Reviews

Frankenstein: Unleashed by Tracey H. Kitts

ana_beatriz's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.25

mburnsides's review

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dark emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

 
How disappointing. No offense to the author, writing a book is hard and self publishing a niche book is even more difficult, but Hardin completely destroys the complexity of Frankenstein, narratively, thematically, and character-wise. If you are a fan of Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein, do not expect a level of quality anything close to the original. I expected so much more from this story, and it continued to disappoint with every new page. Expect an amateurly written OOC fanfic INSPIRED by the idea of Frankenstein. Let it be known, this novel is NOT a hard read, maybe it’s a cringey read, but it’s easy to digest and provides simple, guilty-pleasure entertainment. However, it severely lacks plot wise and character wise.

!!!Spoilers ahead!!!

PLOT
Everything happens for a reason because it's convenient. Elizabeth is a witch (who doesn’t actively practice, mind you) who somehow has the know-with-all to perform powerful spells, like bringing a mish-mash dead body back to life. The inclusion of magic completely strips the plot of any reason, and misses the themes of the original text. The creature being re-alived is no longer disbelief-suspending, crazy God-like science- he’s alive because of Elizabeth’s unintentional magic. The only reason she knows about Victor’s experiments is because she just knows that the man she saw in her dreams is her destined love, and she just feels compelled to go to the far side of the castle grounds. At night. In the pouring rain.
The romance has absolutely no buildup because of this ‘destiny’. The audience knows immediately that there will be no conflict, tension, or learning to love despite one’s self in Elizabeth and Lucian’s relationship because they are supposed to be together. The only thing standing in their way is Elizabeth’s loosely insinuated betrothal to Victor, and Victor’s cartoonish villainy. The cover page (did you notice he’s holding a cross?) is not relevant to the plot at all.

Character
Every character in this novel is the flattest, most one-dimensional caricature of a typical ‘forbidden romance’. Elizabeth is the pure virgin with a secret. Lucian is the Perfect Man. Victor is a literal cartoon-ass sociopathic, self absorbed, sex dungeoning murderer who cares about nothing but himself and his power. All of the moral complexity of the original characters is thrown out the window. The creature is not an ugly monstrosity, outcast by all of society because he’s a literal walking quilt corpse. There's no moral downfall; he kills only bad people who try to hurt Elizabeth. He feels kinda bad about inhabiting a body that once killed people, but he gets over it pretty quickly (almost as quickly as Elizabeth is down to snog that dead, dead meat). Victor’s moral compass is pointing straight to ‘how much more terrible can I get?’ He doesn’t question his actions because he didn’t actually re-alive the creature.
Not to mention the abhorrent treatment of the minor characters. Victor’s brother, William, former 6 yr-old innocent child, is now a 20-something alcoholic attempted rapist. Justine, Elizabeth’s closest friend, defends William’s rapey-ness and then kills herself because she couldn’t live with the fact that she fell in love with and was pregnant by her ‘friend’s’ attempted rapist.
None of the characters are that interesting. I don’t care about any of them having a happy ending.

Writing
I feel bad for saying this, but this book is self-published for a reason. It's terrible in quality equal to Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight, but not nearly as commercially sellable. Besides the poor characterization and lame plot, the actual quality of the writing needs serious editing. Way too much is said through dialogue, making every conversation sound dumb, unrealistic, or weirdly exposition-y. The characters repeat plot points like the reader could possibly forget that Victor sucks or that the creature crawled out of a grave or that the creature’s body was a murderer. All of the main three POVs (Elizabeth, Victor, and Lucian) have fairly similar narrative voices, making each individual chapter near indistinguishable from the others- save for Elizabeth’s constant reminding of her magic, Lucian constantly reminding of his ‘birth’, or Victor’s crazy evil person internal dialogue.

At one point, the author includes some pro-life sentiment, which is weirdly on theme, but that never gets brought up ever again. It's a throw-away opinion line between Victor and his fav prostitute. Did I mention Victor’s into master/slave BDSM sh*t? Oh yeah, Henry’s there too sometimes.

Smut
I know some of you are here for some monster effing, but beware! The real monster was the scientist all along, lol.
No seriously there's not much smut in this book and somehow it's almost all Victor whipping some girls’ arse and saying the cringiest lines.
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