Monday, September 23, 2019

Hyde by Daniel Levine


(hb; 2014)

From the back cover

“Mr. Hyde is trapped, locked in Dr. Jekyll’s surgical cabinet, counting the hours until his inevitable capture. As four days pass, he has the chance, finally, to tell his story─the story of his brief, marvelous life.

“Summoned to life by strange potions, Hyde knows not when or how long he will have control of ‘the body.’ When dormant, he watches Dr. Jekyll’s high-class life from a paralyzed remove. Soon, their mutual existence is threatened, not only by the uncertainties of untested science, but also by a mysterious stalker. Hyde is being taunted─possibly framed. Girls have gone missing; someone has been killed. Who stands, watching, from the shadows? In the blur of this shared consciousness, can Hyde ever be confident these crimes were not committed by his hand?”


Review

Hyde is a chatty, often entertaining POV-reversal take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Levine succeeds in making Hyde a sympathetic character─a victim driven by damage-control circumstances, blackmail and a dominant, uptight personality that is Dr. Jekyll. This is worth reading if you can put up with semi-regular rambling between important plot points and character exchanges. To its credit, Hyde’s tone and other elements match those of its source inspiration book despite its considerably longer length. This is worth reading, checking out from the library.

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