by Kenneth Oppel
HarperCollins Canada
978-1-55468-339-0
298 pp.
Ages 12+
With Mary Shelley's early 19th century tome as the basis for Kenneth Oppel's This Dark Endeavour, young readers can look forward to a complex fantasy with compelling characters who blur our perceptions of good and evil.
In this first book of an inevitable series, sixteen-year-old Victor Frankenstein, true to Shelley’s character, enjoys the privileged life of a son of one of Geneva’s magistrates. When his twin brother Konrad falls deathly ill, Victor is relentless in his pursuing an alchemical cure, inspired by the discovery of a Dark Library (Biblioteka Obscura), concealed by an ancestor beneath Chateau Frankenstein. This ancestor, Wilhelm Frankenstein, practiced witchcraft and alchemy, rituals condemned by the Church and deemed illegal by the state, and, although prohibited by his father from engaging in these activities, Victor enlists the help of their cousin, Elizabeth, and close friend, Henry Clerval, to solicit the expertise of a censured apothecary/alchemist, Julius Polidori. Polidori, a broken man, living with his pet lynx, Krake, translates a recipe for the Elixir of Life, sending the young people out for its unique ingredients.
