to kill and rend and tear humans with his or her bare hands. They all look forward to the day they can finally strike out at real humans and replace them more intensely than the most devout Evangelical Christian looks forward to The Rapture. Philip K. Dick handled this same issue immeasurably better in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," where his androids simultaneously envied, feared, and looked down on the humans to whom they were physically superior, but compared to whom they were emotionally stunted. Koontz' new humans also end up behaving cartoonishly. For example, two replicants, who have replaced the New Orleans district attorney and his wife, talk calmly with each other, calmly decide to go kill their neighbors for no apparent reason, all the while saying things like:

Replicant wife: "I hate her so much."
Replicant husband: "I hate her too. I hate him. I hate them all. Do something really amazing to her."

And later, after a few senseless, very gory murders...

Replicant wife: "I need to be naked when I kill the next ones. It feels right."
Replicant husband: "Does it feel right just for the next house, or is it maybe one of your personal core values?"
Replicant wife: "I don't know. Maybe it's a PCV. We'll have to wait and see."

You've GOT to be kidding me! What has Koontz been smoking lately? And it's not just the over-the-top, ridiculously cartoonish (I can't think of a word that fits this better) violence and dialogue. It's the plot holes you could march the 82nd Airborne Division through. Take the two homicidal replicants I just mentioned, for example. They had replaced the real district attorney and his wife just days earlier, and now they are coming unhinged so completely, and so publicly that they go on the above mentioned, multi-house murder spree, and end up chasing a dog, while naked, through the streets of New Orleans, chanting "Dog, dog, dog..." and "Kill, kill, kill..." all the while. Another one, who replaced a pastor, breaks down and begins losing his mind, as well as his motor functions within an equally short time. Numerous others exhibit homicidal tendencies. Some literally go insane and start chewing off their fingers or smashing their faces into a hot stove, etc. A couple of other undergo spectacular and dangerous physical transformations as well. Now think about this for just a few seconds. Victor Frankenstein has supposedly been making artificial humans for over TWO HUNDRED YEARS by this time! And he's been doing it so successfully that in two full centuries no one has ever managed to discover what he's doing. The only time word really got out was with his first creation, who became a local legend that inspired Mary Shelley to write her famous novel, and at no time since has he ever been close to discovery by the rest of humanity. Now how could he have ever integrated his creations so seamlessly into human society for so very long if they were this unstable? And it's awfully convenient that this mass breakdown of his creations should occur just as he's ratcheting up his plans and is ready to begin mass production of his new humans. Frankly, the story would have worked much better, and the danger been much more menacing, if Victor's creations were successful and stable and blending into society, and stood a real chance of taking over key positions, awaiting the day when they could strike decisively at an unsuspecting and complacent humanity.

Another plot hole is the supposed despair with which all these "soulless" manufactured humans view the world. ALL of them, every last one, wants to die. You see, they have been genetically engineered to be incapable of believing in a higher power, so of course, life has no meaning, and there's no point to existence, right? So what if they create the perfect society? If the universe is just a big, unfeeling machine itself, and there's no soul, and no afterlife, and no higher power to enforce morality and imbue the cosmos with some great metaphysical purpose, who'd want to live anyway, right? And so it is that all of these new humans are secretly living totally empty lives of despair and anguish, and every last one of them wants to end it, but can't, because their maker has encoded a proscription against suicide into their DNA. I am aware that many people of various religions seem to have this view of atheism/agnosticism, but it really astounds me that a best-selling novelist, of all people, especially a writer of fantastic and supernatural thrillers, should be so utterly lacking in imagination that he truly cannot conceive that there are GENUINELY people out there who have no belief whatever in a higher power or an afterlife or a supreme being, and yet still find life fulfilling and meaningful and enjoyable. Not believing in a higher power simply does not inevitably lead to this outlook on life, and even people who do not share this outlook themselves, ought not assume that other people must secretly see the world the way they do. Consequently, I have a hard time accepting this as the motivation for the new humans' ultimate breakdown, which is how Koontz has it.

Anyway, suffice it to say that never has a well begun tale been brought to a sorrier conclusion.

This book was a disappointment.

Why are the detectives still here? They seem to be nothing more than a loose string. A string Koontz toys with solely because it was already there. They've been getting ready for the apocalypse and get... something much less interesting.

There are so many ridiculous plot devices used that it is beyond infuriating. It seems like Koontz couldn't figure out how to end the series. So, he decided to find the simplest way out. He gave up on interesting plot threads, he came up with new characters that were disappointments, and other characters became shadows of their previous self. Then he left us with an ending that wasn't an ending at all.

The book was also highly repetitive. How many times do we have to hear that the lighting made Deucalion something more than a monster? How many times do we need an inventory of his criminal origins? How many times do we need to hear about the pulse of illumination in his eyes? How many times do we have to hear about Carson's dead father? How long could this list be? Trust me it could be much longer. Definitely a bad trait. Especially for a book that isn't even 400 pages.

It honestly felt like Koontz intentionally insulted his fans for pressuring him. We wanted the book because we loved the first two. We were upset because it was promised and never delivered. Now Koontz has insulted his readers and many are beyond upset. I personally will think long and hard before buying another Koontz book.