The Dean Koontz Community

[WhiteWolf]

STOP!

Before continuing any further in this thread, make sure that you have read all three volumes of Dean Koontz's FRANKENSTEIN series, which include PRODIGAL SON, CITY OF NIGHT, and now DEAD AND ALIVE.

If you read any further into this thread and find spoilers for the series, it is nobody's fault but your own.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.







Now then. Seems to me the rest of us need a place to figure everything out after turning the final page on DEAD AND ALIVE without having to use the hide code over and over again.

I just wanted to get the thread going for now. I'll have thoughts and questions and comments and things a little later on.

But don't wait for me!

[dnurse]

I closed my eyes and scrolled dowm! I've completed F-3 thru chapter 11 and can't join the discussion yet. Darn. I just posted a spoiler in the What Are You Reading Now thread. I hate Victor. He's Satan. I don't know what's going to happen to Erika but I'm beside myself with wanting to send Victor to Hell. If DK doesn't give her a happy ending, I'm going to CRY. I might like that little Harker troll. I hope DK does something good with that too. This book is making me feel girly. I already want to cry. 3 books back to back of that butthead is getting to me.

[WhiteWolf]

I hope when you say "butthead," you are referring to Victor, and not Dean Koontz.

[dnurse]

God forbid! That's blasphemy. Of course I mean Victor. LOL

[Nemesis0]

Who here liked the last paragraph?

[WhiteWolf]

I did. I mean, I'm not overwhelmed by it. I don't think it was a stroke of genius or anything, but it seems like the perfect solution for what Deucalion would do with himself at the close of the novel.

It doesn't have to mean that Deucalion will cross paths with Odd in any future books, but it doesn't rule it out, either. I like the open-endedness about it.

I get the feeling you were unhappy with the sudden mention of that location in BROTHER ODD?

[Nemesis0]

No i really liked it. I was kidna surprised i caught it right away cause its been a long while and a ton of books read since i read Brother Odd. I like when authors connect some of their books together like that.

[WhiteWolf]

Oh okay. Good. I really don't see any reason not to be interested or even a little excited about this apparent crossover.

But I'm still not convinced that Deucalion will ever actually turn up in any future Odd books. For one thing, that part of Odd's journey is over, and I'm not sure he would have any reason to return there. And for another, what could ever possibly happen at St. Bartholomew's Abbey that would lead Deucalion to Odd? I'm going to go with nothing at all.

My contention is that Koontz, at the end of DEAD AND ALIVE, needed to do something with Deucalion, and simply returning him to the Tibetan temple just wouldn't do. I want to say that any connection with Odd will start and stop right there.

ON THE OTHER HAND... I have to say that the appearance of Victor's clone at the end, alledgedly smarter, physically more dangerous, and certainly more unstable than the real Victor Frankenstein Helios was, is something to ponder. Vengeance and hatred could force the Victor clone to seek out Deucalion, or hey, you never know, Odd's psychic magnetism could lead him to the Victor Clone. It's possible.

I don't know why though, I just can't shake the feeling. I think there won't be any more connection between the Frankenstein books and the Odd books than that one paragraph. At least, not anything more than another veiled reference that just mentions the Abbey's new resident to Odd in a letter or something.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. Speculation abounded about Odd and Christopher Snow coming into contact after ODD HOURS was published, and then not too much later, Dean Koontz confirmed it in an interview. So I guess, what we should do now is keep our ears open for any new DK interviews, and see if anyone brings it up. He might just be waiting to reveal more details about his secret evil plan to ties all these books together in--I hope as much as everyone else--a super huge epic novel that brings everything to a big, satisfying conclusion.

[Nemesis0]

Yea, it'd be interesting if they were to encounter each other but its probably like you were saying with him just wanting to put Deucalion somewhere at the end, but not just back where he started.

I could see an encounter of Odd and the Victor clone. if not a real confrontation maybe something in passing.

[WhiteWolf]

I have to bring up something else, too.

These books are the closest thing that Dean Koontz has written to straight-laced HORROR in as long as I can remember. Fitting, you might say, as Mary Shelley's book, which is so obviously the inspiration for this series, is also considered the tome that pioneered the genre.

But the sheer horror-ness of these books made me go look up this quote, in the afterword to the new edition of PHANTOMS:

Writing Phantoms was one of the ten biggest mistakes of my life, ranking directly above that incident with the angry porcupine and the clown, about which I intend to say nothing more. Phantoms has been published in thirty-one languages and has been in print continuously for fifteen years, as I write this. Worldwide, it has sold almost six million copies in all editions. It has been well reviewed, and more than a few critics have called it a modern classic of its genre. Readers write to me by the hundreds every year, even this long after first publication, to tell me how much they like Phantoms. I enjoyed writing the book, and when I had to reread it to create a screenplay for the film version, I found it to be just the thrill ride that I had originally hoped to produce. Yet it is this novel, more than any other that earned for me the label of "horror writer," which I never wanted, never embraced, and have ever since sought to shed.
I enjoy reading horror novels, have considerable respect for the form, and admire the finest writers who have worked in the genre. I believe, however, that ninety-five percent of my work is anything but horror. I am a suspense writer. I am a novelist. I write love stories now and then, sometimes humorous fiction, sometimes tales of adventure, sometimes all those things between the covers of a single volume. But Phantoms fixed me with a spooky-guy label as surely as if it had been stitched to my forehead by a highly skilled and diligent member of the United Garment Workers Union making a far better wage than that poor bastard crocheting license-plate cozies.

He wrote the FRANKENSTEIN books after he wrote this afterword, but I think he would have to admit that these books, as much or even more than any others he has written, really do belong on the horror shelf.