This book is terribly hard to rate for me. Even though I didn't enjoy the writing style, which was very tell-don't-show, I'm not sure about the extent to which this is the author's fault when this is a translated work.

The good: This book has plenty to say about revenge. How once that process starts, it never ends. This novel's Frankenstein's creature, called Whatsitsname, is a living-dead embodiment of this concept and goes on his own journey toward understanding what distinguishes a victim from a criminal and how humanity is too complicated for these to be mutually exclusive categories. I enjoyed this a lot, especially since I've been reading Paths Of Dissent alongside this novel wherein veteran dissenters recall the useless U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and its baseless, sometimes cyclical, logic. It seemed to me that a parallel was being drawn between revenge and forever wars, and I appreciated the hell out of that.

The meh: This book's portrayal of women is complicated for me. They were always conquests of some sort for the central male pov characters, whether the conquest was based in sexual fantasy or based in simply trying to get an old widow to sell her home because what's she going to do with all that space by herself? Even though these sections of the novel were likely intended to parallel the flawed logic of vengeance and war, I'm not sure that I'm seeing the connection. Or perhaps these sections were intended to parallel Mary Shelley's own treatment of women in Frankenstein, who were always casualties in Frankenstein's pursuit of self actualization. Either way, these sections fell flat for me, especially since a sexual assault scene near the book's finale ends up (to my understanding, at least) rewarding the perpetrator with more attention from the woman who rejected him. That left a bad taste in my mouth that I'm positive wasn't just my stale coffee.

Ultimately, this book does work as a satire of militant vengeance. If you read it for this purpose alone, then you might get something out if it. It's just a slog to get through (at least for me) due to the broad absence of dialogue between characters that interact on the page. And the portrayal of women is kinda bleh. Regardless, the bits of the book that come from the creature's perspective are what I looked forward to the most, and they were the most rewarding chapters in my opinion. So, if you do give this book a shot, I think it's worth your time and patience.

For fans of: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Tribe by Bari Wood