Oppel, Kenneth: This Dark Endeavor
This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein (2011)
Written by: Kenneth Oppel
Genre: YA/Horror
Pages: 304 (Kindle)
Series: Book One (The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein)
Why I Read It: Let's see if I can remember how this worked: I saw a cover art post, somewhere, for the sequel: Such Wicked Intent. It was gorgeous, and I promptly hopped over to Amazon to learn more. In learning more, I learned it was the sequel to this book, so I looked at it. I was surprised it hadn't caught my attention before, with the whole "Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein" thing (Frankenstein being one of the only few classic novels I've read more than once), but when I looked at the original cover (which is not the one featured at the top of this post), I knew why: the original cover had turned me off. At any rate, my interest was piqued, and because Amazon had it SUPER CHEAP for the Kindle, I downloaded it. Thanks to Mount TBR, I'm reading it now.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Bravery, danger, and intense passion. How does obsession begin?
Victor and Konrad are the twin brothers Frankenstein. They are nearly inseparable. Growing up, their lives are filled with imaginary adventures...until the day their adventures turn all too real.
They stumble upon the Dark Library and discover secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies. Father forbids them from ever entering the room again, but when Konrad falls gravely ill, Victor is drawn back to the Dark Library where he uncovers an ancient formula for the Elixir of Life. Victor, along with his beautiful cousin Elizabeth and friend Henry, immediately set out to find a man who was once known for his alchemical works to help them create the formula.
Determined to save Konrad, the three friends scale the highest trees in Strumwald, dive into the deepest lakes, and even make an unthinkable sacrifice in their quest for the elixir’s ingredients. And as if their task was not complicated enough, a new realm of danger-that of illicit love-threatens to end the ordeal in tragedy.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay, but seriously, if you're familiar with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the spoilers really aren't going to surprise you or anything. If you're NOT familiar, then I suggest skipping to "My Rating." Everyone else, onward!
What a strange experience.
I originally read Frankenstein in my sophomore honors English class in high school. Required reading and all that, but the tale fascinated me. Sue me, I was an English geek back in the day, but not every piece of required reading fascinated me, so there. I re-read Frankenstein back in October 2010 during my very first year of the book club, and that was an interesting experience, no doubt. Also, Frankenstein is one of my husband's most favorite books ever.
So I'm pretty familiar with that story. With its themes. So on and so forth.
But reading the very start of this book was just . . . I almost put it down, it was so laughably melodramatic. And then, lo and behold, the trite and awful dialogue I had been reading was actually part of a PLAY the twin brothers Frankenstein were acting out. Thank God for that, because I was seriously consider putting my Kindle down and moving on to something else.
Yet, it took me a long while to warm up to this book. After the bout of melodrama, I found myself a wee bit more critical than I would be. As a result, every time Victor looked at his twin and saw himself doing that action, I got annoyed. I can't even tell you why it was so annoying, other than the fact that given the twins' ages (late teens, right?), I feel like the observations were just plain wrong. Not that I'm an identical twin or anything (I was supposed to have a twin, actually, according to my mom, but I absorbed it early on. Don't you guys feel lucky? You got the evil one!), but wouldn't twins look at each other and not see themselves, but a different person? If they did obsess over seeing themselves in their twin, wouldn't they get over that before they hit the ages of the twin brothers Frankenstein?
Or am I just biased because I grew up reading all manner of Sweet Valley, and therefore feel like an expert in how twins should be portrayed, which given said source material, is nothing to feel like an expert on?
At any rate, the whole "I saw Konrad dancing with her and saw myself instead" stuff felt false, wrong, as if Oppel were trying to up the tension. Or melodrama.
Because Victor is such a drama queen. Granted, he's not as bad as he could be, but I rolled my eyes more than once during the course of reading this book, and not being able to empathize with the protagonist isn't a good thing, especially when the author is building a series on the character.
Of course, consider the protagonist: it's Victor-freaking-FRANKENSTEIN!!! Anyone who's read Shelley's work knows what an ass he is. The irony of that book is that even though Frankenstein creates a "monster," it's actually Frankenstein himself who is the monster.
