Customer Reviews

Killer Dreams (Eve Duncan)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Silly plot, inane dialogue (characters said "The hell I will" at least 7 times in one chapter alone), cardboard characters.... Three chapters and I couldn't take it anymore. Johansen is capable of much better than Killer Dreams. The Search, about search and rescue workers and their dogs, was terrific.

I have read more Iris Johansen novels than I like to admit (I stopped counting at around 20), but they are getting worse. Her plots are fun, and her creativity in weaving characters and storylines throughout different books is impressive, but her writing itself is just not very good. Much of it could be fixed by a good editor.

All of her characters' dialogue is prissy and old-fashioned--as I imagine Ms. Johansen's own speech is. Every character's speech is littered with "Good heavens"es, "what the devil"s, and, my personal (least) favorite, "dammit," thrown in where there is no need, but where Ms. Johansen thinks the character should sound "tough." In any basic fiction writing class, one learns that every character does not speak the same, and that means not using the same "curse" words and manner of cursing. One other funny Johansenism is "He muttered an oath under his breath." I wonder what the oath was. Did he swear to love, cherish, and honor her 'til death parted them or perhaps first to do no harm? I know what she meant, but it amused me just the same. Couldn't she just say "he swore under his breath"?

Another issue is the basic formula of Johansen's novels: Strong woman is in difficult situation that she cannot handle alone for the first time in her life. Strong woman must learn to trust renegade strong man who is tough and cannot show tenderness. Strong woman and strong man clash in their mutual quest to destroy evil. Strong man and women have deep sexual attraction, dammit. Strong woman and man give in to their carnal urges. Strong woman and man vanquish the evil foe and go back to their separate lives. Strong woman and man realize they love each other and cannot be apart. The end.

The last issue is the men's names. I had to stop reading the last novel because I couldn't take seriously a character called "Silver." Is he a horse? Hi ho! "Royd" is an AWFUL name, by the way. I alternately think of hemorrhoids or steroids. Most people do not call each other by their last names, even men. Some men do, but not all the time, and women most likely wouldn't call all men by their last names. Of course, then even the characters' FIRST names are awful: JOCK?!? What the devil kind of Scottish name is that? Why doesn't she call him "Gavin"? Inconsistent. Oh, if you could hear the oath I am muttering under my breath.

The more I notice the bad writing, the more difficult it is for me to read her books. This is the last of her books I think I will read.

I've read every one of Iris Johansen's "suspense" novels and have loved most of them. The last couple though have been so painful to get through. This one however, I don't think I can even finish. I read where someone called these characters "cardboard," and I couldn't agree more. The female heroine randomly throws in curse words in a cheap attempt to create tension between herself and the supposed male protagonist. Whereas in the Eve Duncan Books and the Wind Dancer books we are drawn into the story and come to care for the characters, it is patently obvious what will happen with each of these characters - makes me think of a writing 101 class. "Now this should happen here, and this here, and this here and boom, climax, happily every after."

I hope that Iris can get her groove back and begin writing novels worth my time.

I think Iris Johansen may be losing her touch. Her latest novel Killer Dreams was a bit of a boring read and I usually love her style of writing. However, her last few books have definitely taken a turn for the worse. Her best novels were the early Eve Duncan Series. Since the author has moved away from Romantic Suspense and is attempting to cross over to the thriller genre, she just hasn't delivered the goods.

The book was a quick read with a few repeat characters that I can see Iris Johansen developing new stories around. However, the entire book lacked the usual twists and turns along with the surprise ending. As the reader, I never felt an attachment to the characters nor any emotion tied to the storyline.

Bottom line is, is it worth buying?

Unfortunately, I would have to say that this is the first Iris Johansen book that I do not recommend buying. Avid Johansen fans will most likely be dissapointed with Killer Dreams. I do hear that she is bringing back Eve and Joe for her next book finally. Let's hope she takes the latest criticism and goes back to what the readers love about her work.

I normally don't take the time to review books however I felt I must comment in this instance. This book is painfully plagued with "romantic" desires. The main character Sophie drove me insane. All the characters kept talking about how strong she was yet she was extremely pathetic. If I had to hear the phrase "The hell I will", "Michael" or that she was moistening her lips one more time I thought I was going to vomit. Johansen is normally a fantastic author but I was quite disappointed with this one. This book seemed thrown together just to get another novel on the stand. I will say if she had taken out all the silly lust and ridiculous one liners the story could have been much much better. I just started Stalemate and so far it's fantastic.

