title: Icebound
author: Dean Koontz
publisher: Headline Book Publishing
pages: 384
year: 1976
reading time: 7days (04/04/09 to 10/04/2009)
rating: 5/10
Of all Dean Koontz books I've read this one is the worst. No horror, no suspense, nothing. The main characters made me sick. I felt no sorry for them and if I could I would have killed them both. So perfect it made me sick. This is one of dean koontz main faults in almost all books... he makes too darn good characters. they are like angels. Well at least this book didn't had a dog.
In the end all ends good but I wished them all killed. What we learn? Nothing. If this was the first book I've read from Koontz I wouldn't be reading another book of his so soon..
It is poorly written, lacks suspense or tension, the characters are one-dimensional and the 'serial killer' subplot is pitiful (so pitiful that the "serial killer" doesn't kill anyone!)
Some characteristcs of the characters,
-One is highly phobic, terrified of (you guessed it): ice & snow (because of an accident that killed her parents)!
-Another's family was murdered in China
-Another's had close relatives assasinated while in office and is disillusioned by politics (a thinly disguised JFK jr?)
-Another lost his son to cancer
-Another's psychotic
... oh well..
title: Watchers
author: Dean Koontz
publisher: Headline Book Publishing
pages: 512
year: 1987
reading time: 11 days (30/10/2008 to 09/11/2008)
rating: 7.5/10
This was the first book I read from Koontz. I like it. Smart dog vs Evil something. Again the same too darn good characters. They are so perfect that are unbelievable. The "evil" characters are so evil that are perfect (well until the end). I think Koontz could start making characters with some flaws... But the story itself was good. I like how unfolds itself. In the end I was glad I read it but...
Again with the golden retrievers... What of the cats? I think he hates them.
"When the Russians sabotage a genetic research project in California, two mutated creatures escape from the lab. One is a golden retriever with high enough intelligence to think and communicate with humans; the other is the Outsider, a vicious monster created from a baboon and bred to kill. Both the man who befriends and adopts the dog and his new bride find themselves stalked by government agents anxious to find the dog, a particularly repulsive Mafia hit man intent on stealing him, and the Outsider, with whom the dog is linked telepathically. "
title: The Taking
author: Dean Koontz
publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
pages: 432
year: 2005
reading time: 7 days (28/11/2008 to 04/12/2008)
rating: 8/10
This is a good book. Again the darn good characters and the dogs... (I bet the next book will have them both...) This book was good for it's atmospheric and almost percepetible miasma. The aliens, the part of the dogs. I thought it was a good and fast paced book.
This review I found despicts my thought without taking a word...
"The story starts off with powerful mood-building imagery and with echoes of Koontz's "Strangers" and Stephen King's "The Stand" and "The Mist." Koontz then cranks up the suspense and horror as alien vegetation begins to invade the town, the residents are dispatched in gruesome and mysterious ways, and the dead come to life. Now the story segues into a Twilight Zone screenplay, as the supernatural and otherworldly occurrences increase. By the halfway point, Molly and Neil are now on a crusade to save the children at any cost, even though they wonder how anyone, adult or child, could survive this hellish new world order. When there are only 50 pages left to go in the story, I am wondering how Koontz could ever resolve the plot instead of leaving the reader hanging until a sequel. Then comes a disappointing ending that plays strongly on Koontz's increasing trend to use religion and hope in his books. Dogs feature prominently in this story, as they do in many of Koontz's books. However, the author's trademark sense of humor is conspicuously absent here.
To be fair, I give the first half of the book a nine rating for an excellent portrayal of a horrific and inexplicable entity gaining absolute control over the earth. I give the middle a three rating as Molly assumes absurdly heroic proportions in the midst of Armageddon. The ending deserves one star as a cop-out and a disappointment. So how can I sum the book up? If you are a Koontz fan like me, you will want to read the book. The first half is a powerhouse of creepiness and it has a story line build-up that showcases the best of Koontz's storytelling abilities. But the second half will likely let you down, unless your favorite theme in Koontz's books is the transcendence of horror by uplifting spirituality."
"A glowing rain begins falling at one a.m. in the San Bernardino Mountains of California, where productive but hardly best-selling novelist Molly Sloan and her ex-priest husband, Neil, live outside a small town. Besides being luminous, the downpour smells like rancid semen, Molly thinks, and it brings with it a feeling of oppression. Animals cower from it, as Molly grasps when she sees a pack of coyotes huddling on the porch. The little wolves seem to be appealing to her for help, and when she walks out to them, they seem to expect her to lead them. She goes to wake Neil, rescuing him from a nightmare, and to wash--no, scour--her hands where the rain hit them. The torrent continues, taking out the power, but then appliances come on spontaneously, and the hands of clocks run wildly in opposite directions. The Sloans conclude they must leave after an interior mirror reflects the house as invaded by ghastly vegetation--but doesn't reflect them at all. Opening sequences come no creepier than this one, and the rest of Koontz's version of the extraterrestrial attack scenario so well lives up to it that the revelation, painstakingly apprehended by Molly, of who the aliens really are comes as no surprise. "
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