Customer Reviews

The Vision

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Yes, this book explains why I would never want to be psychic. Too much stress!! However, psychics make for great stories & good reading!

This book is about a woman who basically spends most of her time helping the police catch criminals using her psychic powers. It's not something she even really enjoys, it keeps her up at night & it's stressful on her marriage- however, she can't stop the visions. Especially the one, the one that seems to be trying to tell her something, the one leading her to evil...to someone she is close to.

This book is a quick read, only about 300 pages, which is small for Koontz. It goes by in a flash, it'll keep you guessing until the end. I'll admit- I had two guesses on who I thought the "bad guy" was, one was right, but the ending still surprised me.

In this slim novel, originally written in the late 1970s, many of the standard elements of Koontz's better work appear: psychic ability, a romantic element, gripping prose. However -- and maybe this is because I have read several other, recent novels -- I found this one predictable. The story revolves around psychic Mary Bergen's vision of several murders that seem to have familiar victims (although she can't nail down why the victims are familiar to her). She is also torn between loyalty to her brother, Alan, and her new husband, Max, who don't get along. The setting is the Christmas season, and this provides the right weather conditions -- rain and cold -- and the right contrast -- happy season v. grisly murders -- to keep the reader's interest to see what will happen next. Unfortunately -- at least for me -- I pretty much guessed 'whodunit' in the beginning, so although I doubted myself a couple of times (kudos to Koontz), I enjoyed the 'why' more than the 'who'. The end is gripping, and the fate of the core characters is up in the air. Good, but not his best.

This book completely took over my rainy afternoon and turned into a study in facinating mystery! The central character of this book is Mary Bergen, a sweet, sensitive, psychic. She endured a torture at the tender age of 6 that she can't remember. Through the physical and emotional trauma at that tender age, she developed psychic ability. She uses that psychic ability to help police solve homicide cases and find the killers.

With her during these endeavors is her devoted brother Alan, always at her side, pained with concern over her. Also there is her tough, but tender husband, Max. Max is depicted as a tough character with eyes of cold steel that only show tenderness when he is with Mary. Of course Alan and Max don't get along, each hating the other.

Soon a series of brutal murders begin to take place. Mary sees the crimes committed, can feel the pain of the young women who are murdered, but never manages to develop a vision of the killer's face. Soon, she knows, this killer is going to come after her. Can she solve this series of brutal crimes before she becomes the next victim?

This story is well written but short enough to read in a single day. Koontz crafts characters that you genuinely care about, and some fearsome, evil chracters as well. None are comic book, stereotype characters, which makes them all the more believable. The story is so well told that it'll draw you in and keep you held in it's grip until the brutal end.

I found this book to be fairly mediocure in the main, however, some parts (towards the end In particular) made it worthwhile reading. The story revolves around Mary Bergen, a clairvoyent who has a visions so terrifying she blocks them out before she can find out their true meaning. It is then assumed these visions could actually be of her own death. Throughout the book koontz leaves many clues to who this potential killer may be, many of them misleading. So basically It ends with you trying to figure out who the bad guy could possibly be. Although I was tricked into thinking it was the wrong guy the eventual conclusion is fairly obvious(that is unless you are stupid like me). I would certainly reccommend this book but it is one of Dean's earliest and personally I have enjoyed the books he has written over more recent years such as; Fear Nothing, Intensity and Strange Highways etc...

Spoiler alert at the end of review

don't waste your time. I can't believe I like Dean Koontz. If this was the first of his books I ever read I'd avoid him like the plague. Too graphic, too disgusting, and quite frankly I'm surprised he hasn't been torn apart by what he wrote here. We do not need such detailed scenes he has written. I enjoy good horror and suspense, but do NOT need to read such disturbing images, regardless if the author thinks it's necessary to paint the evil of this one character, it's absoutely unnecessary and disgusting.

I'm reading along, la de da, and then wham! Rape by and with children, and with animals, and scenes involving drinking menstural blood.

I wish I could take back the time I spent reading this book. These scenes, very graphic and detailed, come in the last 20 pages. Beware. They are not only disgusting, but very disturbing.

I just finished reading the book the vision and I would honestly have to say it is my all time favorite. The Mystery keeps you going and I can read for hours with this book! Dean Koontz always likes to write mystery books and is good at it, but I think he's got a winner. I recommend this book to anyone you has a thirst for mystery and suspense, I garuntee that you will be on the edge of your seat!

