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King, Stephen
Koontz, Dean
Stephen King
Stephen King's homepage: http://www.stephenking.com
Bag of Bones
Carrie
Cell
Dark Tower:
I - The Gunslinger
II - The Drawing of the Three
Dreamcatcher
From a Buick 8
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Bag of Bones
============
When successful writer Michael Noonan's wife suddenly dies, his life is turned
upside down. Not only does she leave him with a number of unanswered questions,
he also finds himself with a virulent case of writer's block. That is, until he
goes back to Sara Laughs, his idyllic summer house in the Maine backwoods.
================================================================================
I found that Bag of Bones took a while to get going, but turned out to be
a pretty suspenseful ghost story with bags of atmosphere, set (where else?) in
the backwoods of Maine, where widower and stalled writer Michael Noonan owns a
summer house. The story generates a number of mysteries and these are presented
and resolved very competently, as you'd expect from Stephen King.
One of the things that King does best is small-town New England, and he does not
disappoint in Bag of Bones. During the story we encounter a collection of
his trademark locals who, underneath their veneer of normality, are as alien to
visiting New Yorkers as any ETs; Noonan himself refers to these insular folks as
the Martians. There is a good reason for their reticence - beneath the rural
tranquility of the area there is a nasty secret that goes back several
generations and is about to reveal itself, like something rotten bubbling up to
the surface of a dark lake.
There's plenty of atmosphere and a real sense of hidden, menacing things ready
to pounce. Maybe in places there's a bit too much - can a place be too haunted?
Not that I'm really complaining - King has a way of presenting the spookiest of
happenings with utter panache.
I have mixed feelings about some of his characters in this story. Unlike some
other reviewers, I have no problem with little Kyra; she's cute but not as
tiresomely cute as I had feared. Mattie, though, is rather too good to be true.
And as for wicked Max Devore and his hideous sidekick Rogette, this duo could
have come straight from the pages of Roald Dahl (reincarnations of Aunts Spiker
and Sponge from James and the Giant Peach, perhaps?) The locals are
entertaining though, and the locations as usual are spot on - I'm still half
expecting to find that towns like Derry and Castle Rock are real places.
While Stephen King does err on the side of melodrama towards the end of the novel,
he also piles on the suspense in his inimitable manner, and this, after all, is
why I kept reading. However un-literary he is said to be, at the end of the day
he provides his readers with a scary, tension-filled roller-coaster of a ride,
and this is why we keep reading his books.
© Alex Cull, 6th April, 2004
Carrie
======
Carrie White does not have an easy life. At the verge of puberty and unpopular at
school, she also has frightening and unpredictable psychic powers; added to all
that, she has a nightmarish religious maniac of a mother. Things are not looking
good.
================================================================================
Who could ever forget the excellent 1976 movie version of Stephen King's novel
Carrie, with Sissy Spacek at her wide-eyed best as the eponymous Carrie and
John Travolta as the thuggish Billy Nolan. With its great casting, script and
music, Brian de Palma's Carrie remains one of the better screen adaptations
of a Stephen King story.
The novel itself is also very good, although it has a documentary style (with
newspaper excerpts and letters) which is not quite what I'm generally used to in
a King book. It was his first published novel (although the sixth that he
actually wrote) and it was thumped out on a portable typewriter while he was
living in a trailer with no telephone; although the author was still evidently
finding his feet, stylistically speaking, Carrie has a raw impact that would
have been even more significant back in 1974.
It almost got thrown away. Stephen King actually stopped writing after a few
pages and dropped them into the bin. His wife Tabitha fished them out, though;
he went on to finish the book and the rest, as they say, is history. I think we
owe Tabitha a debt of thanks.
This novel works well on a number of levels. The main character is based on a
real-life person, a girl who went to high school at the same time as the author
and who later died during an epileptic seizure. For all those of us who were
never very popular at school or suffered bullying or harassment, Carrie strikes
a nerve. Anyone had violent revenge fantasies about those who tormented them? I
certainly did, and can relate to King's heroine that way. But this is certainly
not some kind of cosy revenge fantasy - King shows us graphically how events can
escalate and spiral out of control. Much like in an ancient Greek tragedy, fate
is working inexorably behind the scenes to destroy the protagonists (and many
others, besides) and derails the best-laid plans (or makes them work all too
well).
On another level, it's a powerful novel about difference. Schools and small
towns can be harsh places to be, for anyone who stands out from the crowd. And
this is a small town school. In the 1970s. Someone like Carrie - physically
unprepossessing, socially unskilled, uncool, unhip, with a religious maniac
single mother - what chance does she have? Carrie shows us the truly ugly
face of bullying, intolerance and peer harassment. It also, in the guilt-ridden
character of Sue Snell, shows us what it means to be aware of injustice but
afraid of standing out, and to feel under pressure to go along with the group.
Take away the mutant psychic aspect of the novel and Carrie would remain an
uncomfortably realistic story of difference, intolerance and the way society can
treat an individual who will not (or cannot) conform. It would be an illustration
of the sort of thing social workers and school counsellors are up against all
the time.
But Carrie was also written at a time when western society's interest in
psychic matters and the occult was at a high point. The Exorcist had already
hit cinema screens in 1973, and was a huge international sensation. People who
had (or purported to have) psychic powers, like Uri Geller, Peter Hurkos and Ted
Serios, were becoming well-known, and phenomena such as telekinesis and Kirlian
photography were being investigated and written about. Carrie the book and
Carrie the movie both tapped into (and contributed to, in turn) this
upsurge of interest.
As an aside, I note that the psychic child theme - continued by Stephen King in
The Shining and Firestarter - has resurfaced in the recent TV series Lost,
where Carrie, as of the start of Season 3 this year, has now become one of the
many books containing possible clues to the mystery.
