City of Night

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Title: City of Night
Series: Frankenstein #2
Author: Dean Koontz
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 482
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Victor Helios is stepping up his campaign of the overthrow of the world with his newmen. Unfortunately for him, some really weird things are starting to happen with his newmen and even though he doesn't realize it yet, he's losing control. They are changing, mutating, becoming something completely show more non-human.

Deucalion is still hamstrung by his inability to harm Victor and so his use of police detectives Carson O'Connor and her partner Michael Maddison continues.

Victor sends some of his assassins after Carson and her autistic younger brother but things don't go as Victor planned because one of his creations managed to get to them first and put them on guard.

The book ends with the group planning on how to assault Victor and not unleash the wrath of the newmen who have replaced so many key officials in New Orleans.

My Thoughts:

This series is one I am glad I didn't read as it came out. Each “book” ends on a serious cliffhanger and without a lot of resolution. It is really more one big story that has been artificially chunked up into 5 separate books. Knowing that I have it completed and just waiting for me to read, I don't mind nearly so much. I'm actually reading the omnibus edition, but reading over 1500 pages all at once is just a bit more than I want to deal with. Plus, it's easier to review 5 smaller chunks than one huge thing like that.

This time around there is no small time villain like in the previous book. It made the cops' part feel not as needed. A lot more time with the newmen happens and we see some of the happenings as they change. It is wicked creepy and yet perfectly illustrates how evil always turns on itself and destroys itself.

The threat of the newmen is also made a bit more evident in this book. There was at least one incident where the newmen assassins (a couple where the woman is going crazy because she wants a baby but Victor created them unable to have children) simply walked through a hail of 9mm bullets. Being very familiar with the 9mm, as I own a Sig-p938 cbt, it really brought out just how dangerous these beings were. Not immortal, not invincible, but not something that a regular police force could handle. A race of super villains as it were.

Both Carson and Michael come to the realization, and acceptance, that to stop Victor, it will probably cost them their lives. That is a sobering thought to me as a reader. It also makes me want to cheer for them even harder. Heroes.

The ending with the group planning to assault Victor's secret lab really amped up the tension for me. The lab is filled with newmen, but it is also starting to fill up with the mutations, all of which are wicked nasty and give even the newmen a run for their money in the violence department.

I really wanted to just jump into the next book right away, to see what happens. But I know myself well enough to not start down that path again. I'll get to the next book in a month or two. That wait won't hurt me and will help temper any excitement and expectations I may have for book 3.

★★★☆½ show less

This is the second volume in Koontz’s modern day reimagination of Frankenstein and his creation. Victor Frankenstein- now going by the name Victor Helios- is a wealthy scientist who has created an army of lab grown minions in his bid to take over the world and eliminate humankind. Carson O’Conner and Michael Maddison are New Orleans detectives who have become aware of Helios and his plans via Deucalion, the ‘monster’ of Shelley’s novel. In this installment, things are not going well with some of Helio’s creations. Some are going mad. At least one has escaped. Some are developing free will and volition, which Helios had specifically tried to eliminate. He is having special trouble with creating a wife who is perfect and show more intelligent yet never asks questions. And there is something weird going on at the city dump- weird even by the standards of beings created in a lab for specific jobs, jobs that include burying bodies by the dozens.

The book has a frantic pace, with several plotlines running: Carson & Michael; Arnie, Carson’s brother and his caretaker Vicky; the events at the city dump; Helio’s wife and the house servants; to top if off, there is a hurricane brewing. Reading it feels like you’re careening out of control, but Koontz has it all well in hand. The books suffers a bit from being the middle book where no plot lines are tied up, but it leaves the reader eager to get to the third book. show less

Book 2 of the Frankenstein series. This one for the first half left me overwhelmed with so many characters jumping around from chapter to chapter. I was almost ready to give up but I'm glad I didn't. It got a lot better towards the end and all the characters came together and made sense. This one was definitely crazier and creepier. (panther spider transformation? ick) At the end, it looks like its definitely going to crazier in the next book, which I look forward to reading.

City of Night, the second installment in Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein revival series, is perhaps just a notch better than the first book in the series. Since there is less background to introduce (Koontz does some cursory recapping, but you really must read the series opener before this one), the story moves quickly, comprising the events of just one action-packed day.

Koontz also digs deeper into the questions of existence, consciousness and free will he raised in Prodigal Son. The best parts of this novel are the chapters spent witnessing the breakdowns of Victor Helios’s ‘creations’. Instead of a single malfunction causing them all to go haywire in one predictable way, each has its own flaw that works itself out in a show more characteristic parody of a human capability. These manifestations of evil design spell out the risks of trying to contravene or circumvent the created order.

Recommended. show less

Review by Jeremy Taylor

For book two of his modern-day Frankenstein series, Dean Koontz has a new co-author and a new title, but that’s about all that’s different from book one. The characters, setting, tone, and basic plot are all the same. Fortunately, the enjoyability factor is also similar to that of the series debut, which makes the second book at least readable, if not exactly on a level with what readers have come to expect from “America’s storyteller.”

The story continues right where book one left off, with Deucalion, the original Frankenstein Monster, and New Orleans cops Carson O’Connor and Michael Maddison plotting to track down and destroy Victor Helios, aka Frankenstein, before he can unleash his new-and-improved show more humans upon the city and the world. As the three would-be saviors uncover new layers of Helios’s plot, they find that nothing is what is seems and no one can be trusted.

Meanwhile, Helios’s creations are facing their own issues, as they struggle with free will and their desire to destroy both humans and themselves. And when one of Helios’s creations goes horribly wrong, the stage is set for the ultimate showdown between good and evil.

City of Night contains plenty of characteristic Dean Koontz philosophizing on everything from the nature of man to issues of good vs. evil to the meaning of free will. And it offers plenty of the same off-the-wall humor and good-natured banter between the two main (human) characters. There’s a fair amount of sexual content, though this happily is downplayed from the first book. The sexual tension between the two cops is hardly subtle, yet because they are committed to not acting on their desires (for professional reasons, not moral), the objectionable content, at least between the protagonists, is minimal. There’s some violence, as one would expect in a book entitled Frankenstein, but it’s mostly of a bizarre rather than grotesque nature.

Spiritual content in the book is limited to some rather vague references to an afterlife as characters contemplate what they believe may be their last hours or days before death. There are two interesting scenes that include priests, but the dialog in these scenes, one of which involves a priest contemplating suicide, is more philosophical than religious. Basically, there’s just not a lot of depth in the story, spiritual or otherwise.

The Frankenstein series will not be remembered as Koontz’s best work, and it will probably not rocket his co-authors to fame and fortune. Still, for what it is—B-level horror dressed up as Mary Shelly–esque social commentary—it delivers.

(http://www.cerebralexchange.com/books/reviews.asp?book=269&host=1) show less

I am enjoying this series so far. It is, like most of his books, a quick easy read. This series has Frankenstein and his monster alive in our times. Frankenstein is creating a new race to take over the world. This is book number two. His plans are starting to fall apart and there are a couple of the old race that know what is going on and are trying to fight the new stronger race to save the world. Of course, there is a child in the story that was at risk. He may still be, I will find out in the third book which I will read soon.
I got this book from the Friends of the Pine River Library free book shelf.

This sophomore effort definitely took the narrative to a higher level. I like how Koontz makes you relate to the monsters and it was a lot of fun to be in the heads of some of them. I'm seeing a pattern of cliffhanger endings which makes me think that this five-book series is just one big story; each one dependent on the next.

Well, I'm starting the next one now and I can hardly wait...