The Vision is more a mystery than horror novel. It's about a psychic woman named Mary who spends her time helping the police track down criminals. She was traumatized as a child (like so many Koontz characters tend to be) but has been repressing the memory of it from herself. She can remember being raped and beaten by the family gardener, who later hung himself in his jail cell, but she also recalls the sound of wings beating and she can't recall the source and what it had to do with the attack on her. Meanwhile a serial killer is on the loose, but she's unable to fix an image of him in her head for the police. She's never had so much trouble trying to identify a killer before this, and try as she might, she just can't call up a picture of him in her mind. She's having constant nightmares and is haunted by the mysterious sound of leathery wings that has haunted her since her atack. But now she senses that the sound of wings is connected to this serial killer.

Is her childhood attacker really dead? Is the killer possessed by his spirit? What is the source of the sound of wings, and how is it connected to her childhood attacker and the serial killer?

I was shocked at the identity of the killer, but I see that many people found it obvious, so now I'm feeling a bit slow. I didn't see it coming a mile away. The killer was absolutely disgusting, and what happened to Mary as a child is nauseating.

The Vision is not one of Koontz's best, but it was an enjoyable two day read. The same can be said about other Koontz books from the 70's, such as Shattered and The Face Of Fear. I feel that Koontz's best will always be Intensity and Watchers. I'm now moving on to my 23rd Dean Koontz-The Servants Of Twilight.

Mary Bergen makes her living as a writer, but she's best known as a psychic: a clairvoyant who only takes expense money when consulting in that capacity. Since her recent marriage to Max, who took over handling her financial affairs from Alan Tanner (her older brother), she seems to be doing much better; Max is forceful enough to insist that her expenses be paid as promised, and he's better at negotiating contracts than Alan was.

It's not surprising that the two brothers-in-law form one of those confrontational "brother" pairs often appearing in Koontz' writing. They're connected by their different emotional ties to Mary, but at the same time torn apart by conflict. Alan doubts that Max truly reformed from his hard-drinking, bar-fighting past for love of Mary, making no secret of his conviction that Max is interested primarily in Mary's money. Max, for his part, resents Alan's interference in his marriage.

Alan goes on holiday early in the story to nurse his wounded feelings over being displaced in Mary's life, leaving her with a warning to beware of Max. (Max has also taken over Alan's old role of coaxing Mary through her psychic experiences to produce useful details). But soon after Alan's departure, Mary's ESP takes a new and frightening turn, giving her unprompted visions of a serial killer whom she can't identify, whose victims - often killed with aspects of religious desecration, such as mutilated crucifixes - tend to resemble Mary herself.

Does the change mean that Mary will be one of the killer's victims, or do they indicate another connection?

Mary's powers seem to stem from some childhood trauma, whether the car crash that killed her father when she was nine (her preferred belief), or an earlier sexual assault she resists even thinking about. Despite the fact that the assailant apparently died many years ago, Max and a few friends believe there's a connection to the current killings and begin trying to uncover the truth about what happened to Mary so long ago, as well as the current serial killings.

Rather cleverly plotted as a mystery, as clues are slipped in regarding the killer's identity and motivations with a lot of very interesting distractions added to the mix. Why does Mary keep having the mental image of leathery wings associated with the childhood assault? How can a murder weapon from a previous investigation have surfaced in a more recent killing? Why do poltergeist phenomena seem to occur randomly around Mary during the investigation into her past and the killer's present?

Compressed timeframe: starting a few days before Christmas, leading up to a climactic confrontation on Christmas day.

Drive-in totals:

- Multiple dead bodies, including rapes (one "on camera")

- Flashbacks to a very brutal sexual assault on a six-year-old girl. This one will make you queasy.

- Poltergeist fits whenever the truth is in danger of exposure, whether through therapy or through visions of the killer

THE VISION is a great book about a clairvoyant and her powers to see a serial killer. The killer knows she can see him, and uses that to his advantage - keeping her just out of range, but close enough to feel responsible for not stopping the killing of his next victim. He knows that she's watching him, he knows what she's thinking and doing, but more importantly, he knows that she's hot on his trail. She can see the murder weapon - a large knife with a gleaming steel blade, but why can't she see his face? She's so close, but still far away. Until the very end, you'll be on the edge of your seat!

THE VISION is a good book with glimpses of the unknown - Koontz shows us how a person who sees into the future can use her powers for good, and how those powers can be used against her in return.

I enjoyed THE VISION but do have to admit that it was predictable for me. That could be because I'm an avid mystery reader (ok avid reader of many genres) and Koontz wrote the standard mystery type plot of giving clues to the identity of the bad guy, cover up those details by trying to confuse the issue, and then revealing the bad guy at the end. Even with my figuring out the villain, it was still a very enjoyable book!

Definitely recommended reading!

I thought The Vision was one of Koontz better books. It was suspenseful and kept me reading until the very end. I do believe that Koontz needs to be more original in his stories. The seem to just about always be set it the same place. I didn't like the bat rape scene in this book. What kind of thing is that to write about anyway. I hope I didn't give to much about the book away.