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A review by sistermagpie
The Only Child by Andrew Pyper
2.0
This book really suffers from its central premise. The beginning caught my interest. The protagonist is a psychiatrist at a hospital who specializes in, of course, the most violent and "monstrous" of killers. Then one day she meets one who claims to have come there searching for her because they have a mysterious connection. And he's not a man at all, but a 200-year-old monster who was the inspiration for Frankenstein, Dracula and Mr. Hyde. Soon he's leading Lily all over to discover the truth of who and what she is, while she's also being chased/tempted by a mysterious group that is hunting the monster. (Of course when they have the chance to kill him they will always choose to "study" him--i.e., give him a chance to escape again.)
I'm not sure why the author threw in this idea that this guy is the inspiration for three of the most important and famous horror novels of all time. It seems to actually undermine the story because the more Michael (as he calls himself currently) talks about briefly meeting the three authors and complains how their work didn't tell the real story or used him for petty fiction, the more you're forced to think about how much better all those fictional monsters are than the one you're reading about. Smushing together all three of these monsters into one makes him far less compelling than any of the individual ones--and confusing too. It was unclear to me exactly why he had most of the characteristics he had than in any of the other books--the science is far more hand-waved than anything in Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde and that's a problem not because I need some hard science fiction explanation, but because in both the other books the science is related to the theme and makes for a more coherent story.
I'm not sure why the author threw in this idea that this guy is the inspiration for three of the most important and famous horror novels of all time. It seems to actually undermine the story because the more Michael (as he calls himself currently) talks about briefly meeting the three authors and complains how their work didn't tell the real story or used him for petty fiction, the more you're forced to think about how much better all those fictional monsters are than the one you're reading about. Smushing together all three of these monsters into one makes him far less compelling than any of the individual ones--and confusing too. It was unclear to me exactly why he had most of the characteristics he had than in any of the other books--the science is far more hand-waved than anything in Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde and that's a problem not because I need some hard science fiction explanation, but because in both the other books the science is related to the theme and makes for a more coherent story.