There is probably an alternative dimension, somewhere beyond the todash
darkness maybe, in which Tabitha King never rescued her husband's fledgling
manuscript from the trash and he never went on to become one of the world's
best-selling and most popular writers.
I'm so glad that I don't live in that other place.
© Alex Cull, 27th October, 2006
Cell
====
The day the world ended was a very ordinary one. People went about their
businesses as usual, unaware that in a few brief moments, their safe, humdrum
lives would change forever. And not for the better. Cell describes the
aftermath of this change, and depicts a world where the survivors have become
sorted into two mutually hostile camps.
================================================================================
In The Hollow Men, the poet TS Eliot once wrote "This is the way the world
ends, not with a bang but a whimper." Well, in Cell by Stephen King, the
world does not end with a whimper, oh no. The world definitely ends with a bang.
Or rather, it ends with a Pulse.
To say a lot more about the Pulse and its consequences would possibly be
to spoil the story. Suffice it to say that the beginning of Cell is Stephen
King writing near the top of his form - horrific, scary, unsettling, it's the
perfect kick-start for a story about the end of the world.
The rest of the novel, although by no means dreadful, does not quite live up to
its first couple of chapters. It has a number of themes in common with King's
1978 blockbuster The Stand (including telepathy, an apocalyptic setting,
a band of characters setting out on a long journey), but no way does it come
close to the earlier book's epic sweep and sheer mythic power. The main
characters never quite appealed to me the way other King characters have done,
namely those in The Stand and the Dark Tower books.
Also the story has loose ends that are left dangling. There was at least one
character whom I expected to see appear later in the book, but he never does
show up again. And the ending? More whimper than bang, you might say, or at best
a question mark.
On the plus side, what Cell does rather well, when it depicts a world
divided into two mutually suspicious groups - the "normies" and the "phoners" -
is show us a nightmarish reflection of the everyday world we inhabit and think
we know. Most of us would instinctively tend to class ourselves as "normal", i.e.
not straying too far from a certain range of culturally acceptable behaviours.
Against this "normal" background, however, there are individuals who stand out
like sore thumbs. A shabbily dressed man standing by himself at the bus stop,
muttering furiously to no-one in particular, we would probably not call "normal",
for example - but maybe he has a mental illness, such as schizophrenia, which
compels him to behave as he does.
A modern view of mental health is that it is a continuum, and that mental
illnesses are exaggerated examples of tendencies that we all have to one degree
or another. Approaching that man at the bus stop, however, even the more
enlightened among us might not see a human being like ourselves who just happens
to have a mental illness, but might instead see an unpleasantly looming other,
a weirdo, an alien, a figure to ignore and avoid. Fortunately, there is usually
only one of him, and we the "normal" people thus have safety in numbers.
In Cell, however, as in horror novels generally, the reader meets the
embodiments of his or her fears; the shambling crazies encountered by the
"normie" characters are no longer human as we know the term, but all have
become something other. Much like the birds in Hitchcock's film The Birds
(and, of course, in the unsettling Daphne du Maurier story that inspired the
film) the crazies can also act in unison - truly the stuff of urban nightmare.
Summing up, Cell provides no real competition for The Stand in the stakes
for best ever Stephen King novel - but it has its moments.
© Alex Cull, 31st August, 2006
The Dark Tower II - The Drawing of the Three
============================================
Roland Deschain, the Last Gunslinger, has reached the ocean. On a desolate and
dangerous beach at the edge of the world, he begins the magic with which he will
draw two very special people to him from another reality - 20th-century Earth.
These will be two of his ka-tet, a select group of companions who will
aid him in his journey to... the Dark Tower.
================================================================================
Stephen King's 1982 (revised in 2003) novel The Gunslinger, was the beginning
of it all, the shot from the starter's pistol that got this long-running
adventure under way. And yet this book, The Drawing of the Three, published
in 1987, was where the series got its real start, in a sense. In The Gunslinger
the Tower is there only in the hazy background as an ultimate goal, like Everest
looming on the far horizon. In The Drawing of the Three (to pursue the
Everest analogy) Roland is actively planning his expedition, choosing his
companions, preparing for the journey. Switching metaphors again, I can see
Stephen King getting to work, cutting a tarot deck, carefully constructing the
foundations of his house (or Tower) of cards. Well, enough metaphors.
Much of this story is about problem-solving. Specifically, Roland the Gunslinger
is on one of the bleakest, remotest beaches imaginable. There are three trans-
dimensional doors, through which he (or rather his spirit, inhabiting different
bodies) can enter New York (at different points in time) and back through which
others from the New-York reality can physically enter Mid-World. However...
Roland is somewhat hampered by his ignorance of 20th century life (in our reality).
Some things are easily understandable, such as the blue-clad policemen with guns.
Some things are pleasant surprises, like astin (aspirin) and cola. But
inevitably, in this odd, insanely fast-paced technology-rich milieu, Roland has
bad moments, miscalculates and stumbles.
The two people he is drawn to are rather challenging as ka-tet material. One
is a loser and a junkie, in trouble with both the law and a violent criminal
gang. The other is a young woman with a form of dissociative identity disorder,
alternating between two distinct and contrasting personalities. And not just
any mundane personalities, either; Odetta Holmes is the most innocent and demure
of goody-two-shoes good girls, Detta Walker a cunning, foul-mouthed psychopath.
Oh, and Odetta/Detta also has a severe disability, having lost both lower legs.
Roland thus has to contend with Eddie Dean's weakness and addiction, and also
Odetta/Detta's extreme split personality and mobility problems.
