Comparing Dean Koontz to VC Andrews is sacriligious. I’ve read both, and the ghost writers who write under the name of VC Andrews (since she died many years ago) are horrifyingly bad.
I agree that not all of Koontz’s work is superior, but the dude has written like 40 novels. Some of them are going to suck.
Lightning, Intensity, Fear Nothing, Seize the Night, and Watchers are all brilliant novels worth reading. His latest two novels - From The Corner of His Eye and A Door Away From Heaven - are really unusual, but I think they are lovely and meaningful anyway. There’s a lot about fate, faith, and making the world a better place, but I think Koontz has a decent message that’s worth hearing. His best novels - the ones I listed first - deal with these issues less directly, but the influence of fate and the yearning for faith are definitely driving forces in his writing.
If you don’t like him, fine, but that doesn’t make him an untalented hack. I think he writes in a certain style and about certain subjects that not a lot of authors deal with, and at his best he combines his message with a killer plot, lots of suspense, and enough drama to give you nightmares. At his worst, I feel like I’m reading a New Age religious tract. But at least it’s different. I’m so sick of reading watered-down coming-of-age stories and cheesy romance novels and the latest boring thriller that I really enjoy Koontz’s originality.
I have two recurring nightmares that come from novels. The first is from King’s Gerald’s Game - every time I look in the dark corner of my room at night, I expect to see a creepy necrophiliac munching on a femur. The second is from The Bad Place. I won’t ruin the novel for you, but I frequent “the Bad Place” in my worst nightmares. Ugh. Both men can write horror like no one else I’ve ever read.
Double ugh. I read the entire Flowers In the Attic series years ago, and the fact that books about blatant brother-sister incest sell so well makes me believe what Cecil said about bestiality. Yuck. Shamefully, I also read the Heaven Leigh series (I was 12, okay?), which was so terrible, I simply have not the words.
I haven’t enjoyed any of Koontz’s recent work. I read a lot of his books in junior high and high school, and I’ll still pick one of his new novels up if my mom has them lying around the house, but I never seek out his work the way I do with a dozen other authors.
IMHO, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, and Twilight Eyes were entertaining reads. Not high literature, but fun. I can’t even remember the plot of Tick Tock, though I’m positive it’s somewhere on my bookshelves at home. I didn’t really get into Fear Nothing but I read the sequel because I got it for Christmas.
I appreciated the structure of From the Corner of his Eye, because it was like watching a flower unfold. Gradually, you come to realize how all of these disparate events tie together. However, I can’t forgive the saccharine nature of most of the characters.
A woman and her brothers are horribly abuse by their father, but she can form a perfectly loving relationship with a wonderful man, who conveniently leaves her wealthy when he dies. Her brothers live out behind the house and they clearly have problems, but their situation works. She has a son who’s a genius and a perfect child. Another character falls in love with a woman with a debilitating disease and spends the rest of her life caring for her.
I know it’s fiction. I know these things could happen in real life. I don’t want to sound like a totally cynical asshole, but would it kill Koontz to create some characters with realistic foibles? In every book, it seems, there’s a beautiful/handsome character from a broken home who is brilliant and competant in everything they do, and the only problem in his/her life is the one that provides the plot.
I could be entirely mistaken about it, but it’s just the way it seems to me.
My sister, who is no dummy, loves Koontz. Of course, she does admit that some of his books aren’t so good. But she loves him almost as much as she loves Stephen King (and she loves King A LOT). Me, I’ve read a smattering of Koontz. I think my sister told me which ones to start with (of course I can’t remember the titles now). Anyway, I thought he was good.
That’s about the most I can contribute to this thread. It’s been a while since I’ve read anything by Koontz. I am more motivated to read King right now. (Would you believe I’ve never read “The Stand”? Well, time to fix that!)
Gave up on Koontz after the third book with the same plot: people being chased across the country by someone crazy, reaching the coast, having a big confrontation where the evil people die. Toss in either a precocious child or angst-ridden, rebellious teen, some Ring Dings and Cheese Doodles (I’ve never heard of either of these outside of Stephen King books, but as in King, they seem ubiquitous in Koontz), and you’ve got way too many of his books for my taste. I started one (don’t recall the title, it began by concerning itself with a young boy who was being corrupted by one of his friends who sneaks him out to watch X-rated movies at the drive-in and gets him to curse) where I swear the description of the character was uncannily like the description of the boy from King’s 'Salem’s Lot: shy, intelligent, likes comics, builds models of monsters from kits. I’ve never gotten around to comparing the two from a word-for-word standpoint, but the impression at the time was that the introductions to the two characters were almost identical. Lightning and Midnight weren’t bad, though.
Jeez, you just described half of the little boys who grew up in the last 40 years. It’s no shock that a kid like that would make a good protagonist for a horror novel. I could probably find you five more popular novels with a kid like that in them.
I like Koontz, although his last few efforts have been sub-standard in my opinion. King is a better writer, and King has flashes of true literary greatness in some of his stuff and Koontz never really reaches that level - it’s just good, fun, pulp fiction.
I think both Fear Nothing and Seize the Night had such flashes of genius - what I consider genius, anyway. There were sentences that were so true and so evocative and so boiled down to their essence that they could simply not be improved upon. Both books contained beautiful, honestly written characterization that is exceptional and allowed an intimacy with the characters that kept me reading, undeniable humor, and suspense creepy enough to give me goosebumps. I’m hoping that there will be a third in the series.
Goodness, the last scenes of the second novel - returning to this world with an incapacitated Bobby - are so gripping and moving I re-read them every once in a while just to experience them again.