I've read all of Iris Johansen's novels and thoroughly enjoyed many of them--this, however was not one of them. I found the plot hard to follow with too many references to her previous book. What mysterious event happened to Jock and Royd? Who is MacDuff--well if you haven't read the previous novel, you'll never know.

New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen is back bringing all her trademark suspense, romance, and surprising plot twists. With Killer Dreams she blends fear exacerbated by terrifying nightmares plus a psychotic killer on the loose and on the prowl.

Sophie Dunston is one of the nations best known sleep therapists. Her specialty? Night terrors, the fears that ravage her ten-year-old son Michael. Perhaps rightly so because Michael has witnessed a horror that most of us cannot even imagine. He saw his grandfather kill his grandmother with a single shot in the head and then try to kill him. This behavior, so unlike Sophie's father was due to REM-4, a chemical originally invented by Sophie who had no knowledge that it would turn normal people into zombie-like killers.

Now, after all the tragedy she has endured one of these killers is after her. She will do anything to protect Michael, even accepting the help of Matt Royd, a recovered REM-4 victim. It will come as no surprise to Johansen readers that at first Sophie detests Matt but soon has a change of heart.

The real question is how to stop the diabolical killer who is after Sophie for her research and her life.

There's plenty of action and tension galore as Sophie and Matt try to outwit one of the scariest characters in thrillerdom.

- Gail Cooke

This could have been a real thriller had I liked any of the characters or even cared what happened to them. The only likable character in this story is Michael, the protagonist's 10-year old son. The lead woman, Sophie, has little character and few morales, given that she is hounded for sex by her would-be knight in shining armor, and decides to give in to him because "it's only sex." From the beginning I wasn't sympathetic with her and by the end I was disgusted with her. Iris Johansen is capable of much better writing than this--just read her early Eve Duncan novels and see for yourself. I'll have to think about purchasing any further novels. I believe she's slipping into "what sells" kind of plots. And for a writer of her caliber, that's a shame.

This is the most poorly written book that I have read by the author. I picked it up because I have an interest in sleep disorders but I was dissapointed. The repetitive style becomes tiring. We know the principals are going to sleep together if only he would shut his mouth and stop whispering romantic nothings in her ear, i.e., "am I going to get lucky?".

This could have been a really great book but the author didn't come through. When reading one gets the impression that she just wanted to complete a book and many sentences were there only to make it the proper lenght. The plot was very contrived and the major points were repeated again and again as if to say "get it!".

I've read Johansen before and she can do better. Much better!

Sophie's son, Michael, suffers from night terrors. Two years earlier, he witnessed his grandfather shoot his grandmother and then turn the gun on him. Sophie, however, stepped in front of Michael and took the bullet, but it passed through her and hit him. Although Michael's injury was minor, Sophie took months to recover first from the physical injury and then the emotional trauma that followed in the wake of such a tragedy.

The nightmare that took her parents' lives was not a random thing, however. Sophie always knew that her dad suffered from night terrors and she wanted to find a way to help him. Sophie earned a doctorate in chemistry and another in medicine and went to work for a pharmaceutical company right out of college. Her desire to help her father stayed with her so she specialized in sleep disorders.

Sophie's great achievement was a breakthrough therapy that helped cure her patients of night terrors. Unfortunately for her, the owner of the pharmaceutical company she worked for, named Sanborne, had a more sinister plan for her work...by taking it a step further. He would use it to control the minds of his test subjects to do whatever he wanted them to do. Once Sophie's work was complete, she was of no further use to her Sanborne so he tried to get rid of her by using mind control on her father.

Two years later, Sophie has discovered much of Sanborne's treachery. She joins forces with Jock Gavin and Matt Royd who are former military men. While Jock and Royd were in the military, they were forced to undergo mind control therapy but managed to escape their captors. Now they dedicate their lives and resources to bringing down Sanborne and his partners.

Despite mediocre success with his test subjects, Sanborne and his partner plan to sell the formula for the mind-control therapy to foreign arms dealers, and Sophie and her team must race against time to stop them before it's too late.

The storyline is magnificent but the telling of it is second-rate. I thought it was brilliant that the backstory could be told through dialogue but there were quite a few things that were lacking in this story. The characters, for example, all seemed too one-dimensional with hardly any emotions to attribute to any of them. Narration was few and far between and I think that was the biggest problem. If a character was angry, he yelled. If he was melancholy, the dialogue revealed it. This is perfectly fine for a tale without a romantic line to it. However, since Sophie and Royd are supposed to end up together, a narration is at least necessary to establish a strong attraction between the two. This would've been such a great tale if only the writing were more than passable.