Why do a lot of people here seem to dislike Dean Koontz? He’s a heck of a better writer then most others in his genre i.e., the ones who aren’t happy until most every scene is as gory and gruesome as possible. (At least the ones I’ve read.)
Please explain. I’d like to know.
Can’t help. I rather enjoy him.
I’ve enjoyed several of Koontz’s books. I think one reason many people dismiss him as a hack writer is because he is so prolific. When a writer cranks out a large number of books in a short space of time, that seems to annoy some folks. But a potboiler can be a good read. Not everything has to be litt-ra-chur.
I’ve read four or five of his books, and even as a teenager they just struck me as being embarrassingly puerile and amateur-ish; just classic genre hack writing with very poor dialogue, character development, extremely derivative ideas, and poor pacing. I hate to be so general, but they’ve always just struck me as being very poor books by a poor writer.
What I’ve always found extra irritating is that Koontz’ entire career seems to be predicated on getting his books as close to Stephen King’s as possible - the freaking name “Koontz” ensures that the books will be as close to King’s on the rack as possible, then the jacket design of his books always seems to be derived from whatever King’s most recent designs are. Finally, his books are always released when King’s between books, as though to say, “Hey, indiscriminate horror fan, check out this new Koontz book now that you’re done with King’s latest!”
I read a few of his years ago, and they all just seemed to blend together - there was really nothing that made any of them stand out in my mind. I’ll read Koontz if there’s nothing else available (hell, I’ll read the back of the shampoo bottle if there’s nothing else available) but I won’t spend money on his books and have cleared them off my bookshelves. I only have enough bookshelf space for books I at least might read again.
I edited your title, Star Female, to help make it a little more descriptive.
Simple – he reached that level of popularity that many people define as “must suck”. Become too popular an author (or, to a lesser degree, a recording artist) and a large percentage of people will automatically begin to feel that you must suck.
I suppose the feeling comes from some sort of “lowest common denominator” judgement – the idea that most people have little to no taste, so if you’re selling enough books to consistently make the best seller lists, then you must not be putting out quality work.
I read several Koontz books as a teenager. I started with Watchers and enjoyed it, and moved on to Lightning, which I liked a lot. Then I read about 3 in a row (Servants of Twilight and I can’t remember the others) and I thought they were all very bad so I finally gave up.
I pretty much agree with VCO3’s remarks. I was reading a lot of Stephen King around the time I tried out Koontz. I won’t say that King is a great writer, but he was head and shoulders (and knees and toes) above Koontz when it came to storytelling.
(King has gone way downhill lately, though.)
I don’t agree with Hal (sorry). It’s not just a matter of “he’s popular, so he ‘must suck’.”
I haven’t read Koontz in a good decade or so, but I remember why I quit. Two things:
1: His plots are often redundant. When I realized that I was halfway through his third novel that involved an innocent family being chased across the country by crazy people until they all reach the coast for a final showdown where the bad people die, I gave up.
2: He’s a Stephen King wannabe (and has done very well at it, evidently). So many elements are drawn from King that it seems like you’re reading a King novel, only not a good one. “Ring-dings” and “Cheez-doodles” come to mind (I realize these are real products, but still…). There seems to also always be either a disaffected teen or a precocious child in the mix.
One other thing that I noticed once (a lot of my books are in storage at the moment, so I can’t pull titles for you) was that in a particular Koontz book, I read a description of a character (young boy, built models of monsters and loved comic books) that sounded so familiar I could swear he pulled it practically word-for-word from King’s Salem’s Lot. I’ve never gotten the two books together to compare, but the similarity was overwhelming.
I’ve enjoyed a couple of Koontz’s books: Lightning was fairly good, and there was another one (Watchers, I think) about an industrial town experimenting with nanotechnology that caused a lot of the residents to mutate uncontrollably. Otherwise, I don’t waste my time with him.
I see Tangent has mentioned Servants of Twilight. I think this was one of the “bad people chase good people accros the country and then die” books.
Lightning is good. Watchers is good. There is one book featuring nanotechnology and the one of the dogs from Watchers. That book’s OK.
I derived no enjoyment from anything else I’ve read from him, and I’ve read a fair amount.
I’ve barely read any King, so it’s not just complaints of derivativity.
I was a Koontz defender until very very recently. I just assumed what some other people in this thread had mentioned that whenever an author gets popular you’re always going to have people that think that instantly makes him a hack. There are Koontz books I still pick up and re-read over and over and enjoy them each time. However lately I’m going to move so I’m going through my books and decide to wean a few of his out (I have about 20 I’d say) the first thing that struck me is there were only about three I picked up again after the first read. So I went through them one by one…
Oh my God! What drek. It seems like my mind blocked out the total crap the majority of the books were. I’d remember the good ones and go back but forget everything but the basic plot of the bad ones. So now instead of seeing Koontz as ‘a good read with a few clunkers’ I now realize he’s ‘a horrible author with a few standouts’. I was just tricked by the fact my favorite book of his (Watchers) was the first book I’d read by him.