I guess what I have against Koontz’s recent books, besides the fact that some of them seem too similar to some of his older books, is that every single sentence seems to contain similes, and not always good ones. [Exaggeration]And the waves crashed onto the rocks like the hammer of Thor upon the head of a drunken troll; this thunderous blow produced a bloody knot that was like a lava-spewing island rising out of the sea.[/Exaggeration] I’m thinking of Fear Nothing and Seize the Night here. I also don’t like the way he handles his characters’ vernacular (I think that’s the right word). The way they talk and stuff. It makes me think that he picked up an English-Surfer Dude dictionary, and tried to use that group’s slang without ever having heard it in real life. His dialogue just doesn’t sound real to me, sort of like when fourteen year suburbanites try to sound like they came from the 'hood. Anyway, Koontz’s dialogue and overuse of simile and certain other of his stylistic quirks serve to actually distract me from the story he’s trying to tell. Plus Koontz serves up more talking animals than the folks at Disney.
Still, he’s a better writer than me and a zillionaire and everything, so more power to him I guess. I probably won’t be buying any more of his books, though.
Oh yeah, and he seems to have some funny ideas about the way military, intelligence, and law-enforcement agencies work. Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t think an FBI agent could just call in the Marines and Delta Force, or that an NSA officer (I don’t think they have “agents”) would track Einstein the Wonder Dog across the country, or that a secret military organization run by a psychopath could close down half a state. Not being an FBI agent, an employee of the NSA, or a military organization run by a psychopath, though, I could be wrong.
Suspension of disbelief just doesn’t occur when I read this guy’s stuff.
I read Koontz frequently as a teen growing up. It was a great part of my early to mid teens - they were enjoyable and I read his true gems that many here also recognize. He’s got those hits and misses, but they all appealed greatly to me as a younger boy. I’m 19 now, and am no longer a reader of Koontz. My favorite author is still Stephen King (read the Dark Tower Series for his literary magic), though. So that “horror” element is retained.
No doubt Koontz is rather formulaic from time to time. But some of his good ones are just golden.
Darkfall: little hell-rats and voodoo. Yowza. Of course, I read this when I was in seventh grade (12-13) and it kept me up nights. Terrifying. Dunno what I’d think of it now, 13-some years later.
Hideaway: I don’t remember much from this book except that it was one of the darkest fucking books I’ve ever read.
Watchers: an excellent story all the way around. Only Koontz book that made me cry.
Strangers: Incredible build-up. Incredible characters. An intriguing mystery.
Phantoms: I’ve always liked this book. Read it twice now… the only Koontz book I’ve ever read twice. Some genuinely creepy parts, IMO, though he succumbs to trying to explain the mystery and that sort of ruins the effect for me. S’alright, though, still was an engaging read.
That does it for me. Everything else I’ve read by him was crappy. Wait, except… which one begins with the girl jogging down the beach? Is that Lighting or Midnight? That one was pretty good, too, but for some reason I am drawing a total blank about the rest of the story.
There are quite a few koontz fans, and if you listen to them you should get some pretty decent reads. Then venture out on your own.
I haven’t read much Koontz, the first one I read was ‘The Taking’ Which was very good, except the second half sorta sucked. ‘The Husband’ Which I loved. Then after that I started reading ‘In the Light of The Moon,’ which had an interesting plot, but was SOOOOOOOO boring, and not a good boring. I haven’t even tried to finish it, I think I’m about 120 pages in and have no desire to finish. Then at the same time I started ‘Lightning,’ the first 100/120 pages were great, awesome in fact, character development and everything, it was a five outta five. But then after Danny died the book took a turn for the worse, now the whole thing is just shooting and blocky dialogue. I don’t know if I can finish it either.
The thing I hate about Koonts is how he writes, which is WAY WAY WAY too technical. It seems like he tells you way too much. He also has a gun obsession, not as bad as his dog obsession though.
I haven’t read very much of him, but it seems that there is a pattern in his books. I want to read ‘Watchers’ though. I hear it’s excellent.
I like Stephen King a lot more. I’ve read a lot more of him, his characters are better developed, his plots are deeper and more interesting, and once you get past some of the boring parts of his book (Which, though boring, can still be very fun to read. Take ‘Insomnia’ for instance, most of that book is just build up, not much action, but is still an excellent book, screw da haterz.) The action parts are superb. But I will keep trying to read Koontz, hopefully He’ll appeal to me more.
Agreed with most of the comments…I’ve loved Phantoms, Strangers, Lightning, and Watchers, and I’ve struggled through at least 6 others that, while not terrible, were so bland and forgettable that I couldn’t identify them or recall a single scene. I stopped reading him when, not once but twice, I got halfway through a book thinking it was new and realized I’d already read it.
Just came here to join this revived zombie thread to say that Fear Nothing and Seize the Night are actually pretty dang good SF. Great characterizations, at least about the primary characters. Very interesting vulnerability in the hero. And, of course, you have the classic Koontz ‘magic dog’ which sounds silly but makes me happy.
I read them aloud to my wife as she was convalescing, so perhaps I give the two books too much value. However, they were uplifting even in a terrible circumstance. They were the only two books I actually reread to her. Not sure why. Perhaps because of earlier associations.
I liked Odd Thomas quite a lot. And Tick Tock (that’s the horror->screwball comedy one, right?) I think I’ve read a few that were’t memorable, but IMO weren’t worse than any other pulp author (By The Light of the Moon).
Then a year or so ago, I was desperate for a book and picked a Koontz from the local Duane Reade. Ugh. It was one of those roll-your-eyes-the-whole-time books. A book to be thrown with great force.
I haven’t read all his stuff, and don’t know what order it was published in. So I have no idea whether he had a good phase and a bad phase, or what. But I’ll take your word about the ones that keep getting mentioned here.
