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164 of 188 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely Relentless, June 10, 2009
This review is from: Relentless: A Novel (Hardcover)
Koontz's newest book reminds me of his early stuff. After the last few books, I was feeling really tepid toward Koontz. His writing used to be predictable- always a thriller with a twist and great characterization. His more recent work has tasted a bit flat to me- almost as if he was trying to be contemplative and instead coming off sophomoric. Earlier books were very entertaining and always interesting, not necessarily fantastic literature but very adroit at entertaining the reader and hard to put down.
When I first started reading "Relentless", I thought, "Here we go again." We are introduced to the sweet but goofy Cubby who, coincidentally, is a writer. His wife, Penny, is the tough and capable daughter of survivalists and author of children's books featuring a rabbit with big ears. They, of course, have a child who is, at the tender age of six, a genius of the highest degree and currently working on a project he is unable to even begin to explain to his dad. They have a very lovable dog who also seems to be very special.
Cubby and family are plunged into a nightmare when the infamous Shearman Waxx, reclusive book critic, reviews Cubby's recently released book and skewers it. Despite Penny's warnings to "let it go", Cubby just can't. When he finds out that the reviewer frequents a restaurant where he and his family dine, he goes to lunch hoping to check the guy out. A brief encounter in the restaurant bathroom soon has Cubby wishing he'd followed his wife's advice.
Catastrophe ensues and Cubby and his litttle family are soon on the run from absolute evil of mythical proportions that seems to have practically supernatural resources.
Waxx makes for quite the sinister boogeyman and despite my initial misgivings, Cubby, his wife and kid and the group of eccentric family and friends that aid their flight and search for answers in a race to save their lives, turn out to be quite endearing. They have no idea what's coming for them and they must keep on the move and their wits about them to avoid, not just death- but a terrible one.
Koontz injects a hefty dose of what appears to be his light-up-the-darkness philosophy into the book. Cubby, despite his goofiness and mechanical ineptitude, has a dark secret in his past that makes his comedic and wonder-filled contribution to the literary world all the more amazing given what he has overcome.
An easy read- the time will fly by(read this straight through). Once past the initial chapters, the thriller aspect grabbed me and held me. Koontz likes to leave his reader hanging at the end of the chapter- something major just happened but nope, you're not going to find out until you readd the next chapter. So, if you aren't going to read it straight through, I imagine it would be fun to jump back into it with a new chapter.
Koontz does a good job developing his characters which is ultimately very necessary to suspend disbelief because some very unbelievable things take place in this book and even some of the characters are a tad far-fetched. I so enjoyed his characters, though, that I willed them into the realm of possibly existing in my mind.
If you are a fan of the Koontz thrillers(Lightning, Watchers, Phantoms) you will enjoy this. If you are new to Koontz, I highly recommend those titles I've mentioned. This book has some good suspense(a la Robert Ludlum) and a twist of the unexpected(Stephen King lite). The book does contain several scenes that describe graphic murder scenes which are a bit disturbing. The message of the book, overall, however, is a very positive one(Koontz does get a little heavy-handed with preaching his world view but it does not detract from the overall storyline).
Koontz makes no small show of telling us that we should hang on to our senses of humor, love and moments of grace despite the murder, mayhem and madness of the world and thus we keep the darkness at bay and good wins out over evil.
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105 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What the Heck Has Happened to Dean Koontz?, July 22, 2009
This review is from: Relentless: A Novel (Hardcover)
Dean Koontz has changed, and not for the better.
OK, I'm a Koontz fan from way back. I've read all of the Koontz novels, including most of the Brian Coffey, Leigh Nichols, and Owen West stuff. I've re-read my favorites (Watchers, Whispers, Lightning, Strangers, The Bad Place) over and over. Lately, though....
Let's start at the beginning. Koontz's characters used to be normal people, for the most part. Often they were wealthy, which allowed the story to progress outside of a 9-to-5 job. But they were still ordinary. In Watchers, the protagonists are a retired real estate agent and a terminally shy hermit. In Whispers, they are both cops. In Phantoms, she's a doctor and he's the county sheriff who responds to her distress call. In Strangers there is a couple who own a motel, the couple who run the attached restaurant, a two-bit author and college professor, a doctor, a cocktail waitress, and a priest. In The Bad Place, they run a detective agency. These are ordinary people.
Recently, Koontz's characters have been larger than life. Whether it was Odd Thomas and his necromancy or the only one of many to walk away from a military rescue mission in The Husband, his characters are superlative. In making them so, Koontz renders them boring and two-dimensional.
In the beginning, Relentless looks like a return to the earlier characters of depth, but sorry, they aren't. The story focuses on a family. The family consists of a fabulously successful author, his fabulously successful children's book author wife, a child of startling genius, and a dog with apparently odd powers. Here's a clue, Dean. While we aren't ancient Greeks, and it's rare that a story directly involves the will of the gods, having a character who invents amazing devices that produce unexplainable phenomena is the modern version of Deus ex machina. And it's just as lame in its modern form.
Everyone in this book is more suited to a comic book than a novel. The villains are extra villain-y. The good guys are extra good. And everyone has a little quirk blown up to all proportions. The wife's parents can't be ordinary people. They are survivalist demolition experts who spend most of their life in an underground bunker living without power tools because after the fall of humanity, there won't be electrical power. (So you should suffer now? Use power tools as long as you can and stock hand tools if necessary.)
Second, if you read Your Heart Belongs to Me, or if you read some of the criticism of it, you will know that Koontz's last book wasn't well received. So when the antagonist in this book is a book critic who gives our "hero" a terrible review, it comes across as a passive-aggressive knock to the author's critics. "The people who say my last book was terrible aren't honestly expressing displeasure. They're part of a vast, worldwide conspiracy to corrupt humanity by removing beauty and sources of awe." Puh-lease!
Third, this isn't the first vast-enormous-evil-conspiracy book Koontz has written, and it's getting old. Most evil in the real world is perpetrated by individuals. And it's really disturbing that someone who has had so many authority-as-heroes in his earlier books (the protagonists in Whispers, the sheriff and most of the deputies in Phantoms, the cop and NSA agent in Watchers) that it's sort of disturbing that he can say a whole town council and the police agency for the area are entirely corrupted without expressing some horror over it.
Finally, Koontz seems to have lost the ability to change tone between books. There are spots, especially in the description of the restaurant, when Koontz seems to be narrating in Odd Thomas's voice. I don't particularly like the Odd Thomas series, so it's very apparent. It's another sign that Koontz is writing too fast and relying on his expertise as a writer rather than paying attention to his craft.
All in all, I was very disappointed. I notice that Koontz has two other books due out this year. I wonder if he simply trying to do too much and not taking the time to review his work, create believable characters, and flesh out his plots.
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36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Worst Koontz Yet, August 25, 2009
This review is from: Relentless: A Novel (Hardcover)
Like many of the other readers who have reviewed the book, I also had high hopes for the latest Dean Koontz book. I picked up the audio version at the library in preparation for a long vacation drive, only to have my high hopes wither CD by CD. My advice is to avoid this book and if you do feel compelled to patronize Mr. Koontz, I would suggest the written version from the library.
Top 5 Reasons to avoid this book:
5) For a thriller, there was no suspense
4) The characters are ridiculously unbelievable (especially the dialog)
3) The prose is so verbose you want to pull your hair out
2) Cubby's character is so annoyingly incompetent you'd prefer he's knocked off at the beginning
1) Koontz must have got tired of the book because he phones in the ending
After this, it will be a while before I get excited by another new Dean Koontz and thanks be to the public library.
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