Horizon Road

Under the Dome is another example of why I hope Stephen King will never stop writing. It is more than 1000 pages long, but manages to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the story. Have you ever seen one of those movies where the best part is the fifteen minute intense chase scene somewhere in the middle? Well this book would be like that except instead of the intense chase scene only lasting a few minutes in the middle of the movie, it lasts the entire movie from beginning to end.

The story in this book is not actually the story. The story is about a town and how its residence handle the story. The actual concept of the story plays a very little part in the book, other than the fact that it has put the residence in a predicament that becomes the real story. The initial concept is the cause and the escape, the beginning and the end. But for the 1000 pages in the middle, the story is about the people of the affected town. By the end of the book, you really don’t care if the cause was alien or government experiment or whatever. What you care about are the people. Few writers do this as well as Stephen King. This story has you routing for the good guys and despising the bad guys and almost forgetting about how they got into this situation to begin with, that beginning and end that gave purpose for the story, because the real story is of the people in the town.

This is a must read for old King fans and anyone interested in becoming a King fan, or anyone that simply enjoys reading a very good and intense fiction book, so I won’t go into the story because I don’t want to spoil it for those that don’t read it as soon as it is released, as I do for anything Stephen King writes. All I will say is that this is one of Kings really good ones. I enjoyed every minute of it…time well spent.

My rating is 4.9 out of 5 stars.

Breathless was not how I felt after reading Dean Koontz’s newest book that was released earlier this month. A little confused, maybe, unsatisfied, definitely.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible story, but I am glad Koontz’s books tend to be quick reads. An evening an a half is all it is worth.

In Breathless, Koontz basically tries to explain the existence of man without explaining it at all. And in the process, he introduces us to all sorts of characters that have no bearing whatsoever on the story, the most disappointing being that of a Senator who is planning to initiate the breakdown and demise of society as we know it, although that never happens. And then there us the friend of the Senator who decides not to go with him to the planned housing for some multitude of politicians and great minds planning to rebuild the world as they see fit after this fall of society, but instead decides to become a serial killer and kills his brother and his brother’s wife and hole up in their mountain cabin for three years with a multitude of victims until the supposed collapse of our world as we know it has passed.

Then there is the corrupt lawyer that hires an even more corrupt former client that he had gotten off on murder charges to kill his wife and son. But those plans get thwarted by another character that had little purpose in the story other than being a witness to the creation of a new species on our planet…but again, we aren’t actually told exactly what it was that he had witnessed. All we know, near the very end of the book, is that he is now a changed man, after being a bum and a thief and an addict, and reunited after 30 years with his mother and blind father, who also play absolutely no part in the story.

The story itself, however, the parts that actually matter, are intriguing and delightful, but on the verge of trying to be too cute. The reaction to this new species by the government is predictable and expected. The escape is far too easy and short. The end of the story is abrupt. The tie-ins at the end of the story to all the needless characters we’d been following throughout the book left me feeling like they were created only to fill some pages to make the book long enough to be considered a novel. The Senator and his friend, the lawyer and his almost killed wife, the serial killer, and for the most part even the witness of the creation of this new species that appear on Earth and his trek to find his parents, have no real purpose at all…other than giving Koontz something else to fill space with.

I have read everything Koontz has written and will read everything he writes in the future. His books are kind of like Steve Martin movies…not that they are supposed to be funny, but as much as I like Steve Martin, you can expect to be disappointed in at least one out of every three or four movies he is in. Koontz is the same way. I read everything he does, but I know that only about two-thirds of his work will end up being worth the time.

Breathless has the potential of being one of the good ones, but comes up short in the end. Parts of it I enjoyed very much, but much of it was lost in his desire to create unnecessary characters with stories completely unrelated the subject of his book. The end result is a story that comes across almost as forced as that silly toupee he has sported for the last 15 years or so.

I rate this one 2-1/2 stars out of five.

