Review: Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've seen most of the movies, and read some of the literature, like Saberhagen's The Frankenstein Papers but I'd never read the original source material until now. In the movies, Frankenstein's monster is usually portrayed as a monster with fairly limited intellect who rampages through a town until the villagers take him out with torches.

In the book, Frankenstein's creation is sentient and is suffering from loss and loneliness having never know kindness from any source. Not from his creator, not from the father of a girl he saves, in fact, the only positive interaction he has is from a blind gentleman but that ends badly.

All of the murder and mayhem could have been avoided if Victor Frankenstein had thought about what he was doing when he started chopping up dead bodies and sewing them together to create a gigantic replica man. If you're going to take up necromancy you need to have a strong stomach and not be disgusted by the end result.

View all my reviews