From Publishers Weekly
In this grisly thriller, the first in a new series by bestsellers Koontz and Anderson, Dr. Frankenstein has survived into the 21st century, masquerading as biotech tycoon Victor Helios. Helios wants to replace flawed humanity with his New Race, people born and fermented in pods, their personalities programmed by him, their imperfections removed in the lab. But at least one of his creations has become a serial killer, trying to assemble the perfect woman from parts of many. Like expert plate-spinners, the authors set up a dizzying array of narrative viewpoints and cycle through them effortlessly. These include one of Victor's creations who suffers from autism and is trying to understand it; a cloned priest who serves as a clandestine member of Helios's army; Helios's custom-made wife, unique among his creations in that she's allowed to feel shame; and, tying it all together, a classic buddy-cop set of homicide detectives who slowly come to understand that the butcher they're chasing isn't quite human. The odd juxtaposition of a police procedural with a neo-gothic, mad scientist plot gives the novel a wickedly unusual and intriguing feel. The familiarity of the Frankenstein myth makes much of the story arc predictable, but it's still a compelling read, with an elegant cliffhanger ending. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From AudioFile
What if Mary Shelley got it wrong? What if Dr. Victor Frankenstein was not a victim of his own creation? And what if he was a truly evil genius determined to replace humanity with his own "perfect" progeny? What if Dr. Frankenstein is still alive today, living in New Orleans? That's the premise of Dean Koontz's new four-book saga, co-written with Kevin J. Anderson. John Bedford Lloyd gives an uninspired reading of the first book in the series, which tells of Frankenstein's original monster assisting a pair of New Orleans police officers as they track a serial killer who may be one of Frankenstein's creations. The story is intriguing, but Lloyd sounds uninterested, modulating his voice with false melodrama. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Some 200 years after creating his monster, Victor Frankenstein, alias Helios, is settled in New Orleans. Continuing research and experimentation have allowed him to obviate robbing graveyards to fashion his creatures, and to enhance himself so that he indefinitely remains a vigorous fortysomething. He is seeding the city with his perfect (i.e., perfectly obedient to him) New Race, intending to eventually replace and exterminate "imperfect" humanity. Helios has been identified, however, and photos have been sent to Deucalion, in retreat at a Tibetan monastery, who hastens to see whether he can unmake his maker this time. Deucalion is Frankenstein's original monster, granted virtually indestructible longevity, he thinks, by the lightning that brought him to life. If Frankenstein has become monstrous, the monster has become human in the best sense, also cannier and more powerful. Unfortunately, with New Racers in mufti all over New Orleans, many more need to be gotten. Fortunately (as it happens), one New Racer is rebelling, murderously, and his killings overlap with those of a serial killer, bringing the attentions of homicide cops Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison. And, known only to the reader, one of Frankenstein's new experiments is going awry, not to mention AWOL. With Anderson's help in this book (and Ed Gorman's in its continuation, coming this spring), Koontz realizes his original concept for a cable TV effort from which he withdrew. It was TV's loss, for, filmed utterly faithfully, Prodigal Son could be the best horror thriller and, hands down, would be the best Frankenstein movie, ever. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"A compelling read.... The odd juxtaposition of a police procedural with a neo-gothic, mad scientist plot gives the novel a wickedly unusual and intriguing feel ... with an elegant cliffhanger ending."
--Publishers Weekly

"This is classic Koontz at his best. The plot zips along, the characters are grotesque and funny. The basic elements of Mary Shelley's novel, though slightly altered, fit right in."



From the Paperback edition.


From the Inside Flap
From the celebrated imagination of Dean Koontz comes a powerful reworking of one of the classic stories of all time. If you think you know the story, you know only half the truth. Get ready for the mystery, the myth, the terror, and the magic of…

DEAN KOONTZ’S PRODIGAL SON

Every city has secrets. But none as terrible as this. His name is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who’s traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. Detective Carson O’Connor is cool, cynical, and every bit as tough as she looks. Her partner Michael Maddison would back her up all the way to Hell itself–and that just may be where this case ends up. For the no-nonsense O’Connor is suddenly talking about an ages-old conspiracy, a near immortal race of beings, and killers that are more–and less–than human. Soon it will be clear that as crazy as she sounds, the truth is even more ominous. For their quarry isn’t merely a homicidal maniac–but his deranged maker.


From the Paperback edition.


About the Author
Dean Koontz, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives with his wife, Gerda, and their dog, Trixie, in southern California. Kevin J. Anderson has written twenty-eight national best sellers and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stroker Award, and the SFX Reader's Choice Award. He also holds the Guinness world record for "Largest Single-Author Book Signing."


From the Paperback edition.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Dean Koontz's Frankenstein -- the author's first literary series -- is a nightmare-inspiring, modern-day retelling of Mary Shelley's 1818 horror classic. Coauthored with Kevin J. Anderson, the first installment in this four-volume saga pits a reanimated giant and two tenacious police detectives against the demented scientist who created him.