Odd Hours is the fourth installment already of the Odd Thomas series started in 2003 and it sets itself up for a fifth offering that will be coming before too long, I am sure.

The entire story takes place during one evening, a span of about six hours. Odd Thomas finds himself in a town for reasons unknown to him, finds a mysterious pregnant woman whom he doesn’t know, and vows to protect her with his life for reasons she will not reveal. This chapter in Odd’s odd life begins with him meeting the unknown woman who has no last name, and ends with him driving out of town with the woman while still having no idea who she is, why she needs protection, and with no real destination in mind.

Enter book five.

The mysterious woman character is not even necessary in this story, makes a couple of guest appearances to make sure we don’t forget about her, and leaves the reader with a strong feeling of an unfinished story despite the fact that Odd manages to discover and thwart an evil attempt by powers unnamed to redesign the world order beginning with the destruction of several major cities in the United States, all in a six hour time frame.

This story raises more questions than it offers answers. Koontz’s descriptions of the flowers and trees and weather and such take up at least half the book. The other half is Odd using his unusual psychic abilities to track down and shoot the bad guys dead. But even with the villains all having fresh bullet holes in them, the mysterious pregnant woman still requests his safeguarding.

Having helped Elvis find his way to the ever after in the end of the third installment, he relies on the spirits of Frank Sinatra and (of course) a ghost dog named Boo to help him out of a few jams. But even though Odd manages to kill all the pawns in the evil scheme, we are allowed one slip of the tongue that mentions a Senator might be behind, or at least involved, in the plan to start a New Civil Order, yet no conspiracies or politicians, from our country or any other, including the origin of the ship delivering the nukes to the fumbling pawns of the plot, are otherwise ever even mentioned.

This book falls to third in my favor of the four Odd novels. The first one was one of my favorite Koontz novels when I read it. But later, in fact just a few weeks ago, my son and I were watching a movie, one that Dean had watched many times, we decided, The Mothman Prophecies with Richard Gere. I had told my son about Odd Thomas as we often discuss the books we read with each other, but he had not actually read any of the Odd Thomas novels himself. But at the same moment during The Mothman Prophecies, after a single particular line spoken by the expert that Richard Gere had sought out for some supernatural answers, my son and I looked at each other at said “Odd Thomas” almost simultaneously. Sure enough, a quick double checking of dates showed the Mothman appearing in 2002 and Odd Thomas appearing in 2003.

Just like the idea for The Good Guy comes directly from the movie Red Rock West with Nicolas Cage, Odd Thomas is a direct result of The Mothman Prophecies.

It makes me wonder how many other novels of Koontz’s are taken directly from movies that I haven’t happened to see. I hope Life Expectancy isn’t another rip-off being my current favorite Koontz novel.

That being said, despite the fact that Dean appears to be much less imaginative than he would like for everyone to believe when he talks about where he gets his ideas (which he does very often in his newsletters, all of which I read, and none of which mention the movies he is stealing his ideas from); and despite the fact that even with Trixie gone he can’t seem to write a story that doesn’t contain a hero dog or two, Dean Koontz is a very talented, descriptive writer and I enjoy his work because he makes it easy to visualize his story as he tells it.

His books are fast reads with large font and usually fairly fast paced. I read Odd Hours in just two evenings, enjoyed it, but was definitely left unfulfilled with the open-ended finish and all the questions about who this mysterious pregnant woman with no last name is and why she was even in the story to begin with.

Rarely are movie sequels as good as the originals and Odd Thomas falls into this category as well. I thoroughly enjoyed Odd Thomas in 2003 (although now hold a lot less respect for it since discovering, without question, where Koontz lifted the idea from); Forever Odd in 2005 felt like a waste of time; Brother Odd in 2006 was much better than the second in the series with a much more substantial story to tell, but still mostly just the same old stuff in new surroundings; and this latest effort falls somewhere between the second and third chapters of Odd’s odd life.

I suppose when you write as much as Koontz does, you need to dip your fingers into the wells of others to keep the stories coming.