Oppel's just trying to show the roots of where that man came from. I appreciate that, I do. Empathy in a lead isn't necessary when the lead is a fascinating character. But melodrama does not a fascinating character make.
However, i did like the camaraderie between Victor, Konrad, Elizabeth, and Henry. A few times, I got a Harry Potter feel, because of the bonds of friendship and the search for magical items, you know? Those feelings were few and far between, but they were there.
Though, so many stupid, little things disappointed me. One of the wonders of Shelley's work is that the Frankenstein monster is created through science. Okay, not real science as you or I know it, but in Shelley's day, it was a fearsome possibility. And through-out this book, we're given the defense of alchemy not being magic, but a science that's not understood yet. So I was a little miffed with then the eyes of the wolf didn't just dilate the pupils to make it easier to see in the dark. Victor and Elizabeth actually started taking on wolfish characteristics -- growling and sniffing and biting and all kinds of non-normal human behavior. Maybe this shouldn't have bothered me. Maybe if I were the target audience, this would've been wicked cool. But for me, it undercut that whole notion that the alchemy wasn't magic. And that rather ruined the believability for me: it told me that the author was going to resort to more magical means to achieve his goals, which wasn't what I was interested in. I wanted to see science that looked like magic but wasn't, but made sense despite not being real science. I felt like Oppel was setting me up for some seriously implausible magic later down the road, and that thought did nothing for me.
Which leads into the portrayal of Elizabeth, oddly enough. There's a lot of talk about her passionate, animal side versus her restrained, human side. But I hated this duality, even though it was supposed to represent both brothers' natures and give a kind of connection to both. But her biting the throat of a vulture? Wolf portion or no, that was just weird. WEIRD. And making Elizabeth into a kind of monster was strange and worrisome to me, especially given her (albeit brief) characterization in the source material.
Krake was awesome, up until he wasn't awesome. And his demise was absolutely horrifying. R.I.P. Krake. You did not deserve your fate. Poor kitty....
The tasks to find the ingredients for the Elixir of Life were awfully convenient. It reminded me of reading Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising fantasy series last year, where the artifacts just so HAPPENED to be in the locale the kids were in at that point in time. Here, too, the ingredients were a bit too easy to come by, in terms of locality. What would've happened if one of the ingredients hadn't been so local? The book would've been longer, perhaps, and harder to write, but still.
I did like all the nods to the source material, and to Mary Shelley herself. Everything from the I will be with you on your wedding night to the names of characters, I found myself grinning at all the illusions. I'm quite sure I didn't catch ALL of them, but the ones I did catch made me smile.
But for every bit I liked, something else came up to annoy me. In this case, the triangle. Not your usual love triangle, mind you: after all, we're in the guy's POV, and we don't often get that in YA love triangles. But it was so… icky. Victor's obsession with her was so unhealthy that I couldn't root for the two of them to come together, despite (or especially) knowing Elizabeth's fate in Shelley's book. I guess that's the point though: Elizabeth was something Victor was never meant to have, and his obsession is in keeping with his character as portrayed by Shelley. So intellectually, I appreciate what Oppel is doing here. I just don't care for it, because I don't care for Victor, and my brain's trying to connect the dots between this character and his surroundings to the one in Frankenstein. And by this point, I'm starting to wonder if, by the end of the series, Oppel doesn't plan on re-writing Frankenstein itself in order to tell his own version of it and keep all the changes that've been made. I'll get to that in a minute.
Polidori was a character that I came to quickly distrust, especially when the third ingredient was at hand (ha-ha). When he asked after Konrad, I was certain he somehow had something to do with the relapse. That somehow, he knew that it was the Frankenstein family he was working with, and was exacting his revenge. That being said, I was right to distrust him, but I believed him when he said he'd meant to make two potions, one for Victor and one for himself. Circumstance didn't allow that to happen, so Palidori wanted to keep it for himself. Too bad he didn't. :) Then we'd know for sure if Victor's potion worsened Konrad's condition or not. However, given the ending we have, it's good for Victor to distrust the alchemy. It makes the fact he never learns all the more poignant.
Though the logistics of gathering the final ingredient were puzzling to me. Okay, so they needed two fingers. Why not the pinky from each hand? Or was it better to have one deformed hand instead of two?
