What do you think of Dean Koontz?

[Phatchick]

Really good writer, his work just leaps off the page and grabs you.

[redbeardiam]

I waver between 'I love his stuff' and 'he's an awful hack.' Most of the time the second, but for some reason I keep picking up his books occasionally.

[Shoes]

I give him a 'thumbs sideways.' IMHO, his books lacked the depth of S King's books. King developed an alternate world that devloped in dozens of books. he populated this world with deep charachters and interwoven plots and storylines. Koontz has some good stories, but i'm not 100% sold on him

[pastor's wife]

I'm reading the Frankenstein series right now. I love how the first book references C. S. Lewis in many ways. That was an unexpected benefit, as one would expect references to Mary Shelley's original work but not Lewis.

So often I have incredible compassion for Frankenstein's creatures because they are filled with such longing and hunger; they way they call him "Father" is especially pitiful. But their anger and hatred is extremely chilling and makes it hard to view them with any pity at all.

(And I must admit that *Possible small spoiler* Frankenstein's plot to replace real people with exact look-alikes that are really his New Race*end spoiler* crossed my mind with the cop in CA going on a rampage.)

[myotch]

(10-19-2011 09:44 AM)Shoes Wrote:  I give him a 'thumbs sideways.' IMHO, his books lacked the depth of S King's books. King developed an alternate world that devloped in dozens of books. he populated this world with deep charachters and interwoven plots and storylines. Koontz has some good stories, but i'm not 100% sold on him

Once upon a time, I devoured everything King wrote. Lit with a pulse. I even read most of his Bachman-pseudonym stuff, and found it had a dark quality that was at times more real and pleasing than books with his own name attached. (Before I die, would someone please make Bachman's "The Long Walk" into a movie? Is it too much to ask?)

"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" are probably the greatest prison stories ever.

IT probably ruined me on King, as did Tommyknockers and a couple of other books and scripts. It seemed that, in King's universe, evil was embodied in more organic/intelligent things - and for some reason, that realization caused a real disconnect with me, as if evil was a tentacled being with one large eye and radiated malevolent thoughts and behavior that affected weak people. What happened to the early days of King, with the easy paranoia, solid horror themes, and the exploring of ESP?

It was that very concept of radiating evil that made me fall in love with The Shining - albeit through the filter of Stanley Kubrick. And maybe that's what needs to be done with King's work - take the structure and key plots, and subtract the stuff that King uses as his own psychological therapy. And then hand it to an auteur who utilizes wide angle shots and steadicams.

[beensetfree]

I remember reading one book, can't remember the title, and there was something about a snake being inserted into an orifice. I've never gotten over the disgust of that. It disturbs me now just thinking about it. I have read a few but don't remember the titles. I worked at B. Dalton for a year and his books flew off the shelves.

[pastor's wife]

I just finished reading Life Expectancy and I really liked it. For a thriller, I thought it had some cool themes of love and courage and family and fate.

[pastor's wife]

I've just started book III in the Frankenstein series. I found this quote intriguing:

"The sole allegiance of members of the New Race . . . must be to the organized community that Helios envisioned, not to one another, but to the community, and in fact to to the community but to the idea of community."

That reminded me of experiences in the IFB. We spoke of love but we often weren't loving one another but were only attached to the IDEA of love, not its reality. Or we were supposed to be followers of Jesus but it was often to our idea of Jesus, not the Jesus who scolded the religious and spent time with sinners and was patient and forgiving.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining it well, but I just liked how Koontz described how the creatures, while supposedly connected to one another were really only connected to the IDEA.

[pastor's wife]

Just read Odd Thomas. As often with Koontz's narrators, they tend to over-explain themselves, how they're feeling, and where they're coming from. This often slows down the plot and can make tense situations less tense because the character is busy explaining his perceptions about something. Still it was an entertaining read.

I can buy his seeing the dead; I was less convinced by the way he is supernaturally led to the right locations. That seems a bit too convenient to me.

Spoiler:

The character of his mother was so unexpected. I thought she'd be some creepy insane monster-like figure so to have her instead be a beautiful yet utterly self-centered person was shocking.

There were several unexpected twists, the biggest of course about Stormy.

I like all the Biblical allusions in his work too, like this from Brother Odd :

"Civilization . . . exists only because the world has barely enough of two kinds of people: those who are able to build with a trowel in one hand, a sword in the other; and those who believe that in the beginning was the Word, and will risk death to preserve all books for the truths they might contain."