If it sounds like I am being a little hard on the compulsive writer, it’s because I have always considered him one of my favorites. But as I have discovered a few of the sources for his stories, it feels a bit like seeing how the magician does a trick that you have always loved and discovering it was a lot simpler and less complex than you had ever thought it could be, or like going back to the circus for the first time as an adult and seeing the sadness and desperation behind the masks of the clowns that you hadn’t noticed as a child.

All in all, I give Odd Hours a 3 on the 5 star scale and will buy the fifth chapter when it comes out next year sometime, if for no other reason than to find out who this mysterious pregnant woman is that Odd has vowed to protect, and why she needs protecting. Koontz is a talented author and I do enjoy his writing, but I think he has been knocked down on the “favorite” list a few notches because he is much less original than I had previously thought. If you like Dean Koontz, I recommend Odd Hours to spend an evening or two with to pass the time, assuming you have been following the story from the beginning. But if you haven’t been following Odd Thomas since 2003, you aren’t missing much bypassing this long chapter.

Intended to be for young adults when it was written, ‘Coraline’ fell to the same fate as Harry Potter and ended up being enjoyed by not-so-young adults as much as its intended audience.

The story is of a brave little girl left on her own to save her parents, and herself, from an evil, lonely, button-eyed spirit that lives in a different world behind a door that has been bricked off in her new home. With a little help from her oddball neighbors that share the large boarding house, she is able to match wits with the spirit in such a way that Gaiman actually makes believable.

The novella is a quick read and once you start, you want to make sure you have time to finish because you won’t want to put it down as you follow Coraline on her quest until it is done. And even when you think it IS done, you discover there is still a little more.

Even though the book was intended for the young, young and old alike will thoroughly enjoy a few days in the life of this clever, little self-proclaimed explorer, Coraline, not Caroline, as she points out more than a few times, but Coraline.

I give it a 4.2 on a 5.0 scale. A recommended read.

I just finished reading “Duma Key” by Stephen King this evening. As a disclaimer, it is only fair to mention that I have also read everything else he has ever published and I tend to buy his books on the day they are released, if not sooner, and read them as soon as I can find the time. I am a big fan of King and even bought his son’s (Joe Hill) first novel (although I am yet to even be tempted by a Tabitha King novel for some reason) so this needs to be factored in when reading any reviews I write on a Stephen King book.

That being said, as is usually the case with a new King offering, I thoroughly enjoyed “Duma Key.”

The bare bones of the story is a typical format for many horror stories; ancient supernatural entity reaches out to unnaturally tuned in victim from the comparably recent past who subdues the ancient monster only to have its powers and horrors unleashed again in the present with modern day heroes struggling to repeat the impossible task once performed by their ancestors, but hopefully with more permanent results this time. What makes or breaks a story using this, or any of the other redundant genre patterns used to create a novel, is of course the characters and setting and the writers ability to bring them to life with his words. And in my mind of course, few people are better at that than Stephen King.

The story is just over 600 pages long and held my interest all the way to the final pages. King is excellent at intertwining several stories at once and then bringing them all together in the end. He touches on all your emotions at one time or another and makes every page count.

The simplicity and complexity of the characters along with masterful manipulation and joining of the subplots makes this novel his best story since completing the Dark Tower Series. I felt it was quite a bit better than “Cell” (2006) which used more of a two level horror template as opposed to the three-level horror template used in “Duma Key.” I thought it was also better than “Lisey’s Story“, (2006) which had some of its own charms that I enjoyed very much, and “Blaze“, (2007) written as Richard Bachman and about a completely different type of horror.

I highly recommend this book to all King fans. And if you used to read Stephen King but don’t as much any more, this one is an excellent one to revisit the master with. Much like a good wine, he has improved with time.

My rating - 4.5 out of 5.0.

Stephen King released his 39th novel today, “Duma Key”. King has also released 7 novels as Richard Bachman and 9 collections of short stories, as well as numerous novellas and shorts and non-fiction offerings.