Is there any way Roland's task could be made even more difficult? Amazingly,
the answer is yes. In the first few minutes of the book, he is attacked and
severely mutilated by lobstrosities, some of the most horrible crustaceans
I've ever encountered in a work of fiction. Limping, unable to use his right
hand, Roland is now in pain and is slowly succumbing to infection and fever.
To find out how he sets out, doggedly, to solve these problems and get his
expedition to the Dark Tower under way, you will have to acquire this book
for yourself. This is an excellent, if gruelling novel, which is a veritable
showcase of Stephen King's ability to mix gritty reality with magic in a
convincing way. He presents the reader with layer upon layer of surreal
complexity, but in such a way that it all seems normal and straightforward.
Just another day, on a desolate, lobstrosity-haunted beach with a few trans-
dimensional portals on it... It's also one of the better novels - perhaps the
best - in the whole Dark Tower series.
Some stages of the journey are better than others, but they don't get much
better than this one.
© Alex Cull, 13th April, 2007
N.B. This book inspired the formation of punk rock band The Lobstrosities.
I've never heard their music, but here are some links.
The Lobstrosities' website: http://www.thelobstrosities.tk
They're also on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/thelobstrosities
The Dark Tower I - The Gunslinger
=================================
In pursuit of the mysterious Man in Black, across deserts and mountains, is
Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger. Single-minded, obsessive and equipped
with a deadly pair of sandalwood-handled revolvers, Roland must face perilous
situations and make some truly difficult choices in the process.
================================================================================
I first read The Gunslinger a long time ago, at the end of the 1980s.
Nice story, I thought, albeit unfinished and obviously in need of a sequel or
six. But then lots of stuff happened in my life, I moved from Japan back to the
UK and forgot all about Roland's quest, being caught up in a quest of my own (for
paid employment, mostly).
However, the world has moved on, as they say. It is the year 2004 and Stephen King
has, against the odds, managed to complete his epic Dark Tower fantasy series.
This has spurred me on to re-read The Gunslinger and to catch up with
Roland and his friends as they approach the finish line.
So...
One thing that stuck me on re-reading The Gunslinger is that it doesn't
seem to have dated all that much. There are several obvious reasons for this -
firstly, the author has updated it, and secondly it is a work of fantasy, which
tends to have a timeless quality anyway (especially when compared with, say,
science fiction set in the near future.)
The story does have a cold-war feel to it at times (Mid-World has suffered
something like a nuclear catastrophe and is slowly reverting to a pre-technological
stage), but back in our own world the fin-de-siecle feeling has never really gone
away. We no longer face nuclear Armageddon, but global warming and the war on
terror currently serve to maintain that end-times flavour. Consequently, the themes
in The Gunslinger remain as fresh as ever.
There is a dreamlike, mythic quality to The Gunslinger, which is a lot
different to Stephen King's usual fare. Gone is the strong sense of locality,
gone are the trademark New England settings; as Dorothy might have said, we're
not in Maine any more. Roland, the last gunslinger, inhabits a world of vast
deserts, impassable mountain ranges, dusty wastelands. It is a hostile, bleak
place where demons lurk; people are few and far between, and fewer still are
friendly. Roland himself seems to be detached from everyday rules of human
interaction, being completely caught up in his quest. He knows there is a purpose
to his epic, obsessive journey to the Tower, but what this is, he cannot yet say
for sure.
Some readers may be put off by the poetic, nightmarish quality of this story, with
its lack of clear endings or answers. Maybe it's not for everyone.
Nevertheless, I would recommend it. The Gunslinger has one of the most
evocative opening sentences that I've ever read. More importantly, if you are
intrigued by the series and wish to embark on that long journey to the Dark Tower,
this, my friends, is the place to start.
© Alex Cull, 18th November, 2004
Dreamcatcher
============
Four childhood friends are caught up in a confusing struggle between the US
military and hostile life-forms from space.
================================================================================
Under a bleak November sky, something unfriendly is lurking in the Maine woods,
not far from the New England town of Derry. Strange lights are flickering in the
night sky, there are rumours of a crashed spacecraft in the forest, the military
are on the move, local people are going missing and reappearing changed - and not
changed for the better.
Dreamcatcher is a mix of borderline SF, the supernatural and truly gut-
rupturing horror; it's reminiscent of King's earlier novel The Tommyknockers
at times, and there are also resemblances and references to It. It is also a
story about friendship - the Dreamcatcher of the title is a metaphor for Duddits,
a boy with Downes Syndrome who was rescued and befriended by the four kids who
later became the four grownup men in the story.
One feature that slows everything down in Dreamcatcher and reduces its impact
is the heavy use of flashbacks. Typically the action keeps on switching from the
present moment (aliens in the woods) to past episodes which fill us in on the
Duddits plotline and the background of the main characters. Consequently time seems
to grind to a halt and the whole episode in the forest begins to stretch out
interminably, when really it's all over in a matter of hours. On a positive note,
this drawn-out quality does contribute well to the oppressive, wintry feel of the
novel.
It's also not easy to warm to people who appear mostly in flashbacks and
reminiscences. This is particularly true of Duddits, who is a very important part
of the characters' childhood and is in fact crucial to the plot from about halfway
through the story. I found it difficult not to think of Duddits as a remote object
of pity and affection rather than a fully-fledged character.
The extraterrestrial aspect of this book is all very entertaining, although I
couldn't find much of a coherent explanation of how the different otherworldly
manifestations relate to each other (which is why the SF element is very
borderline.) It is gross at times, I have to say, with a pretty disgusting variant
of Ridley Scott's chest-bursting alien concept. Actually, what was lacking
sometimes was a sense of real lurking menace.
