I personally don’t care for his work, since I think the characters and plots are repetitive(and I felt that Mr. Murder was too much like The Dark Half by King), but granted for that reason I have not read much of it . However, I am willing to listen to other points of view and take another shot at his work. What do you think of his writing and what should I try?
I think he sooks. Then come to find out he once wrote a book called How to Write a Bestseller, or some other such cynical crap.
See the sig line.
Good but lazy.
When he’s actually trying, IMO he’s much better than King.
He doesn’t often try.
Strangers, Watchers and Lightning (and maybe The Bad Place) were wonderful. Most of his other stuff is…competent. More or less. IMO
Fenris
You really have to pick and choose his books.
Some are really good and some are really bad.
I personally like *Watchers, Lightening, * and Strangers quite a lot; in fact Lightening is one of my favorite books.
The Bad Place is pretty good also.
Some of his early stuff published under pseudonyms is okay.
The rest of his stuff is just awful.
I agree with everyone else. I must have lucked out. The first I read was Watchers followed by Lightning then Midnight (which I didn’t mind). I read Servants of The Twilight which I thought was okay, but not great. I tried a few others, but got tired of constantly having him fall back on government conspiracy/genetic tampering. The last one I tried was Tick-Tock , I threw it across the room in disgust. At least I took it out of the library and didn’t buy that piece of crap.
Hey, Fenris, great minds think alike, huh?
I think that’s my first simulpost.
Ditto.
Was it good for you too?
Well, technically, mine was a minute after yours, but yes, it was good for me, too.
I agree with Fenris and Kinsey - Lightning, Watchers, and The Bad Place are his best earlier work. I also loved Intensity, but I’m weird like that, because a lot of folks hated it.
However, I would argue that Fear Nothing and Seize the Night are his best books of all - simply amazing. The two books are part of a trilogy, I believe - I can’t wait for the third. He blends the suspence and terror of his earlier stuff with bits and pieces of the sentimentalism that has made his most recent stuff difficult. Both books are quite sci-fi-y, too, which I enjoyed, strangely enough. Intensity also has this excellent blend of horror and emotion.
I actually do like his two most recent novels - with long names I cannot remember - but a lot of fans don’t, and I can see why. The sappy moralism in them is sometimes hard to get through. But I do think he has a message, and I like that message, and I respect that he is taking a risk with his fame and his fanbase to get the message across.
I used to enjoy his early stuff, like Watchers, Strangers, Phantoms, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (said in my best Yul Brynner voice), but his latest novels have become unpleasant right-wing paranoia-fests.
The most recent one, One Door Away From Heaven, I think, was just horrible. IMHO. I could hardly get through it.
False Memories started out good, but got weird.
As gobear said, some of his latest stuff is right-wing paranoia-crap-fest. Okay, I added the word “crap”, but you get the idea.
Dark Shadows of the Heart started out good, but the end,
with the father, and that house, and the serial killer bit was just really, really weird.
Fear Nothing and Seize The Night were just okay, IMHO.
Those two, and the one about the plane crash fit into the right-wing paranoia theme.
Phamtoms was good.
The Face of Fear was good.
The House of Thunder was good.
What was the one with the American woman who lived in Japan, and had been brainwashed from leaving? She had witnessed a murder (or something), and for some reason could not leave Japan. She would have an anxiety attack when she got on an airplane and the hero helped her figure it out. It was one of his older ones, I think published under one of his pseudonyms. That one was good.
I LOVED “Strangers”, “Watchers”, “Phantoms” and “Sole Survivor”. Many of the others were entertaining to me but not great.
I suppose the fact that I live in Southern California lends in my enjoyment in that he writes about actual streets, landmarks, and such in the area. I remember in one of his books, he goes into great detail describing eating Nachos and drinking Dos Equis beer at Las Brisas, a well known mexican restaurant in Laguna Beach. It got me so damn hungry that I ended up eating nachos and drinking Dos Equis that night (not at Las Brisas however) because it sounded like such a damn good idea.
I had read a couple of Koontz by the late 80’s and thought they were okay. I happened to mention this to my step-grandfather (a fellow book-lover) before I got sent to Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War. Well, once we started getting mail, I received a box with about 20 Koontz paperbacks. I think he cleaned off the shelf at Waldenbooks.
So, I read them one at a time and passed them around. Some of my favorites have already been mentioned, so I won’t repeat them. I found that if you read that many in a row, the similarities really stand out (“Hey! Didn’t that happen in that other book also?”). I think every female character “hugs herself” at least once when scared or nervous.
I also liked Whispers, which has not been mentioned. I really liked Hideaway.
The first Koontz I read was The Mask. I recall caring about the girl, but thinking Koontz really copped out with a weak ending/resolution.
Hmmmm, as a rabid right-winger, maybe I ought to read some of his more recent works.
I’ve read a good deal of his work and have mixed feelings.
Hideaway was quite good, but as many people have pointed out there is quite some variation in the quality of what he produces.
He’s a very uneven type of writer. Either he’s really good, or he’s really crap. I keep reading him, though…
Koontz gives me hope that my crappy novels will one day be published.
I first read Koontz around thirty years ago; he had a story in Harlan Ellison’s anthology Again, Dangerous Visions. So obviously he had early promise. Later, in the 1980’s, I read a few of his novels – Night Chills, Phantoms and another one with a title I don’t recall. I’m a little slow, but eventually I realized his plots were terribly cliched, his characters clumsily drawn, and his tone a bit condescending; I stopped reading at the point in one of the novels where he presents a situation of perfectly obvious irony, and then explains the irony to the reader.
But, he keeps getting published and read, so maybe there’s hope for us all.
Awww…I like Dean Koontz. My mom used to let me read his books when I was little, but I couldn’t read Stephen King, because Koontz’s books had happy endings, and if there was a dog or a little kid in the story, they probably wouldn’t die.
Speaking of dogs, I really liked the story that he wrote about the smart dog (help, anyone?)–I have memories of really enjoying that book. I haven’t read his stuff lately, so I don’t know about the whole right-wing paranoia thing. It would certainly be a shame if his books degenerated into that, because I really liked his stuff.
The smart dog story was Watchers, Girl, and it is inarguably his best work. That story blew me away. I also liked Night Chills and Lightning. But even though I’ve read quite a few of the others (everything he wrote up until about six or seven years ago) I have no recollection of what they were about. Like everyone’s already said–they pretty much blend together. I’d stick to the few gems and leave the rest in the gutter where they belong.
I’ll argue with you (good-naturedly, of course) and say Watchers was his second best. I prefer Lightening. It is so far and away better than most of his work, I almost think someone else wrote it and published it under his name.
I’m not saying Watchers isn’t good. It is a great story, but then again, I’m a sucker for a good dog story. 