In an interview just prior the release of his seventh and final book of the Dark Tower series in 2004, King said that he had completed his life’s work once Roland the Gunslinger’s story had been told and didn’t know if he would, or even could, continue to write. 23 of his 55 books bore a relation to the Dark Tower series, including one by Bachman and two short story collections.

However since that statement four years ago, “Duma Key” is King’s fifth story released post Dark Tower (The other four; “The Colorado Kid” (novella), “Cell“, “Lisey’s Story“, and “Blaze” (Bachman)). Who was he trying to fool, anyway? He couldn’t stop writing if he wanted to. And I will always look forward to his next story.

“Duma Key” is now available in bookstores for $28.00.

Published by Forge in 2005, Judgment Day is James F. David’s fifth of six novels he has written. This story is a roller coaster ride of emotions. A classic good versus evil tale with an ingenious mix of logic, realism, and science fiction. Comparisons in David’s epic novel to many political, social, and religious aspects and practices of today appear almost too close to home. This book definitely makes you think twice about some of things we take for granted.

Non-stop action covering half a life-span, it is nearly impossible to put this book down once you get started. David’s descriptions and details of the unknown leave you believing you’ve been there yourself. I cheered out loud, I cursed the evil, I laughed, and I cried. When the book was finished, I was sorry I had to go. I recommend this book to anyone that has imagination. It’s quite a ride.

This is one of my all-time favorites.
I rate it a 4.8 out of 5.

The Darkest Evening of the Year is Dean Koontz’s 71st novel under various names (the majority of which I have read), by my unofficial count, and 94th story published including 23 novellas during his early sci-fi years (none of which I have read), not counting rewrites of old stories, which he seems to do frequently. That is a lot of writing.

Published by Bantam in December of 2007, the new novel’s title is more a reflection of his personal feelings about the death of Trixie, his long-time best companion, a golden retriever, than it is a suitable title for the book.

Dogs have often played key roles in Koontz’s stories. In this story, a golden retriever is again one of the main characters. This is one of the reasons why I was not as excited about reading Koontz’s newest offering. One can only read so many stories about dogs and aliens before they start getting old, two of Koontz’s favorite subjects to write about, and he writes a lot about them. But once I started reading The Darkest Evening of the Year, as is usually the case with Koontz’s books, I wasn’t able to put it down until I had completed it.

Dean Koontz had a very close relationship with Trixie. If you have ever owned a dog, a good dog, one you learned to love, one who seemed almost human to you, whose eyes you could read and understand, one that seemed to understand you better than your friends, one that comforted you when no one else could, you will probably appreciate this book more. I owned such a dog myself once, Sheba, and reading this book brought back many memories of that relationship and made me miss her very much.

As I mentioned, I was not overly excited to read yet another story about a hero dog by Koontz, but I am a dedicated Koontz reader, bought it the day it was released, and finally picked it up yesterday to read into the new year. I took a few hours off to sleep and finished the book this morning.

This is not a spoiler, so I don’t want to say too much about the story other than it is worth the read. The main characters are strong and likable (though unlikely). The villains, in classic Koontz style, are easy to hate with absolutely no conscience whatsoever. He tries to hide the outcome of the story by having just about all the characters living currently under different names than they had been born with, but it is still a little easier than he probably intended to figure out the hidden truths about half way through the book, possibly for me because I have read so many of his books.

The ending is satisfactory, if you’ve been taken in by the story, and love dogs and the supernatural. But if you don’t like either of those subjects, then you probably shouldn’t be considering reading Koontz, anyway.

This book is no where near as good as my favorite Koontz story, Life Expectacy, one that has no canine characters in it (though that’s not why it’s my favorite), although I do recommend the book to anyone that has ever read Koontz and liked it OR to anyone that has ever had a close relationship with a dog. If you read it for the first reason, the story is good. If for the second reason, the story is emotionally good.

I rate it a 3.5 on a scale of 5.