With lesser writers the above issues would have been more of a problem, because
written in a clumsy or pedestrian style the story would have bordered on the
ridiculous. But, as ever, King is so darn readable that he carries it off.
Just about.
© Alex Cull, 27th July 2003
From a Buick 8
==============
There is a thing sitting in Shed B that looks at first glance like a car, a 1954
Buick 8. However, the officers of Troop D, Pennsylvania State Police, know
different. For twenty years, this thing has excited their curiosity, imagination
and horror. This is its story.
================================================================================
When I first saw this book I assumed it would be some kind of sequel to Christine,
maybe it was about that monstrous Plymouth Fury's long-lost country cousin or
something. I was wrong. This is in fact rather a neat story about an anomaly, a
very enigmatic machine which looks like a classic car but turns out to be
something else entirely.
A thread that runs through the story and the force that motivates most of the
characters in it is curiosity ("Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him
back") - this was also what motivated me to keep turning the pages. I love reading
about anomalies and weird Fortean happenings (I recommend John Keel's book The
Mothman Prophecies for some seriously strange anomalous stuff) so From a Buick 8
was right up my street.
That said, not a lot happens in the story. Well, actually lots of things happen,
but what I mean is there isn't much at all in the way of plotting and character
development. You could argue that this isn't a proper novel at all, really an
extended novella or short story, told mostly through flashbacks. The characters,
engaging though some of them may be, are always secondary to the central burning
mystery of the Buick.
One nice touch is that it's not set in Maine but in Pennsylvania (right next door
to the Amish country) so this is a bit of an excursion for King, and a chance to
explore some fresh territory (clearly it's a general sign that the Maine backwoods
are now overflowing with weirdness, and it's spilling over.) Another is the
sympathetic treatment of the cops (not always the case in a King story) - it's
refreshing to see them as the good guys. Actually the warm, close-knit family-
like nature of the Patrol community is pretty much essential to the story, as you
will see.
All in all, From a Buick 8 is a good shortish read that will please King
fans and also curious cats like myself, who enjoy immersing themselves in SF,
horror and books about anomalous and mysterious things. Curiosity may have
killed the cat, but satisfaction has certainly brought me back to Stephen King
time and time again.
© Alex Cull, 31st March 2004
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
=============================
Nine-year-old Trisha finds herself alone in the Maine woods, with very little
in the way of shelter or food. On the plus side she has her trusty Walkman radio
and a baseball cap signed by her hero Tom Gordon of the Boston Red Sox. On the
minus side she is hopelessly lost, and there is something menacing in the woods
with her...
================================================================================
After ploughing through a few books the size and weight of house bricks (do some
of these guys get paid by the word?) it was altogether refreshing to read
something a lot slimmer. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is what perhaps is
still called a novella, i.e. something far longer than a short story but which
can be consumed very comfortably in one afternoon, rather than munched
interminably over a long beach holiday. No bloat, filling, padding or
over-complicated plotting, just a straightforward story as welcome as a drink of
ice-cold spring water after a long day's hike through the woods.
I like it when Stephen King does this. I mean, when he occasionally cuts back on
the supernatural stuff and writes something as relatively simple and powerful as
this tale of a little girl lost in a very big forest. As usual, King creates a
character we quickly grow to empathise with, then makes her suffer big time.
Trisha is pitched just right - she is a convincing nine-year old, imaginative
and resourceful without being unbelievably so.
Like many another survival story, both real-life and in fiction, The Girl Who Loved
Tom Gordon brings home two truths about the human condition. The first is
that we are always stronger, braver and more resilient than we think we are.
Whether we are lost in the woods, in the desert or adrift on remote seas, we have
a remarkable capacity to survive beyond all reasonable expectations. The other
truth is that our comfortable world of hot meals, TV, electricity and running
water on demand, has its boundaries. Stray off the path, in any sense of that
phrase, and you can be in deep trouble.
This story also demonstrates how, in survival situations, mundane objects can
become suddenly very important. A plastic drinks bottle, a handful of berries, a
Walkman with failing batteries - these can make the difference between living and
dying. In the same way, to Trisha, lost, hungry and alone in the Maine woods, the
outcome of an ordinary baseball match becomes almost unbearably significant, as
her hero Tom Gordon begins to acquire strange godlike properties in her mind.
As Trisha's journey nears its end, it becomes ever more difficult to tell apart
her hallucinations and actual events. There are some very nice eerie touches - she
glimpses a silent black helicopter, a drowned human face in a pool, mutilated
trees and deer. Despite her fatigue and her confused state of mind she has the
growing realisation that in addition to starvation and exposure she is facing a
much more immediate danger...
I liked The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon a lot - it is a simple story well
told. The image of Trisha among the trees at dusk, listening for news of her hero
on her Walkman radio, I'm sure will live longer in my memory than many a book
about aliens or demons.
Also if I ever find myself lost in the woods in New England, this story will
hopefully inspire me to survive long enough to get back to the path.
© Alex Cull, 10th October 2003
Top
Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz's homepage: http://www.deankoontz.com
The Face
The Husband
Lightning
Night Chills
Odd Thomas:
Odd Thomas
Forever Odd
Velocity
Watchers
The Face
========
Channing Manheim, "The Face", is a Hollywood superstar, owner of the Palazzo
Rospo, a fabulous Bel Air mansion. Typically, he is not at home when a series of
cryptic and threatening messages arrive at the estate, and it is up to security
chief Ethan Truman to solve the riddles and provide protection for The Face's
little son Aelfric (Fric). But Truman is soon about to face more than his own
share of deadly puzzles.
