First off: if you’re reading this while the blurb still talks about immortality and seeking an heir, that blurb is WRONG. I won’t speculate about how that happened – not my business – but it’s very, very wrong. That is not what this book is about at all.

To head off any other jokes: it’s also not about a dinosaur. It is indeed a play on Shelley’s Frankenstein, and specifically the creature – and yes there’s a whole bit about the name choice.

So what is it about, then? Well, Frankenstein (the creature) has been king of the world for many, many decades. Since not long after Napoleon popped up, in fact, and it’s now just our time. Frankenstein does seem to be immortal; he’s not ageing or changing, and assassination attempts in the past have failed. Of course, that doesn’t stop other people from trying.

Frankenstein rules as a benevolent (ish) dictator. All land belongs to him – with just a couple of carve-outs, like Jerusalem and Mecca – and he leases it back; but he has strict expectations about energy efficiency etc. The lingua franca is French (heh). National sentiment is forbidden, and regarded as irrelevant by the powers that be. Decade on decade, Frankenstein swings between more liberal and more tyrannical. Someone is arrested for planning to assassinate the king… and the novel goes from there.

It’s very important I let you know that the opening chapter has some quite gruesome torture. I had to skim a couple of paragraphs after I realised what was going on. There’s nothing like it for the rest of the book, so it’s a shocking opener but not indicative of the novel as a whole.

As well as being a novel about trying to understand a would-be assassin, this is quite blatantly a book about politics. If there is literally a monster in charge, how do and should humans act? (Yes, of course there is discussion to be had about whether the creature is a monster, and you’ll note that I don’t use ‘monster’ to describe him.) Sometimes there is something darkly appealing about having one person in charge forever and ever! Change is hard and sometimes painful! … and there will always be collaborators, who are either all-in on the regime or out for whatever they can get; and there will be people who are just muddling along and putting up with it because what else are you going to do; and there will be some few who are defiant and maybe reckless and endanger both themselves and others because they think there’s a better way. Where does righteousness lie? What is appropriate? I know what I think; and Roberts manages to be a lot more nuanced than many other writers would achieve (which does not surprise me, because… well. It’s Adam Roberts. Man knows how to be complicated).

I do have thoughts about the ending; spoilers below the cut.