

Jekyll he knows to be an imposter, who slips slowly into paranoia and madness, it overturns the former belief we had in him.

So when in this novel it is Utterson, confounded by the appearance of a Dr.

In fact, it is part of the sinister nature of the novella that he is an intellectual man, ever more convinced of something inexplicable happening to his friend. Before, the reader stayed with Utterson for the majority of the book, experiencing the increasingly strange occurrences through his eyes, and we have no reason to disbelieve his account thanks to the final evidence for the Jekyll/Hyde coming in the form of two corroboratory letters. Thank you to the author, Anthony O'Neill, and the publisher, Black & White Publishing, for this opportunity.ĭespite the overall setting and language of the book feeling right as a follow up to Stevenson's original, I am too unsettled by the author's mistreatment of Utterson to really get behind it. I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is a truly brilliant re-imagining that does Stevenson the justice his work deserves and is also a perfect example of Gothic suspense, in its own right. The characters, setting and bones of the story were known but O'Neill managed to take them in a direction I could not presuppose, and very much appreciated. The elements of the former story are well known and so the author was very adept at continuing to keep his readers guessing, when so much remained true to the original. What started as an authentic retelling soon, also, turned into an exciting story, in its own right. It is this fog-laden landscape that allow the truly chilling elements of both this story, and its predecessor, to permeate throughout, and allows the trickle of dread and anticipation access from the very first page. The reader is transported to Victorian England, with startling ease, as O'Neill creates an evocative atmosphere similar to those I so adore in the Gothic classics. I was immediately and pleasantly surprised to find the penmanship evoking the feel of the original tale. Utterson can only rely on himself, to prove his assertions correct, uncloak the mystery, and protect his own fracturing sanity. He believes an impostor is posing as his former friend and has succeeded in fooling their entire social circle of this guise. Only Utterson does not believe that this is the case.

Jekyll is presumed dead and his lawyer and good friend Gabriel Utterson is set to take over his prior home and fortunes, in just a few days.īut then Jekyll returns. Seven years have passed, since the events of the original tale. This is a retelling of the infamous classic text, The Strange Case of Dr.