================================================================================
Over the course of about twelve years, Dean Koontz produced a number of cracking
tautly-written thrillers - some of my favourites from this time are Watchers,
Midnight and Dragon Tears. Then, from about 1999 onwards, something
strange appeared to happen. As if replaced by some kind of doppelganger, grown
from recombinant DNA in a development similar to one of his own plots, the writer
we knew was replaced by someone rather more long-winded and ponderous, prone to
giving even his minor characters whimsical and unusual names, peppering his
lengthy novels with unsubtle moralising and even less subtle irony. What happened,
really? We may never know.
In The Face, I think I see the inklings of a return to form. Maybe the
spirit of the old Dean Koontz is hovering at the newcomer's shoulder, exerting a
benign influence. Maybe the doppelganger's DNA is beginning to revert. Maybe -
all right, I'll shut up now. But basically, in a nutshell, I think The Face is
the best novel that he's written in a while.
It's not too long, for a start, and has some likeable characters, namely Ethan
Truman, head of security at the Bel Air mansion, and Hazard Yancy, Ethan's larger-
than-life ex-colleague at LAPD. Manheim's little son Fric, who could have been
obnoxious, is actually sympathetic and engaging. The novel kicks off with a
mystery which is complex and intriguing, and soon spawns a number of other
equally fascinating puzzles; I also found myself becoming absorbed in the details
of the Palazzo Rospo, a building as fantastically ornate as any fairytale castle.
There are some annoyances, the most obvious ones being the minor characters. Like
bit-part players desperate for a share of the limelight, they vie shamelessly for
the reader's attention with their exaggerated quirks and mannerisms. Everyone
wants to be a star. Also, the villains, entertainingly camp though they were at
times, were generally very much like cartoon baddies, which did tend to detract
from the threat they posed.
However, The Face did have enough of interest to keep me reading, and, despite
itself, generates a good amount of tension from start to finish. It also
literally oozes atmosphere. So not bad at all.
© Alex Cull, 26th April, 2004
Forever Odd
===========
Once more, evil is at work in the sleepy desert town of Pico Mundo, with the
murder of a local doctor and the kidnapping of his young son. Luckily, Odd
Thomas is on hand to deal with the case, but he faces terrible danger, and will
even have to travel outside the neighbourhood in order to track the killers down.
================================================================================
I used to think that Dean Koontz simply didn't do sequels. Then came Seize the
Night, the second novel to feature Koontz's young hero Christopher Snow. And
after that has come Forever Odd, sequel to Odd Thomas, whose
eponymous hero has a few things in common with Chris, in fact. Both, for instance,
are young, vulnerable and orphaned (or as good as, in the case of Odd.) Both are
restricted to their respective neighbourhoods, Chris by virtue of his xeroderma
pigmentosum, Odd because of his rather retiring nature and due to the fact
that he can see spirits of the dead (could be an overwhelming experience in large
cities.)
Also they both have flamboyant friends (Chris has Bobby, Odd has P Oswald Boone.)
And both sets of stories have (unusual for Dean Koontz) cats in them - the
redoubtable Mungojerrie and the scary Terrible Chester, respectively.
Anyway, on to the story itself. At the end of Odd Thomas there was at least
one mystery left outstanding, and I was expecting that the sequel would bring some
answers. However, I was wrong. We get an entirely new villain and a new situation
for Odd to deal with. Oh well.
There's plenty of action and plenty of atmosphere for Dean Koontz's quiet and
unassuming young hero, as he dodges bad guys in a fantastically derelict (and
haunted) hotel out in the middle of nowhere. There is some highly competent
thriller-writing here, the reader being kept on edge as Odd tries to figure out
exactly where his assailants are. And away from the action, the trademark
quirkiness of the original Odd novel is still in force, like it or hate it (I
like it.)
However, I thought the baddie was somewhat below par. Kooky rather than scary,
she was the latest of a series of eccentric, flighty villains who would seem
more at home in a camp 1960s TV show such as The Avengers. Where is the sinister
omnipresent military-industrial complex when we need it?
And talking of that, another mystery which is raised and then just left
hanging, is that of the network of tunnels under the town of Pico Mundo and
which extend for miles through the wilderness. Where do they go? And what is the
significance (if any) of shadowy army base Fort Kraken, which is associated
with these tunnels? The name reminds me of Fort Wyvern, the military base
which is the centre for spooky goings-on in the Chris Snow stories. Another
(granted, rather obscure) connection between the two heroes.
Will we will get a few answers in the third book, Brother Odd, due out
later this year? Well, maybe we won't.
But I'll be reading it, just the same.
© Alex Cull, 9th August, 2006
The Husband
===========
Mitchell Rafferty is a landscape gardener, happily self-employed and married,
whose ambitions extend to starting a family and settling comfortably into
domestic bliss. Unfortunately, the fates have other ideas - Holly, his wife, is
kidnapped by a mysterious and violent group of assailants, and a ransom is set -
of two million dollars.
================================================================================
These have been busy times for Dean Koontz, recently. He's written a sequel to
Odd Thomas (Brother Odd), which was published towards the end of last
year, and is working on at least two new books - The Good Guy, plus a third
in his Frankenstein series. And we have The Husband, published last
year and now in paperback on UK bookshelves. Whew. Does the guy ever rest?
The Husband is a page-turner reminiscent of Koontz's 2005 novel Velocity.
Rafferty is another of the author's ordinary-joe heroes, plunged suddenly into
perils not of his making. Thrills, spills, twists and turns abound, as he, like
Velocity's Billy Wiles before him, learns how to play hardball and takes
on the bad guys. There are some pretty decent action sequences in The Husband
as Koontz's humble gardener learns advanced urban survival skills - in a hurry.
