Book Review: This Dark Endeavour

 

Book Review: This Dark Endevour by Kenneth Oppel 

Goodreads Description: Victor Frankenstein leads a charmed life. He and his twin brother, Konrad, and their beautiful cousin Elizabeth take lessons at home and spend their spare time fencing and horseback riding. Along with their friend Henry, they have explored all the hidden passageways and secret rooms of the palatial Frankenstein chateau. Except one.

The Dark Library contains ancient tomes written in strange languages and filled with forbidden knowledge. Their father makes them promise never to visit the library, but when Konrad becomes deathly ill, Victor knows he must find the book that contains the recipe for the legendary Elixir of Life.

The elixir needs only three ingredients. But impossible odds, dangerous alchemy and a bitter love triangle threaten their quest at every turn.

Victor knows he must not fail. Yet his success depends on how far he is willing to push the boundaries of nature, science and love—and how much he is willing to sacrifice.

My Review: Kenneth Oppel has had a special place in my heart since I was a kid, when his bat-tastic Silverwing series swooped into my life and made my oddball ass feel less alone. So, years ago, when I spotted a Frankenstein prequel by Kenneth Oppel, I was quick to snatch it up, but the book languished on my TBR shelf the last few years as more pressing titles jumped the queue. I finally found the time to pick it up, and to say I was disappointed would have been an understatement. This Dark Endevour is DULL. It's predictable. It's more than forgettable, it's why-bother-reading-able. The book's greatest weakness is that it's a Frankenstein prequel; its saving grace the target audience, who likely have not read the original Frankenstein and can't compare Oppel's changes to the original text. Yet even then, the book falls flat: the story is uninspired, the romantic and plot twists are contrived, lacking any sense of stakes, and the characters feel ripped out of the wrong time period. 

Slapping Frankenstein on this book leads to natural comparisons between the texts, but ironically, knowing the basics of Frankenstein makes the plot and twist ending of This Dark Endevour painfully obvious. Oppel introduces readers to his Frankenstein twins: Victor Frankenstein, the savant scientist that science-fiction knows all too well, and Oppel's creation, Konrad - the virtuous mirror-inversion of Victor, whose flaws have been bent backwards into much a nobler configuration. Konrad is sweet, he's compassionate, he's sensitive and gentle, but also brave, just, and level-headed - often the voice of reason, reigning Victor in when his lofty ideals pull them off the moral path. Yet this inversion of Victor's traits also reveals that Oppel either dislikes or doesn't understand the nuance within Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, as Oppel emphasizes Victor's negative traits - greed, ambition, stubbornness, solipsism - and crafts Konrad as the opposite of that, making both characters feel partly artificial and casting them in 'angel' and 'devil' roles. In the original text, Victor spent much of his time reigning himself back in, and the balance between doing wrong and trying to correct course is what made him so fascinating. Oppel's Victor feels more akin to the mad-scientist representations of Victor Frankenstein that pop-culture is more familiar with. 

Early in the book, Konrad falls deathly ill, motivating Victor and his friends Elizabeth and Henry to seek out alchemic knowledge that would lead them to the Elixir of Life to safe Konrad's life. At this point, the fact that this is a Frankenstein tale immediately gave away the ending. This is, after all, Victor Frankenstein, the man known for bringing back the dead, not for saving the living, so before I'd even opened the book (as Konrad's illness is spelled out on the back cover), it was painfully obvious that despite all efforts, Konrad wasn't going to make it. Oppel tries to combat this by drawing out the tension of Konrad's illness and faking out the reader in regards to his recovery, but the efforts fall painfully flat.  

The overall plot is organized around a three-point fetch quest that quickly became predictable and dull. Victor and his friends connect with an alchemist who tasks them with collecting the three ingredients needed to save Konrad, and holy crap was this boring. No amount of cool glow-in-the-dark moss, demon fish, or wolf's eye alchemy could distract from the terrifyingly predictable arcs of find thing - attacked by monsters - barely escape with item. This formula repeats again at the finale as trusted characters turn on each other and the actual creation of the Elixir becomes yet another fetch mission. The story could have worked if it was in a video game, where the agency of players could have mitigated some of the boredom from the plot's predictability. Instead, the reader is dragged along, beat by expected beat, without anything to change up the formula.

Finally, the characters. As I already mentioned, Victor and Konrad are two-dimensional representations of the "good" and "bad" twin, although thankfully this becomes less pronounced as Konrad becomes bedridden and less of an active character. Elizabeth was also difficult to stomach through much of the text. Many times, she asserts her equality to the boys by declaring that she's braver, stronger, and more tenacious than others (certainly Henry). The characters often have a "Don't You Know, Bob?" moment where they recount when Elizabeth bested the boys, was braver than them, or, GASP - wore trousers. These conversations feel so contrived, like Elizabeth is arguing against someone that isn't even there, asserting her autonomy and independence when no one was questioning it (other characters, narrative, even audience). I can't help but wonder why Oppel felt the need to assure audiences of Elizabeth's Girl Power! and can only assume it's because of the time period the book is set in. Finally, Oppel establishes an interesting romantic conflict between Victor, Elizabeth, and Konrad, but introduces this too late (so it feels like it comes out of nowhere, when this romantic tension could and should have been underlying their interactions from the beginning). This tension also doesn't lead to much besides some simmering resentment and moments of will-they-won't-they. I wish this romantic tension was better defined, upped the stakes, and actually lead to consequences in their relationship. It would have been nice to see that simmering resentment actually pitch up to a boil. 

All in all, this book isn't worth the read. Even as a fun, dumb pulp read, there's nothing really fun about it. With how predictable the whole plotline was, it would have been smarter to start the plot at book 2, where Konrad is already dead and build to how Victor plans to bring him back, even if that would have had its own complications. That concept at least has some creative possibilities within in, but this book left such a bad taste in my mouth that I don't care to see where Oppel takes this concept. It's dead in the water if you ask me, and not worth the lightning for its resurrection. 

TL;DR: 2/5 stars. Boring and uninspired.