It would be unfair to both Shelley and the author of the Afterword to write a short review of this masterpiece. Thus I will not attempt to accomplish this dificult task. Suffice it to say that the deep dilemmas posed by this novel are still relevant for us and no film adaptation can match the atmosphere of the original novel. (PS: Would it make a great exercise to re-read the book in the light of the strong Artificial Intelligence or Artificial General Intelligence theses?) ( )

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how on earth this book could be considered boring. I had to read it in school and I finished it before the rest of my class and then I went and bought my own copy. She clearly shows the character's pain that he felt with playing God. It tore him apart the fact that he created this poor creature and he didn't consider how it would survive, if it needed companionship, and especially how society would accept him. Frankenstein's ambition for knowledge ruined his life when he created the monster, and he was made to suffer when he lost his cousin. For me, these elements cannot be considered boring or a let down. ( )

It had me thinking about the theory that all horror movies are modern day cautionary tales, reinforcing the rules and taboos of our society and showing the macabre fate of those who transgress. Such a reading on Frankenstein has Victor Frankenstein, creator of the monster, thoroughly castigated for his greed for knowledge. The early parts of the story has him describing the feverish state in which he worked and worked to finish his creation. He even says something to the effect that «nobody who has never done research can understand the hypnotizing effect it has» - painting it like drug abuse or at the very least a serious vice. How biblical! ( )

I have been trying to read this book for months, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it. It's a great scary story with plenty of misery and death to satisfy the best scary story lovers. Shelly's writing is incredible, some of her passages really stuck with me and I am amazed at how young she was when she wrote it. Really enjoyed it, but don't think I'll pick it up again anytime soon. ( )

I really didn't like this one. Maybe it's because of all the hype about it - surely after that anything would be a letdown.

The reason I didn't like it was this: I felt that the themes of the novel were very interesting (knowledge, humanity, etc.) but I felt the execution was poor. Some key events in the novel depended on far too convenient plot devices (The monster needs to learn about humankind and morality! Oh, look, there's a random suitcase of philosophy texts lying in the woods! How convenient!) and because of that for me the plausibility of it suffered. And I KNOW it's meant to be a fantastic as opposed to realistic story, but I feel that with really, really good writing an author can make readers believe in things that are fantastic and implausible - and the writing in this book definitely didn't do that. Giving it two stars only because it's remained popular this long, so I suppose there must be something going for it. ( )