Along the way, Dean Koontz invites us to ponder the nature of evil. What makes
one man a straight arrow and the next a devious psychopath? Not upbringing,
apparently, Mitch having been brought up by cold-blooded elitist parents (whose
Skinnerian notions of child-rearing involve an unlit, windowless room) but having
turned out all right after all. Maybe evil is somewhere in the genes, like the
coding for a hare lip or a tendency to diabetes, or is otherwise somehow imprinted
on the psyche at birth. If so, should we still call it evil? (Apparently, yes we
should, according to my reading of this novel, and once someone is evil, they are
really, utterly, dyed-in-the wool evil. Which would, if true, make the world a
lot less complex than it appears to be.)
I was interested in reading about Mitch's inhumanly academic parents. Could
such people exist? Back in the heyday of behaviourism, were there ever people
who took BF Skinner's notions to heart and applied them in such a heartless way?
Or perhaps this is simply a reflection of similar unfounded ideas that have
dogged Skinner himself, for example, regarding his "baby-in-a-box" air crib?
I'm curious.
What I found really fascinating though, was Mitch's father's collection of
coprolites, polished spheres of fossilised dinosaur dung. For some reason, this
captured my imagination. Balls of dino-dung would not make good paperweights,
I suppose, having the tendency to roll off one's desk and land on someone's
toes. You might be able to stack them in pyramids, though, like cannonballs,
and you could also devise bowling games with them. Perhaps a coprolite from
a tyrannosaur would score more points than that of an iguanodon, let's say. And
maybe - just maybe - you could crack one open and find the skull of an unlucky
human time-traveller...
This interest probably means that I'm another of those weird psychologists -
it's a good thing, then, that I don't have any children of my own, to perform
inhuman experiments on.
Anyway, back to the book. As an action novel, The Husband is very good -
but not perfect (the beginning is much more satisfying than the end, for one
thing.) However, it kept me turning the pages and wanting to find out what
happened next, which is what thrillers are all about. And if you find Koontzian
whimsy a bit too much, be assured there is very little within these pages (what
whimsy there is, comes mainly from the mouth of Mitch's gardening associate,
who does not feature very much in the story.)
I just looked at a description of The Good Guy, due to be released at the
end of May this year. Timothy Carrier, a mason, is sitting in a bar when he is
approached by a stranger. I'm wondering if his life is about to be turned
upside down and whether this good guy will shortly be trading bullets and blows
with the bad guys. I guess so.
In fact, I'd bet my life on it. (If I were a betting man.)
© Alex Cull, 13th February, 2007
Lightning
=========
Laura Shane has overcome many hardships during the course of her eventful life.
She has not always faced her problems alone, however, as a handsome blond man she
has grown to think of as her guardian angel has often materialised to rescue her
at moments of great danger. Little does she know that this ageless mystery man
holds not only the key to her own destiny but also the fate of the world itself.
================================================================================
Lightning was one of the first books I ever read by Dean Koontz, years ago.
I read it again recently and found that it has lost none of its impact. What a
roller-coaster! It's an excellent example of a Dean Koontz novel from the old
days, when he wrote books that were full of suspense and terrific, explosive
action. His style has changed radically over the years, and while there have been
some good recent examples (I thought Odd Thomas was fine in its way), I
know that given the choice I would prefer to read novels such as Lightning.
So what is it that I like about this book? Okay, for one thing, the author adheres
to the "show, don't tell" rule. There is no long, lyrical description of the
trials of Laura Shane - Dean Koontz simply gives us the story with a minimum of
authorly intrusion. The plot unfolds, wonderful and terrible things happen, and I
found myself mostly able to draw my own conclusions about the meaning of Laura's
life. I was moved by the events of the novel, not through the use of any heavy-
handed commentary but simply through the relating of the events themselves. That
is extremely satisfying, as is the way in which extraordinary things happen to
ordinary people - another rule for thriller writers (or if not, it should be.)
Laura and Danny are regular folks, just like you and me, and this can only add to
the impact of the things that happen to them in the story.
And what a story it is, with excitement, danger, tragedy, acts of great courage,
bags of atmosphere, and plenty of twists and turns. Dean Koontz has (or had?) a
marvellous gift for conveying a sense of impending danger, and pulls out all the
stops in this novel, which is a thriller first and foremost despite the gadgetry
and trappings of SF (that's another great thing about him, the ability to combine
different genres in the interests of writing a good story.) Incidentally, I also
love the fact that the lightning in Lightning is not just a writer's prop
to convey a sense of menace - it has an important function in the story.
Incidentally, it is interesting to compare his earlier heroes and heroines with
his more recent ones. In the old days his vulnerable main characters would feel
moved to equip themselves with masses of assorted weaponry, from Uzis in the
cupboards to shotguns under the bed, in an effort to even the odds. His newer
people, such as Odd Thomas, seem to be quirkier, less gung-ho and more physically
challenged, preferring to go lightly armed or without weapons altogether, and
finding themselves gifted instead with unusual powers. Laura Shane, bless her,
is of the old school.
If you've never read anything by Dean Koontz before, you could do a lot worse
than start with Lightning. I certainly feel better for reading it again.
This makes me now want to re-read lots of his other early stuff, like Watchers
and The Bad Place and post reviews for them all on Planet Bookworm.
And do you know, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
© Alex Cull, 13th September, 2004
Well, that was almost four years ago. I haven't got very far, in all that time. I
think Dean Koontz is writing novels a thousand faster than I can review them -
speaks volumes about the energy of the man. Or, more likely, about my sheer
laziness.
Alex Cull, 10th May, 2008
Night Chills
============
The inhabitants of Black River, Maine, are suffering from a mystery flu-like
virus. Nothing is what it seems, however, and this innocuous, short-lived bug is
the precursor to something far more sinister.
