Dean koontz Book Reviews

When you finish this book you can’t help thinking ‘Wow! This is new.’ This novel is different from all other Koontz books. Koontz includes a note to the readers that explains why he wrote this book. He wanted to write a screwball comedy and that is exactly what this is. With most Koontz books he has you believing whatever he puts in the book could actually happen –he makes no attempt to do that in this book. He just has fun with the story and lets it take it own course.

This is a very colorful story with bold characters. The main characters include Tommy Phan, a Vietnamese-American who gets a doll dropped on his porch and is instantly thrown into the Twilight Zone from then on. The doll comes to life with the mission to destroy Phan before dawn. While in the midst of this predicament, Phan meets Deliverance Payne, who can only be described as a superhero with whiley ways. She has a dog named Scootie who contributes to the story as well. The three of them join together to try to make it through the night before the doll-thing gets to them.

There is a mixture of side characters (including both Phan and Payne’s mothers) that add to the story.

If you want a book that is totally different and that shies away from the norm, this is the book for you. It is a fun read, if not taken too seriously, and makes for a lighthearted, interesting tale.

This is a good book as long as you take it for what it is; a book written from the screenplay of a low budget horror movie. This is not your typical Koontz book. It is not deep on many levels or any of that other stuff. It IS well written and fun to read. A few parts give you the heebie-jeebies and it’s a quick read. If you like horror movies and books you will like this one. It also delves into the carny life that Koontz is fascinated with.

This is a fun story with shades of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ which was cleverly mentioned in the book. I always list the first publication of the book (for reference purposes), but the copy I read was the revised version. I would be curious to read the first novel, even though it had Koontz himself cringing (as he put it), because it must have been very ahead of its time. I can see why this is not a favorite of many Koontz fans, it is not his typical book. There is not the usual character development and dialogue that is normally attributed to his novels. There is a reason for this, the story is told through a computer. If you can get past the frequent repetition of lines in the book, it is an imaginative story that can lead to a fun game of ‘what ifs’ in your household.

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