As might be clear from an earlier review, I’m re-entering my Frankenstein obsession. Not that I was ever truly out of that obsession, but still.

(Also, fun fact: pictured below is not even half of the editions of Frankenstein that I own.)

In The Unkillable Frank Lightning by Josh Rountree, Dr. Catherine Coldbridge has spent the past twenty-five years tormented by guilt. Back in 1879, her husband Frank was killed in Montana while serving the US Army, and in her grief, Catherine used her medical skills and knowledge of the occult to bring him back to life. But he came back monstrous, going on a killing spree, and Catherine fled in horror. Now, however, she’s determined to right her mistakes, so she hires two unsavory men to assist her in tracking down Frank and ending his unnatural existence at last. Her plan takes her to Fort Worth, where Frank has traveled with a Wild West variety show, as the Unkillable Frank Lightning. There, she faces her greatest regret, and all that he has become.

When I heard that this was a Frankenstein-inspired Western/horror mashup, I knew I had to read it. What a delightful idea. And the setting and atmosphere are pretty great. I loved seeing some sci-fi and supernatural elements in this gritty past version of Texas.

The characters are also decent. Frank is especially great, a fascinating and flawed man, but I also quite liked the other members of the Wild West Revue, like Mabel and Hank and Cowboy Dan. The hired gunmen, Aubrey and Seth, were good in that they were fun to dislike, and served as an interesting blend of ally and antagonist. But my favorite character by far was Falling Bird, a Crow man who befriends both Frank and Catherine before the story starts and is simply the best person in the entire book. He’s a voice of reason so much of the time, unfailingly loyal, and generally awesome.

As for Catherine, she’s a much more complicated figure for me, especially as the protagonist. Like Victor Frankenstein before her, she’s not particularly likeable, making choices that most people simply would never consider. This makes sense as an homage to the original novel, to have a narrator who isn’t making good choices, but I also felt that she wasn’t as well-rounded as she should have been. I wanted to see more of her life before she met Frank, when she was getting her medical degree and also learning about the occult. Instead, we only get it in expository inner monologues, which is a far less interesting way to receive information and backstory. Additionally, a couple of her character beats in the present timeline feel a little rushed, especially her change of heart upon reuniting with Frank.

I think that most of my critiques of this book, including my thoughts on Catherine, come down to the book’s length. At under 250 pages, and alternating between two timelines (autumn 1879, before Frank’s resurrection, and spring 1905 when Catherine seeks him out again), the book doesn’t have as much time to flesh things out—pun intended—as much as they could have been. I would have loved a portion either in the middle of the novel, or as another perspective to shift between, that was from Frank’s point of view. That’s part of the reason that Frankenstein itself is such a strong novel; it gives the creature a chance to tell his own story, but here we’re denied that.

In fact, most of this book should have been written from Frank’s POV! That would have been amazing! His experience over the twenty-five years seems way more interesting than Catherine’s. While it seems that she spent that time wallowing in guilt and becoming an alcoholic, Frank traveled the country, sought out a person from Catherine’s past for insight into his own existence, then somehow joined the Revue. Unfortunately, we don’t get to really see any of that happening on the page, only hearing about some of those details after the fact. I wanted to know more about all of that, especially about him joining the show and finding an unconventional family among its other members. That’s a really compelling subplot, but I only got scraps of it. Worse still, the resolution feels rushed and anticlimactic, when it should have been the most emotionally fraught scene of the entire novel.

However, there are still elements I liked about this. The general tone is great, and there are some similar plot beats to the original novel. Frank is ostracized by most people, causing them to drive him and his allies out of Fort Worth. Plus, he’s an eloquent and intelligent being who seeks acceptance (even while he doesn’t particularly enjoy his existence), and not enough adaptations of Frankenstein portray the creature in this way, so I loved this. And lastly, there’s a point toward the end of the story where Catherine is pressured into trying to revive another person, to devastating results. Clearly, Rountree appreciates and understands a lot of what makes Frankenstein such a magnificent book.

But is Rountree’s work as good as the original? To me, absolutely not. But he’s not alone; I’ve yet to watch or read a derivative work of Frankenstein that even begins to compare. However, there’s still some decent stuff here.

In the end, I wanted to love The Unkillable Frank Lightning, but didn’t. It suffers from being far too short and not developing the most interesting aspects of the plot. The action is often violent and intense and hard to put down, and the sci-fi elements are dark but cool. Many of the side characters are excellent, and the dynamic between Catherine and Frank is decent. I just wish it had been longer, giving Frank and his story time to breathe, so that the emotional moments in the final act could have more impact. But for a Frankenstein-inspired book, there are many worse and less original books, and if you want a thrilling horror novel, this might be worth checking out!

The Unkillable Frank Lightning is available now!