================================================================================
Mind control is one of Dean Koontz's intermittent themes, cropping up more
recently in False Memory, which like Night Chills owes a lot to Richard Condon's
1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate. Hypnosis is used in False Memory,
whereas in Night Chills the modus operandi is the use of subliminal messages,
an intriguing if rather controversial field. Night Chills was first published
in 1976, only three years after the well-known (alleged) use of subliminal images
during screenings of The Exorcist, so this would have been very topical at
the time. As in False Memory Koontz includes the additional factor of a
psychoactive drug.
I first read the novel many years ago; re-reading it this year, I found that it
has not lost much of its impact. It is very much old-school Dean Koontz, with
bare-bones descriptions and plenty of fast-moving action. It compares very well
with False Memory, which I found bloated and overwrought, despite having
an equally interesting theme.
The fact that Koontz has set his town of Black River in Maine immediately gets
me thinking about Stephen King and the differences between the two writers. With
Stephen King there is an overwhelmingly strong sense of place - a King version
of this story would surely have had masses of local detail and a cast of
colourful extras. Koontz, on the other hand, focuses on the plot, and the result
is a tightly-written story which could have been set in any remote spot in North
America.
Subliminal perception is a fascinating subject in itself. If you have read books
such as Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key (also first published
in 1976 - coincidence?), you will be aware that advertisers are (allegedly)
using subliminal images to get us to buy more of their products. Faces in ice
cubes, genitalia on cigarette packs, strange hidden signals and mismatches,
embedded words such as "sex" (of course) - it is difficult to tell whether
many of these are deliberate or pure coincidence, and if deliberate, whether or
not they actually have much of an effect. I suspect that when it is deliberate,
it does work in the same way that much of advertising works - if I see a well-
made commercial for cornflakes, there is no guarantee that I will go out and
buy cornflakes. Yet sales of cornflakes may well rise across the nation - shown
to millions of people, the commercial will cause some of them to buy. By no
means an exact science, but effective just the same.
If you like early Dean Koontz, then I think you will enjoy this novel. It is
certainly a far cry from his more wordy recent books, and displays the
freshness that he certainly had at the time. Night Chills is a
technothriller, basically, written I'm sure before the term was invented, and
it is a good one.
© Alex Cull, 23rd December, 2004
Odd Thomas
==========
Odd Thomas is a short-order cook, working in a diner in the sleepy desert town
of Pico Mundo. He's not your average short-order cook, however. For one thing,
he has ambitions to work in car tyre sales. In addition there's the fact that
he can see the dead. He can also see bodachs, unpleasant spectral harbingers of
death, and when large numbers of these shadowy creatures start to appear, he
knows that something very bad is going to happen soon.
================================================================================
I've been a Dean Koontz fan for a long time, and have felt frustrated in recent
years, as his style has undergone some radical changes, few of which have been
for the better in my opinion. I liked The Face, however, and enjoyed Odd Thomas
even more. For one thing he has kept the word count low. I'm also starting to
warm to his rather whimsical new tone; the recent books are a far cry from his
taut actioners of yesteryear, but they are starting to have a sort of tragicomic
charm all their own. I suppose it's a bit like unconventional food, for example
anchovy-flavoured ice cream - weird at first if all you've ever sampled is
vanilla, but gradually you acquire the taste (well, that's the theory.)
Odd Thomas is a somewhat unusual hero. He has the ability to see and interact
with ghosts, which makes him an invaluable aid to the local police chief. On the
other hand he is modest and unassuming to an almost pathological degree,
unwilling to ever leave Pico Mundo, satisfied with his job at the Grill. Crowds
of quirky, virtually Dickensian characters surround Odd, such as his Elvis-
obsessed boss Terri Stambaugh, and his overweight, six-fingered novelist friend
Ozzie Boone, owner of fearsome cat Terrible Chester. I'm getting accustomed to
the author's stream of larger-than-life minor characters, which are fast
becoming a Dean Koontz trademark, so that's cool with me. They're certainly out
in force, in this book. Even Elvis himself puts in an unusually sombre cameo
appearance (and yes, he is definitely dead.)
As far as I know, Dean Koontz made his first foray into comedy in 1997 with
his novel Ticktock, which had a mixed reception, and since then he has
experimented quite a few times with blending comic elements into his
supernatural thrillers. There are risks associated with this - water down the
laughs or the thrills too much and the result can be bland or just downright
strange. Along with all the quirky stuff, there's a fair bit of tension in the
story, with a strong sense of time running out as Odd struggles to find out
where the bad thing will happen. And there's also a large dollop of romance,
which the oddball humour manages to save from being just a bit too saccharine.
I think he has got the mixture right in Odd Thomas, and while the result
is strange, I found it an appealing, rather than off-putting, strangeness.
One thing that Dean Koontz does well in his inimitable way is to incorporate
themes that reflect the subjects that Americans obsess about. Terrorism is an
obvious one, with its associated elements of randomness and uncertainty, and
gun crime is another; the Twin Towers debacle demonstrated that outside forces
can destroy with terrible effect, and various high-profile sniper attacks have
shown that the enemy within can strike home effectively too. As its name
suggests, Pico Mundo is a microcosm of the country at large, and perhaps stay-
at-home, gun-shy yet courageous Odd Thomas is an appropriate new type of
American hero.
There is at least one mystery in the novel which is unresolved at the end,
which leads me to believe that one day there may be a sequel. Dean Koontz is not
known for writing sequels, the only one to date being Seize the Night in 1999,
featuring Christopher Snow who first appeared in Fear Nothing (and with whom
Odd Thomas has quite a few things in common.) If there ever is a second book, this
may well prove to be the start of a very odd but interesting series.
