Reviewed by: Slappy

Sometimes, you are surprised at just how enjoyable some authors are. Dean R. Koontz, one of my earliest favorite authors from back when I was only a teenage monkey (no offense to the current ruling Teen Monkey) has maintained
a place in my bookcases despite my changing tastes in fiction. Koontz writes plainly yet vividly and completely enthralling. I have never started a Koontz novel and not finished, which says quite a bit for old Dean ’cause I have this thing where if a book doesn’t grab me by at least the first hundred pages, it gets set aside for me to return to later, which of course most times I never do.

Dean R. Koontz has written numerous novels spanning the better part of two decades and still remains one of the most under appreciated authors. Granted, his style of writing and subject matter is more “easy read” than most horror or sci-fi authors, but just pick up one of his books. You’ll see. He is entertaining and interesting and intelligent and insightful (ooohhh … phonetic alliteration! gotta love that!) and his books generally end with the good guys stomping the crap out of the bad guys. Most Koontz novels are horror/sci-fi, yet there are a few in his portfolio of prose (hee hee … I’m on drugs right now) which center around psychological threats to the main characters as well as just plain old mean bad guys trying to make things horrible for the good guys.

My favorite Koontz novel … Strangers. Probably his most epic, the story involves several people from across the country who are inexplicably drawn to a particular town where they all find they are not strangers, no, they know each other, yet HOW they know each other is only marginally revealed. That is, until the novel’s climax. I was totally engrossed in reading this
book. A priest, a doctor, a professional thief, an author and several other individuals try and uncover the particulars of their shared pasts, though they know not what that past entails. And let me just tell you this … you will not expect the answers Koontz gives.

Read Dean R. Koontz. You will not be disappointed in his work, just don’t go expecting Ayn Rand.

Koontz is much more enjoyable.!!!!

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Other Koontz novels Slappy recommends…

The Bad Place
Midnight
Night Chills
Phantoms
Twilight Eyes**
Watchers
Whispers

**Twilight Eyes is my second favorite Koontz novel. A story about a circus, a psychically ` gifted young man and demonic activity from ages ago planning to conquer the human race.

Mass Market Paperback – 688 pages Reprint edition (May 1996) Berkley Pub Group; ISBN: 0425119920; Dimensions (in inches): 1.50 x 6.84 x 4.17

Reviewed by: The Blind Monkey

As many of you know, the Blind Monkey is predisposed to RIP writers with a lack of respect for the english language. Authors like Robin Cook or Clive Cussler, who try to pack punch into flimsy sentence structure by repeatedly going to the Thesaurus for more creative ways to express a point.

The problem is, so few writers truly posses the expanded vocabulary they are trying to pass off as natural in their work. So instead of focusing on gripping plots and believable and well-woven characters, they get caught up in using big fancy words they don’t understand with no regard for context or setting.

Unfortunately, it seems that this strategy of ‘sounding more intelligent than you really are’ is a successful (and obviously lucrative) attempt at impressing the high-paying publishers that promote books to the top of best-seller lists for the simple minded.

I find it depressing. And if you follow the Monkey’s reviews for any length of time, you will find that this is my number ONE complaint with many of the modern writers that we review here at BMR.

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And then we have: Dean R. Koontz. Koontz has such a masterful command of the english language that anyone with an appreciation for how mind-numbingly difficult it is to construct an original sentence will have to periodically put down the pages to gape in awestruck wonder.

I am one of these sorry souls who recognizes that my chosen words never adequately express what I’m trying to say. And when I find a writer that can do this so effortlessly, so cleanly, I have to drop to my knees in a “Waynesque” manner to repeatedly chant “I’M NOT WORTHY!!”

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To prove my point, let’s look at an example from his latest suspense thriller, Seize the Night.

Typical modern writers like Kellerman, Cornwell, or Patterson flagrantly use curse words and obscenities to express everything from anger to excitement to mild interest. Although this is a clear reflection of our times, Koontz achieves the same effect without ever uttering the offense:

“…I heard myself repeating the same four-letter word, as if I had been stricken by a terminal case of Tourette’s syndrome and would spend the rest of my life unable to stop shouting this single obscenity.”

His delivery is so much more clever and subtle that you will read these descriptive phases over and over for sheer entertainment.

Hardcover- 384 pages (December 29, 1998) Bantam Doubleday Dell Pub (Trd); ISBN: 0553106651; Dimensions (in inches): 1.30 x 9.32 x 6.09