I was surprised at first to see Dean Koontz’ Frankenstein series continuing beyond the original trilogy. I’d come away from that series thinking the story was pretty well wrapped up, and wrapped up pretty well. Also, Koontz has generally resisted writing series in the past, though he’s made exceptions here and in the Odd Thomas books.

However, on reading Frankenstein: Lost Souls, I was reminded of loose threads from the previous books which had indeed set us up for a continuation. So it’s all fair and aboveboard.

The main characters are back, but the locations have changed. New Orleans detectives Carson O’Conner and Michael Maddison, now married, have moved to San Francisco, where they work as private investigators and dote on their new baby. “Deucalion,” the reformed Frankenstein monster, has retired to a monastery (the same one, as it happens, that Odd Thomas lived in for a while, in Brother Odd). And Erica Five, Dr. Frankenstein’s android bride, is living near Rainbow Falls, Montana, along with Jocko, the android gnome, who serves as an object for her maternal instincts.

Then Deucalion has an intuition—a sure conviction in his psychic sense, telling him that somehow Dr. Frankenstein, who was horribly killed at the end of the previous book, is nevertheless alive. Continue reading Frankenstein: Lost Souls, by Dean Koontz →