Be that as it may, by this point I was utterly engrossed with the action. Again, R.I.P. Krake. But I also found it to be an interesting choice (and in keeping with Victor's character), how anti-religion he is. And not just anti-religion, but anti-god (so I guess that'd make him a hard atheist, right?). Pretty ballsy for a YA novel, but I respect Oppel more for keeping true to the character.
In regards to the original work, I mentioned that I almost felt like Oppel may just take a stab at "re-writing" Shelley's story, but using his take on the characters. Why do I feel that way? Well, part of it has a lot to do with the introduction of a twin brother who dies, who Victor would do anything to save. We even get visions of the monster from Shelley's book, but here, that monster is actually Konrad. Couple that with the fact that Konrad is buried in an ice crypt, which means his entire body will be preserved? Yeah… it'd be all too easy to make the monster Konrad, but that changes the entirety of Shelley's novel, which means in order to do this, Oppel would have to write it from his perspective.
This isn't wholly a bad thing. In many ways, it could be entertaining, despite the potential of so much lost. And besides, the original will always be there. Hell, my Kindle version is actually both Oppel's book and an electronic copy of Frankenstein itself! And I can see how Oppel's work might excite readers and give them a way to enjoy Shelley's work that they wouldn't have otherwise. To which I say, awesome.
The ending itself was rather jarring. Partially because by time I got there, there was still 40% of the book left (which turned out to be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), but partially because everything was so sudden. I know that was the point, and really, Konrad's death shouldn't have come as a surprise, because let's face it, there is no twin brother in Shelley's work. Still, I expected Konrad to last for at least another book. He doesn't, and that's okay, but not as surprising, simply because I was waiting on that poor boy to die the entire book!
My Rating: It's a Gamble
Truly, this book was hit or miss. There were some moments where I was utterly enthralled by the action, where I loved all the little nods to the source material of Frankenstein, where I felt Oppel was truly capturing what the boy Victor Frankenstein might've been in order to become the man who created the monster. Those parts were quite fascinating.
On the other hand, those very same parts sometimes felt painfully obvious. It was a weird thing, but I almost wish there had been more subtlety to this book, so that when a connection was made, the genius of it would dawn on my slowly, rather than whacking me upside the head and screaming in my ear, "See what I did there? SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!?!?!" I also found Victor to be a bit too melodramatic at times, though I've got to give credit where credit is due: Victor Frankenstein is a rather despicable and tragic man in Mary Shelley's work, and he's a rather despicable and tragic boy here in Oppel's work. I personally could've done without the love triangle, which was no love triangle at all, really, because if you've read Frankenstein or seen any film adaptation, you know how all of this turns out. I guess that's part of the genius, making you care despite knowing they're all doomed. Like of like setting a love story on the Titanic.
Frustrations aside, I find myself curious about the second book, Such Wicked Intent. I'm curious to see where Oppel goes with his characters, and how he's going to connect it all to Shelley's masterpiece, or if he'll not bother with the connection and re-tell the masterpiece from his own perspective. No matter, the point is that despite this novel not really working for me on the whole, I'm curious, and that's a good thing. Curiosity means that I might one day give in and give the second book a shot.
Keep in mind, though, that while this did not work for me, other reviewers have absolutely loved and adored this book. Let me point you to The Book Smugglers, who rated this as a 9 out of 10, which for them is "damn near perfect." Truly, it's a book that's a gamble, and being a fan of the source material does not guarantee whether or not you'll like the book. The only way to know is to at least sample it, or just give it a shot. It's a fast read, after all. And I think that fans of Rick Yancey's The Monstrumologist may find this book particularly appealing. No doubt, I feel Yancey is the better writer on a host of levels, but the terms of historical horror stories, there's a kinship between these two books which makes me think if you like one, you'll like the other.
Cover Commentary: The cover featured at the top of the review, I love. I love the font choice, the coloring, the stark historical simplicity of it all. And the lighting. Love the lighting. The original cover, seen behind the cut, is appealing to me if I just ignore the keyhole. However, the keyhole itself is a distraction rather than an invitation, so I'm glad they changed up the art.
Next up: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold