Customer Reviews

Dragon Tears

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I listened to Dragon Tears on audio and enjoyed it, but like another reviewer, it reminded me of other Koontz novels. It was a cool story idea, having a 20 year old man with supernatural powers try to rid the world of people he didn't feel deserved to be here. Like a homeless man and a woman and child living out of their car. When a police officer accidently ticked him off, he and his partner are the next in line. I thought Dean Koontz did a good job of making the apparitions scary, and the narrative by the dog was great. I love dogs, and this sounded like I would have imagined the dog to be able to think and talk. The only drawback was that I think the police officers figured out the whole plot way too fast. I would have never guessed what was causing the terrifying beasts to appear, or have been able to figure out who was behind it, but that's fiction and it was a fun listen. I like all of Koontz's novels, this wasn't my favorite, but I would recommend it to anyone who likes a little horror.

On the precipice of being a fine horror novel, Dean Koontz's "Dragon Tears" attempts to convey a very admirable message-that dire events or situations that may occur throughout life are only as horrible as they are perceived by those who they occur to-but falls flat on its face because of an outrageously dubious plotline. Similar to his last couple previous works such as "Hideaway", this work attempts to use an inhuman, prophet-like murderer from the Dark Side to torment the protagonists.

Police detectives Harry Lyon and Connie Gulliver are partners but could not be more different-Harry is consumed with order and balance, from his perfectly crafted color-coordinated closet to a strict daily routine that involves voluntary tedious paper work, while Connie embraces chaos, using it to fuel her aggressive craving to stop evil and make the world a better place. A Tuesday afternoon seems harmless enough, but Harry and Connie are summoned to stop a raging killer in a restaurant, leaving Harry to eventually shoot the perpetrator numerous times with his gun. Harry's day only gets worse from there, as a huge, disgusting street vagrant foretells him that he is going to die by sunrise and that all the people and things he cherishes are in danger as well. As dawn ticks closer and closer, Harry and Connie must comprehend all of these bizarre convictions before it is too late. What they discover is than a callous force believed to possess the strength of a god is out to make severe changes to the current world, one change being the exodus of the two detectives.

"Dragon Tears" brings in too many extraneous and fairly inconsequential characters into the narrative, especially the repeatedly used canine personification that is speckled throughout. Koontz has a large heart for man's best friend, but "Dragon Tears" does not benefit from the half-witted dog psych-analysis, causing the piece to seem campy and less resolute. Koontz perhaps created this yarn to promote how increasingly petrifying the world is becoming and how two completely different cops revolve around this premise (which is a commendable idea), but he could have created a much more believable, plausible tale to get the point across. Some may truly enjoy this supernatural thriller, while many others may conclude "Dragon Tears" a disappointment.

Harry and Connie are L.A. homicide detective's ala the "Odd Couple." Harry is obsessively neat, and Connie is a messy dirty Harry type. Both characters are tracking a serial killer who brutalizes women. Harry's life takes an unexpected turn, when he encounter a strange hobo who tells him "Tick Tock You'll Be Dead By Dawn," thus begins a 12 hour Odyssey wherein Harry, Connie, and a rag-tag group of homeless pit their wits against a psychic serial-killer with a God-Complex.

Okay, I liked the first HALF of Dragon Tears. But after that it devolved into sheer Koontz formula.

For readers of Koontz, there really are no surprises in this novel. He uses the same formula in numerous other books. Lessee: There is a best friend who is a Hispanic cop. A Saintly single mom character. Quotations from the `book of Counted Sorrow,' a sentient dog, ranting about the apocalypse, mistrust of the psychiatric profession, and a serial killer who collects body parts... *Yawn.* How many Koontz books have elements similar to this?

The disappointing thing was I actually enjoyed the first HALF of the book. I liked the characters of Connie and Harry, but the second half contained way too much deus ex machina to be believed. And whatever happened to the first case Harry and Connie were working on? This subplot was dropped entirely. Disappointing. This was average Koontz. It might entertain readers who haven't read his backlist and for whom many plot elements are new...But for Koontz fans it contains no surprises...

How do you kill what can not be killed? That is the question with which Harry and Connie must wrestle throughout the story that is Dragon Tears.

Yes there is a bit of the Koontz "formula" to this story, which is why I graded it 4 stars instead of 5...but this book is arguably one of my favorites. Unlike some of his other "formula" books (like the much-celebrated WATCHERS) I truly enjoyed the frights in this book. It was engaging and engrossing. If a reader doesn't get absolutely caught up in this chase.... well, I just don't know what to say.

Highly recommended!!!

Well it's an interesting concept in occult thrillers, and certainly well read by Jay Sanders, despite occasional lapses into boring monotone. His voice describing the world as seen through the eyes of a dog are hilarious. My complaint with this presentation is the meandering verbose style of the author that regularly has you screaming for him to get back to the story.
In the middle of crucial scenes he takes wordy diversions, through the voice of his characters. The ramblings are not always relevant, often preachy and irritatingly moralizing. By the time he has finished you have forgotten the point of the current episode or have lost the feeling of suspense. If ever there was an author in need of a good editor, this is a prime example.

This is a slow starting but eventual fast paced novel. The greatest Koontz character ever created lets you into his mind when he appears about half way through the book. That character named Woofer is a dog who gives the reader an insight into the way dogs actually think, ie being mainly obsessed with getting food. Woofer is a sensational character who although not a super intelligent dog like in other Koontz novels such as Watchers, is still the greatest character of the book. It's a shame he didn't appear a little earlier when the book hadn't yet picked up the pace.

Human characters in the book are also pretty interesting such as the detectives Harry Lyon and Connie Gulliver who are complete opposites but honest hard working police officers. Bryan (known as Tick Tock by his tormented) is an evil childish man with sensational supernatural powers who enjoys practicing his lethal powers while waiting to Become. He believes he is the next God whose job is to thin out the human population with the remainders holding him in awe and fear. He targets the two detectives for his next victims but they won't die without a fight.

Although starting a bit slow this book especially the second half is a sensational thriller and you really will enjoy meeting Woofer. Buy Dragon Tears just to meet him alone.

Rating System:
1 star = abysmal; some books deserve to be forgotten
2 star = poor; a total waste of time
3 star = good; worth the effort
4 star = very good; what writing should be
5 star = fantastic; must own it and share it with others

STORY: Two Southern California police detectives track down a demonic serial killer with paranormal abilities

MY FEEDBACK:

CONTENT ¡V More profanity than most of his books contain. Demonic scenes try to portray true Evil and may be more graphic than some might want to read. Jay O. Sanders is very good reading the audiobook version. All characters (even Woofer, a dog who plays an important role) are fully voiced

CHARACTERS ¡V Protagonists are the grey type of characters that leave you liking them but also not liking them at the same time. Some of the ¡§minor¡¨ protagonists are much more likeable as we feel for their helpless plight. Bad guy is evil and it makes sense why he does the things he does. I really liked the bad guy concept, sort of a melding of genres (can¡¦t say too much more without giving it away). But there were some scenes with the bad guy that I didn¡¦t feel was showing me anything new so why have the extra pages?!

SETTING ¡V Southern California, where else would Koontz place one of his novels. ƒº Setting works as usual

PLOT ¡V I felt the beginning dragged. I kept asking myself, where is this headed and why is the author taking the scenic route vs. the direct route? After about the first 35% the story took off for me and I really enjoyed it.

OVERALL ¡V Well done, I enjoyed it and wouldn¡¦t mind listening to the audio book again in about a year.

Detective Harry Lyon and his partner, Connie, are opposites; he likes order and she chaos, he safety and she danger. But both have the same reaction when they discover they are being stalked by an unseen force that sends monsterous golums with red eyes to torment them and tell them they'll be dead before dawn. They resolve to find this force ... and kill it.

The quest -- and the book -- take the whole night. One of Harry's friends is horribly murdrered; a homeless man and a woman and her son are also threatened; soon "Ticktock" -- the name Harry and Connie have given this monster, since ticktock is his favorite word when taunting them -- has heightened the game by freezing time. Ticktock cannot be killed by bullets. He cannot be burnt by fire. He can appear anywhere and everywhere without notice. The childishly sadistic force behind him must be having a high old time.

Then, of course, as in (it seems almost) every Dean Koontz book, there is a dog. A very smart dog.

The combined result of all these factors is a chilling, unreal, slightly nauseating, but ultimately compelling horror story. The subject of a supernatural villian made me queasy, but both Harry and Connie saved the story. They are well drawn and engaging and fit admirably together, creating a team that, though beaten and battered, manage to prevail.

The reason I gave this book only three stars? It would have read faster if Koontz had stuck more to Harry and Connie's point of view. I found most of his asides unneccessary and distracting. The dog was okay, if you're into supersmart pets, but I could have done without a lot of the villian's perspective. In Ticktock and his creator, Koontz has created a bad guy horrible enough that you really don't want to spend that much time with him.

All told, not a bad book, if you don't mind the supernatural aspects (and if you're reading Koontz, you probably don't).

"There's a Chinese saying that goes, 'Sometimes life can be as bitter as dragon tears. But whether dragon tears are bitter or sweet depends entirely on how each man perceives the taste.'"
"In other words, life is hard, even cruel - but it's also what you make of it."
"Perhaps wisdom may yet enter through the thick bone of your Yankee head."
- private investigator and Connie Gulliver, herein

DRAGON TEARS covers a fine, sunny Tuesday in the lives of career cops Harry Lyon and Connie Gulliver that starts out beautifully until they have to shoot a maniac at lunch. After that, the day quickly slides into the Twilight Zone, as a huge vagrant thug with mysterious powers begins stalking Harry and Connie, warning them that they'll be dead by dawn. The thug has also appeared to Sammy Shamroe - a bright man who wound up on the streets after destroying his own future through cocaine and alcoholism - and to Janet Marco, who with her preschool son Danny and his dog Woofer have taken to the streets as sanctuary from the memory of her abusive husband.

The viewpoint cycles primarily between the victims-to-be (emphasis on Harry and Connie as professional investigators) and the stalker, with a nice little Columbo-style mystery going: how can the victims win the vicious hide-and-seek game the stalker is playing with them? How can they find him when he acts only through golem puppets, never directly risking himself in confrontation?

Very interesting novel here, partly playing out as a homicidal fairy tale in a California landscape. (Harry is very fond of the Brothers Grimm; while the unexpurgated original tales are violent, at least the goblins don't get the queen's daughter in the end. Connie, by contrast, collects true-life tales of modern horror stories.) DRAGON TEARS has varying portrayals of homeless people and of the general population's reaction to them, from Sam the Sham's retreat into alcoholism to blot out his own worst memories to Janet's ability to make a precarious living as a scavenger, from the deliberate blindness of most people on the street to the generosity of a care facility that feeds the homeless with leftovers after the patients have eaten.

Harry and Connie have a kind of good cop/bad cop routine along the lines of Jack and Rebecca from DARKFALL, where Connie is the more cynical bad-attitude partner, having come through a mixture of child abuse and foster homes in her youth. Harry, on the other hand, is uptight about rules and procedures, but not so much so that he can't laugh at himself a little. (They'd both like to know what the priest in THE EXORCIST looked up in the index when he consulted a psychology book, for instance.)

I recommend the unabridged CD narration by Jay O. Sanders. He makes an effort to give each character a distinct voice without throwing in senseless pauses for campy effect; he plays it straight.

Drive-in totals:
- Six dead bodies (though I may have lost count), including a dog.
- Sexual content, including one serial rapist turned murderer, though no "on camera" rapes.
- Connie Gulliver is much given to recounting grim true-life "new Dark Ages" anecdotes, e.g. murders committed for trivial motives
- One psycho shooter with grenades
- Injury to eye motif
- Aging female rock groupie motif
- Psycho with psychic powers
- Time control fu
- Golem fu
- Illustration of rave culture, including Ecstasy drug abuse

In this re-release of Koontz's 90's book a killer with supernatural powers and the ability to control time threatens to kill various people by dawn unless they can find a way to stop him.The story makes nice use of the killer's unique abilities and mixes in Koontz's usual observations of society today(a little overdone)but the most entertaining aspect of the book is the dog Woofer.Sections are told from the point of view of different characters including the homeless dog Woofer who tries to help.After having to deal with Fluffy the cat who used to like to pee in his water bowl when he had a home Woofer is totally unafraid to track down a killer who likes to roll his victim's eyeballs over his naked body!A fun suspense book though not one of his best.Interesting afterword on the orgin of the title and how it was almost a movie!