Krishna
Another review of a Dean Koontz book. Dean Koontz and a couple of others are probably the most reviewed authors in this location only because I personally have read more of their books than those by other authors. See What The Night Knows, Relentless and Velocity for reviews of some of the other books by the same author.
As I have said before, Koontz can be unpredictable, with good books interspersed by mediocre efforts. This one belongs to the latter category.
Even in badly plotted books, his writing style is good and some elements and description of scientific or supernatural things are always good, which makes the disappointment at the end bigger. This book also has its moments where you are absorbed in the descriptions and the story fully.
This story starts very cute. A lot of characters are swiftly introduced.
Grady Adams walks with his dog “Merlin” when he sees some strange animals frolicking.
Camilla River and partner Donna Corbett are vets but do a lot of pro bono work due to kindness of their hearts.
Henry Rouvroy kills Jim Carlyle, his twin and intends to take his place, including with Nora, Jim’s wife. He shoots Jim in the stable. Kills Nora and settles down to enjoy life. Grady continues to be ‘visited’ by mysterious creatures in his home. Part of it is his paranoia. But weird things happen, explained from his point of view. Henry is puzzled and alarmed by the bodies missing suddenly and lights being on where he did not expect it at all.
Grady has the creatures visiting his house, which he names Riddle and Puzzle in his room and calls Camilla for consultation. Camilla arrives but is filled with wonder when she sees them. They are nothing like anything she has ever seen. The description of their eyes is absolutely fascinating and is vintage Koontz.
The government, predictably, wants to shut the whole thing down and silence everybody who knows anything about them. They capture Puzzle and Riddle and ill-treat Grady and Camilla in the bargain. This goes on for a while. This is the new pessimistic Koontz to the fore again, where he is gloomy about the evil government trying to cover up and browbeating innocent and honest citizens in the process.
To add to all the confusion, there are guys just floating about doing apparently nothing for most of the story. There is this kind man who wins fortunes in casino and gives it all away; there is this driven hobo Tom Biggerwho feels pulled by a higher power. Some of this ties up nicely at the end, for instance you know why Tom Bigger is in the story, even though it is a bit part and in my mind the intro is huge for that purpose. Also, there is this attorney, who asks a groundskeeper (mild mannered boyish man who is really a vicious killer) to rape and kill his inconvenient wife and also kill the child in the bargain; What are they doing in the story? Again, there is a very weak tie in at the end to justify all these parallel threads floating around but it is not a very strong tie, I am afraid.
And then Dean Koontz goes crazy again! Let us look at this. Darwin’s evolution theory has not been proved, claims the author. Wait, what about the overwhelming evidence from fossils? Yes, Dean is clever enough to have thought of it. You can’t trust any of it because carbon dating is not precise. (What? All of it is untrustworthy? Yes! All of it.) Why? Because 2 billion years of time is not enough to have caused all this advanced evolution of these genes in human beings (wait, don’t laugh yet). But don’t conclude from this that Dean Koontz is propagating creationism. How can he be doing it, when the evidence quoted is the life of the universe from the Big Bang Theory?
By the way, evolutionists simply hate mathematicians because they keep saying that the time of the universe is enough to cause all this evolution. OK, Dean, do they offer any proof of their own? Or do they consider that from a primordial soup, we have seen protein like chains spontaneously evolve under lab conditions that kind of points to evolution? No, this seems to be the argument similar to “Elvis Presley still lives. Period”. Any evidence you give to the contrary is cooked up and is unbelievable. Which is why I hate the fake science quoted in some of his books. (See our review of Odd Thomas books). The story is fiction but the science underpinning it should be real, correct? If the science background is also fiction (in a non fantasy story like this), it undermines the entire credibility of the fictional accounts.
There is more. The “reality”, according to Koontz,is species come into existence spontaneously out of thin air. Of course, that theory is completely credible and is a lot easier to accept than Darwinian evolution, right?
Tom Bigger the vagabond, links up with a man trying to do good and thwarts the baby faced killer Rudy Neems trying to rape Jennifer, the wife.
The end is sort of crap. Highly confusing about Henry and why he even exists in the book. Also a crappy ending about what these creatures are, and where they came from.
A 3/10 would be fairly generous for this book.
– – Krishna