I used to like Koontz quite a bit. The problem is that he has been writing the same book over and over again. Well, two books.
Book #1. There is a loner, unhappy with life because of a past tragedy. Loner believes the tragedy was his fault when it wasn’t. Something bad happens. Loner hooks up with someone else (of the opposite sex). Loner and sidekick defeat the evil and loner learns that he really does not want to be a loner and that not everything he does ends up a tragedy.
Book #2. There is a family. Something really bad happens. Family flees the bad thing. Family defeats the bad thing and becomes closer. This usually includes a precocious teen or pre-teen. Also, at the start of the book the family is probably a bunch of loners who hook up, possibly before the tragedy starts to become a family.
The last couple things I’ve read from him have been pure dreck. I tried reading the Frankenstien thing and it just sucked.
He does have some enjoyable books but he seems to have run out of ideas. Also, in the last book of his I read the percocious child dialog was so over the top cute it became rather disgusting.
I do hold out hope that he will improve. I don’t seem to find many good horror writers and when he is good he is worth reading.
Slee
I enjoyed Koontz a lot as a young teen - we’re talking 12-14 here. Now, I’ll read his books if they’re there to be read, but I won’t go out of my way to find them and I won’t buy them. My mum’s a fan, so when I’m around borrowing books from her, if she’s got one of his then I may pick it up.
It’s not that I dislike Koontz as such, and I certainly don’t hate him. But for me, I found his stories to get very predictable after the first two or three. For a while I had a bit of a game with myself. Picking out the martyr characters, the evil-but-a-diversion characters, the Real Bad Guy characters. There’s always a plucky dog to help the protagonist out of trouble in some crucial point. And so on.
It’s not bad writing, not in the way that I found the Da Vinci Code to be bad. It’s just formulaic and that can get a bit wearing after a while.
Sometimes, predictable drivel is nice to have. I got very, very sick of his ‘single mom saves kid from evil entity’ story though – his ‘young male loner saves self from evil entity’ is a little more interesting. He’s also one of a few authors who can successfully pull off unexpected humour. I can’t remember any recent book of his where I rolled my eyes at a joke.
I dislike Koontz immensely, but it’s certainly not because “it’s popular, so must suck.”
A number of the books ended as complete deus ex machina out of the sky plot elements… so that the main characters could have just not shown up at all and the evil would have self-destructed on its own.
He frequently either (I forget which, maybe both) as narrator or character goes on about some rather intellectually lacking political philosophy.
They’re all the same. Suicidal loser finds will to go on living by helping other hapless loser, and a dog/kid thrown in for good measure.
And it’s pretty much the definition of hack writing. Mechanical, emotionless, rushed books. (Though the intelligent doggie one had some emotional content… probably because that stupid dog had more character development than all the humans in three of his books put together.)
I think Koontz just doesn’t identify with people in general very well, hence the crap politics, suicide, bad characters, etc.
He’s not a very good writer. I stopped reading Koontz in the middle of a book: there was an ironic situation (mob boss responsible for many murders becomes maudlin over the loss of his poodle) and after presenting the situation Koontz then explained to the reader why it was ironic.
Koontz was featured in one of my favorite little bits from the “Family Guy” cartoon:
On a country road, a van strikes a pedestrian.
“Oh, my God! We ran over Stephen King!”
“Hey, that’s not Stephen King – it’s Dean Koontz!”
And the van backs up and runs over him again.
Stephen King isn’t a great writer, but at his best he is an exceptionally good storyteller, and can sometimes create characters who are very sympathetic and interesting even apart from the horror stuff.
Dean Koontz, though- when I’ve read his stuff, I’ve almost always found that I hate the characters so much that I want bad things to happen to them. They have seemed, to me, to be pretty much universally one-dimensional and annoying.
So that’s why I don’t read Dean Koontz. I still read Stephen King, though his later work just isn’t as good as his earlier.
I’ve read a few…very few of his books. I thought his story telling was kind of predictable, but I did thinking his writing style was kind of clever.
I like Koontz. I like him much better than King. I read him often. But only when I want a light, quick read. His books are rather formulaic IMO. I am quite miffed at him for having not finished his frankenstein story. I found his second installation of said story superfluous - it didn’t add to the story at all.
When I was in the hospital last year I asked Mom to bring me anything by Koontz. I had trouble reading (concentrating) while on pain medicine and as I said, his books are a light quick read. She brought be me something by Steven Coonts. :smack: (My fault for not being specific. 
)
I enjoyed his science fiction, like Beastchild.
I just dislike the genre King writes in.