More anchovy-flavoured ice cream, anyone?
© Alex Cull, 30th July, 2004
Velocity
========
Billy Wiles leads a quiet life. When he is not working at a local bar, he spends
his time at home with his beloved wood sculptures. But all this is about to
change, when Billy receives a disturbing note from a stranger, forcing him to
make an impossible choice. He must decide which of two innocent people will die...
================================================================================
I've noticed a recent trend in Dean Koontz's main characters, who are starting
to fall into the category of "humble hero", normally a meek young working-class
guy whose life is suddenly overwhelmed by an irruption of pure evil. We have Odd
Thomas the cook in the Odd Thomas books, Jimmy the baker in Life Expectancy
and Mitch the gardener in The Husband. In the aptly-named Velocity we meet
Billy Wiles, humble small-town barkeeper, whose life is turned upside down when he
receives a note from a sinister stranger.
There's also an endangered/absent heroine theme in these novels, and coma-stricken
girlfriend Barbara in Velocity fits the bill, lying helpless in a local
convalescent home as Billy, her only hope, struggles to respond to his tormentor's
words and actions. At the end of the day there is no deus ex machina or savior
to step in and bring the bad guy to book - there is only Billy, fighting alone to
protect his loved one and himself.
Billy has to adapt to the situation fast, if he wants to survive and prevail. He
will get no second or third chances.
As with Koontz's most recent novel The Husband, the plot is the star of the
show. It twists and turns with lightning speed, as Billy's mysterious assailant
constantly ups the ante, forcing him to call upon all the inner resources he can
muster. The author demonstrates that he still knows all the right buttons to
press, forcing his readers (in a manner reminiscent of his most ruthless
villains) to keep turning the pages.
I was dipping into Velocity while sitting in my car on my way to work,
whenever gridlocked in one of London's frequent traffic snarl-ups, and got so
absorbed that drivers behind me kept beeping to let me know that things were
moving again. In retrospect, it was not a good choice for a traffic jam book.
The main weakness of this book is that the bad guy's motivation, in my opinion,
is not all that convincing; in that sense, Velocity is similar to The Face
and Forever Odd, whose baddies are also rather on the lightweight side. In a
way this is partly a flaw of the author's own devising; after all, the premise
underlying the novel is that Billy is such a fundamentally harmless person that
it is difficult to understand why anyone would ever want to torment him in this
systematic way. But it does not become much of a problem until the final few
chapters.
Some other reviewers have not warmed to the character of Billy Wiles, finding
his actions morally questionable and his transformation from ordinary Joe to
determined fighter difficult to believe. However, I think Koontz has pitched it
just right, because ordinary people are capable of extraordinary actions when
pushed, especially when their survival is at stake. Who among us can guarantee
that we would not, in Billy's circumstances, do the things that Billy did?
I enjoyed Velocity - it's a suspense-filled rollercoaster of a novel.
Great for reading at home on a rainy evening - not so good when you need to be
fully aware of your surroundings. Don't take it with you in the car.
By the way, in contrast to Dean Koontz's recent books, I now learn that the
hero of his next novel will be a millionaire anarchist who is menaced by an evil
consortium of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
Only kidding.
© Alex Cull, 15th September, 2006
Watchers
========
Travis Connell is walking in the wilderness when he is befriended by what appears
to be an unusually intelligent golden retriever. However, Einstein is more than
just a dog - he is the product of a top-secret research laboratory. He is also
on the run, both from government agents and from another product of the lab - a
monstrous and vengeful creature known as the Outsider.
================================================================================
If I had to sum up Watchers in a nutshell, I'd say that it is the archetypal
old-style Dean Koontz novel. It's also in my top ten best ever novels by this
most prolific of authors. What do I mean by "archetypal"? I mean that this novel
has the configuration of characters that veteran Koontz readers will recognise
as being typical of a number of his stories (although Dark Rivers of the Heart
is the only other one I can recall right now.) The good-hearted man, the woman
with the troubled past, their intelligent and affectionate canine companion -
and the implacable monster.
Actually, there are a couple of monsters in this novel - one is the Outsider, a
violent creature that was put together in a secret government lab. And there is
a human monster, assassin Vince Nasco, who is another Koontz staple, the
psychopath who believes he has superhuman powers - in this case, convinced that
the stolen life essence from his victims will help to make him immortal.
In my view, Watchers has all the elements of a classic Koontz novel from the
late 1980s or the early 1990s. It has a couple in danger, fleeing from shadowy
government agencies. It has a gene-engineered monstrosity, product of the vast
and secretive military-industrial complex. It has suspense, uncertainty, an
almost tangible air of sheer menace, and an almost complete lack of the quirky
humour that is a more recent Koontz hallmark.
Thinking about all the above attributes brings it home to me just why I like
these earlier novels and why they have the edge over more recent fare such as
Brother Odd. I miss all that sense of a dark conspiracy unfolding, and the
scientists and military people who tinker with things better left untouched.
Whatever happened to recombinant DNA, with all its sinister possibilities?
Also, whatever happened to those formidable and seemingly unstoppable villains
of yore, who despite their eccentricities, went about their evil work in a
commendably professional way? Shadows, mere shadows of what they once were.
Ah well, times have certainly changed in the Dean Koontz universe.
If you are looking for an old-school thriller, with SF and horror elements, and
which actually delivers thrills, look no further. Watchers, along with
Lightning, Dragon Tears, Midnight and quite a few others, is all that and more.
And if your experience of Dean Koontz's fiction has been so far limited to his
most recent output, I recommend Watchers as a fine example of all that we
have been missing.
© Alex Cull, 11th May, 2007
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