The HORROR!
I actually liked Servants of Twilight due to how you actually start believing the kid might be the Anti-Christ, despite logic.
And the book I tried to read but couldn’t was the Funhouse. I read the first two chapters, maybe, and decided I just didn’t care.
I have been a DK fan for years my favourite one being The Bad Place and the least favourite Demon Seed (a very poor one indeed).
Richard Layman writes in a very similar style tro DK and I would highly recommend any DK fan to try some of his books. A weird coincidence maybe, but some of his cover pictures and titles are very like DK books.
Ditto for Hideaway starring Jeff Goldbloom. One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Just horrible. Liked the book fairly well myself. I was quite absorbed in the whole macabre aspect of it. Strangers was probably my favorite.
Voices of the Night, definitely. Featuring the two psychotic kids who go around killing people. It’s been a long time since I read it, though – all I can really remember is how they had to spend $205 on a cheap tape recorder, since it took place in the 70’s. That part was quite odd to read.
I also liked Lightning, Watchers, and Servants of Twilight, but after reading several more books I realized he used the same damn characters in every novel, and more or less the same stories, so I gave up.
I stopped reading Koontz when it seemed that every book involved a rape or threatened rape under some form of mind control or other submission device. It kind of creeped me out that I might be looking into the author’s head a bit too much.
Sort of like when Piers Anthony started advocating sex with 14 year olds in his books.
I think you read the wrong books in the wrong order somehow there, sport. Either that or you siezed on details that were not significant. In Cold Fire, for example, the protagonist goes around saving people who are about to die violently, and one of those he saves is a little girl who, along with her mother, have been kidnapped by sickos who intend to abuse and murder them. No rape or attempted rape is detailed, but one can assume that’s what the bad guys had in mind. By your logic, this constitutes some sort of unhealthy fixation on rape, but in real life it is nothing of the sort.
Sadly, I can understand where Slyfrog is coming from. I read a lot of Dean Koontz when I was younger, and two books that fit his criteria immediately leap out.
False Memories had a mind-controlling psychologist who, among other things, spent a long time raping one of the heroes’ best friends, erasing the memory of it each time, before eventually ordering her to kill herself. That was some gruelling stuff to read, and a lot of pages were lavished on it.
There was also Night Chills, where a mind-control drug is released into the reservoir of a small town, and more mind-control rapes ensue.
I think that these two, and maybe others I haven’t read, could lead some of us to conclude that Dean Koontz has issues. Last time I looked, Koontz was of a strong libertarian bent; perhaps the mind-control stuff is just an expression of the theme of being controlled. Its understandable, and it doesn’t put him into the same league as Piers Anthony (shudder). But its also not that fun to read.
False Memories was actually the book that put me off Dean Koontz. Not because of the rapes (nasty as they were), but because it was bloated with Koontz’s attempts to be poetic and profound. I skipped over a hundred pages in a row, and missed nothing. And I’m someone who never skips pages; I felt dirty doing it. But he drove me to it.
I had similar problems with his two “surfer dude” books- Seize the Night and Fear Nothing-too many words, too little to say. But tastes differ.
The books of his that I liked best were Coldfire, Lightning and the Bad Place. **the Bad Place[b/] had one of the most messed up families in fiction, and I thought Coldfire was good. I need to read the Watchers.
Lets try that last bit again.
The books of his that I liked best were Coldfire, Lightning and the Bad Place.
The Bad Place had one of the most messed up families in fiction, and one of the heroes’ had powers that were fun to read about, and to fantasise about possessing (albeit in a safer form).
I remember reading Lightning and really liking it, although the details are kind of blurry. What one of the famous characters did near the end was great, and seemed like just the kind of thing he’d do in the circumstances.
I thought Coldfire was good and suspenseful. I liked the plot twists and resolution, but others may not.
Lightning and Watchers are both excellent and probably two of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read. I’ve never met anybody who read these books and didn’t love them.
Phantoms, Twilight and Strangers are also pretty decent.
As a few of the folks in this thread have already mentioned, you can only read so many Koontz books before they start becoming a little… redundant.
I was really angry when I got lured into Funhouse and one other out of the series that he apparently wrote in high school, and then re-issued. I haven’t read anything of his since. Growf on him. Ptui.:wally
I used to enjoy Dean Koontz, then I stopped reading him for awhile when I went off on a big Anne Rice kick. Then, while travelling, I finished my book early and needed something to read. So I bought the one about the guy who can’t go out in sunlight. It was the worst book I’ve ever read, and I swore I’d never pick up another Dean Koontz book.
I enjoy most of his books, although Tick Tock was unreadable, IMO.
My favorite has to be Strangers. I loved Whispers as well.
One of the fun things about Koontz for me is that I live in the same area that he does and he tends to describe a lot of local stuff in the books (restaurants, streets, malls, etc.)