I was reminded of the game "Operator" in which a story is whispered from person to person to see how close the final version is to the original. This story came to the reader via a letter from a brother on the Arctic Seas who encountered Victor Frankenstein and was told this incredible tale of the fiend which he had created. It is only fitting that a tale heard fourth person should be so fantastic. The writing was wonderful, the characters obviously memorable, and the plot was fabulous. I am so glad I read this book! ( )

I’m not sure if I read this when I was a kid or not—I must’ve. But man…I must have lost my taste for “classic” language as there was just sooooo much in this to annoy the heck out of me! The one thing that sticks in my mind is that they don’t seem to have invented the phrase “we left (place)…” instead the author said, “we QUITTED (London)” or “we QUITTED the house” or whatever. Once or twice was no big deal, but after dozens of times, it started to get really distracting and pulled me right out of the story. The second thing I noticed is that it wasn’t really scary. It’s not really a horror story so much as a treatise on man’s tendency to judge each other based on looks—how we create our own monsters by the way we treat others, that the monster Frankenstein created was reviled because of how he looked, that he originally had a peaceful, inquisitive mind. The reader had a rather strange voice and the modification he used for the monster’s speech was just weird—sort of like I had to keep listening, slightly repulsed, but too fascinated to shut the darned thing off. LOL Okay, I loved the old B & W Frankenstein movie and this book I just didn’t care for all that much, “classic” or no. It was actually sort of…boring, despite my agreement with the author’s premise that we place way too much emphasis on appearances. ( )