It's no surprise that Deucalion, at almost seven feet tall and with half his face a mangled ruin, spent time as a European carnie sideshow attraction nicknamed the Monster. After enjoying several peaceful years at a monastery in Tibet, the introspective and enigmatic giant receives dire news: The man who created him centuries earlier, Victor Frankenstein, is inexplicably alive and living in New Orleans under the name of Victor Helios, a wealthy business owner and philanthropist. When Deucalion vows to leave his Tibetan sanctuary and destroy the man who created him, he soon realizes the critical magnitude of his mission -- Helios is in the process is secretly creating a new race of posthumans to take over the world!

As is par for the course in many fiction sagas, readers should be prepared for a cliff-hanger of monumental proportions at the conclusion of Prodigal Son. Koontz and Anderson, however, masterfully set the table for a virtual feast of hideous twists and turns, nightmarish monstrosities, and nonstop action in upcoming installments. Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, in which a man transforms himself into a monster and a monster learns what it's like to be human, is an absolutely brilliant rendition of the Shelley classic -- a horror tour de force. Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A brilliant re-imagining and updating of the classic Frankenstein story that only Dean Koontz could conceive, PRODIGAL SON is the first volume in a four-book series that opens with the "monster"--Deucalion--coming to modern-day New Orleans, where he will join forces with a street-smart police detective and her partner on the trail of a macabre serial killer...a serial killer spawned, Deucalion will discover, by his own creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, now Victor Helios. Deucalion has survived for two centuries, given near immortality by the furious lightning storm that brought him to life. But he is no monster--not anymore. While he carries a quiet mystery about him, Deucalion is literate, intelligent, and very much in control of himself, almost as if he has an inner peace. For two hundred years Deucalion has thought himself alone among men, an aberrant creation of an evil mind. Now he will find that his fellows are legion...that they live among us at every strata of society...and that his nemesis, Victor Frankenstein, has survived the centuries as well...and dreams of seeding the earth with his creations. Loosely based on Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, the national network television series scheduled to begin airing on USA at Halloween, and co-authored with Kevin Anderson, subsequent volumes in the series will continue Deucalion's pursuit of Victor Helios and his unnatural army, in partership with two tough, bemused New Orleans cops, and will move back and forth in time as well, unspooling Deucalion's story from the time the original story closed. Rich, suspenseful, heartbreaking and terrifying, Dean Koontz's Frankenstein will explore as only "the master of the psychological drama"*can, the heights to which we might aspire, the depths to which some may fall, and what, in the end, it means to be truly human.
*Larry King, USA Today

SYNOPSIS

From the celebrated imagination of Dean Koontz comes a powerful reworking of one of the classic stories of all time. If you think you know the story, you know only half the truth. Get ready for the mystery, the myth, the terror, and the magic of…

DEAN KOONTZ’S PRODIGAL SON

Every city has secrets. But none as terrible as this. His name is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who’s traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. Detective Carson O’Connor is cool, cynical, and every bit as tough as she looks. Her partner Michael Maddison would back her up all the way to Hell itself–and that just may be where this case ends up. For the no-nonsense O’Connor is suddenly talking about an ages-old conspiracy, a near immortal race of beings, and killers that are more–and less–than human. Soon it will be clear that as crazy as she sounds, the truth is even more ominous. For their quarry isn’t merely a homicidal maniac–but his deranged maker.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In this grisly thriller, the first in a new series by bestsellers Koontz and Anderson, Dr. Frankenstein has survived into the 21st century, masquerading as biotech tycoon Victor Helios. Helios wants to replace flawed humanity with his New Race, people born and fermented in pods, their personalities programmed by him, their imperfections removed in the lab. But at least one of his creations has become a serial killer, trying to assemble the perfect woman from parts of many. Like expert plate-spinners, the authors set up a dizzying array of narrative viewpoints and cycle through them effortlessly. These include one of Victor's creations who suffers from autism and is trying to understand it; a cloned priest who serves as a clandestine member of Helios's army; Helios's custom-made wife, unique among his creations in that she's allowed to feel shame; and, tying it all together, a classic buddy-cop set of homicide detectives who slowly come to understand that the butcher they're chasing isn't quite human. The odd juxtaposition of a police procedural with a neo-gothic, mad scientist plot gives the novel a wickedly unusual and intriguing feel. The familiarity of the Frankenstein myth makes much of the story arc predictable, but it's still a compelling read, with an elegant cliffhanger ending. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In Koontz's (Hideaway) latest series, Deucalion lives in a Tibetan monastery, where he hides from his mysterious origin and the man who created him. Meanwhile, two detectives in New Orleans are hunting down a serial killer who makes off with various body parts of his victims. Their worlds collide with the hidden madness of Victor Helios, a scientist bent on creating a new race of beings subservient to him. Victor is hundreds of years old, and to keep his work secret, he has changed his last name from Frankenstein. Imagine that the Mary Shelley story actually happened, and the participants are still alive today. This first book in a multipart saga features fascinating characters and an intriguing premise. The only disappointment is the suspense-filled ending. The next title is more than six months away, so a wrap-up won't be coming anytime soon. For all library collections.-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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