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SlimMackenzie View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote SlimMackenzie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July/22/2009 at 7:05am
Yeah, the way WAXX died was surprising. I thought he would go out in some horrific way.
The other night I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.
-Rodney Dangerfield
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breezit View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote breezit Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July/28/2009 at 3:35pm
I read it, and thought it was just okay. Much better paced than Koontz's last few books. Lots of funny dialogue, especialy about the book industry.   

But in the end, this book reminded me too much of THE GOOD GUY -- a lot of familiar characters dealing with familiar situations that Koontz has written about better in other novels. I also found the ending disappointing, a pretty common problem with Koontz's more recent work.

This is probably a 6.5/10.
"In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite what it seems.” Dean Koontz

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FinalExam View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote FinalExam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August/26/2009 at 1:12pm
This book had potential but Koontz totally botched it. The section where he goes to his "so eccentric they can't be anything but fictional characters" in-laws and their boobytrapped hallway made me think Indiana Jones would come running through with a giant boulder chasing him, that stopped me dead in my tracks just when I was getting into the story. Then the story picked up again only to have one of the dumbest most unsatisfying endings ever. I am so f*#king sick of Koontz and his anti-climactic endings. It is refreshing on occassion to have a sudden abrupt ending that isn't dragged out, but all Kootnz does these days is build and bulid and build and then totally throw away the climax in a quick two pages. He gives us no real information about this "agency", and the dialogy of ZuZu is so ridiculously cheesy that I thought she should have a handlebar mustache and twirl it. And it's over just like that, after all that great building up to the conclusion, he just sort of discards it. It feels like he doesn't know how to close a book anymore and just tries to get it over with so he can move on to the next thing. And the part where he reveals that someone is going to get shot and die and life "will never be the same"...King uses that trick a lot, and don't kill me King-haters, but when king uses it he doesn't cheat you, he goes for the balls. As soon as Koontz used it, I knew it would be a cheat, and the person would die and come back. Then the cheat he uses is f#*king borrowed from Seize the Night for Christ's sake. koontz has a lot of older books I adore and I will always love him for those and gladly discuss them, but I think I'm through with him as far as new releases.
We are not strangers to ourselves, we only try to be. --Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
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withpatience200 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote withpatience200 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August/28/2009 at 9:12pm
So I opened this book, read about 4 pages, breathed a sigh of relief, and thought to myself Thank god he finally wrote a funny, fast paced, old style book again. I found great humor in this story. I was stuck to my seat reading it.
Then around the last 3rd of the story I got pretty nervous I actually put the book down, and read a Terry Goodkind book. I can not remember exactly what it was that stopped me from finishing it right away. I just know that I could see that things were getting sloppy. I think it was around the time they left her parents. Well after finishing Goodkinds book, I went back and read the rest of Relentless and I just can not believe that he would do this. I feel kind of the way you feel when a great book (like Half Blood Prince) is made into a major motion picture, and then ruined.   Like some idiot in editing decided that all of the important stuff that makes the story great is left out just so lazy people who do not want to think deep, or strive to understand struggle will enjoy the story.
I have been wondering if some publishing company told DK to lighten the mood, or dumb things down, or maybe he is just trying to write a book that some dumb moviemaker will take a look at and see it as a major motion picture. This had that kind of only looking at the surface kind of feel that most movies have now.
I wish he would work strictly on Odd and Snowman, Get them out of the way, and then go ahead and change his genre all together. Start writing Christian fiction, or something that interests him more than this genre seems to right now.
Though I have not read Frank 3 yet. So we will see.
BTW you can tell more and more that he has never had a child. What are the statistics for children being super genius. Sometime I would like to see an author put a kid in a story and have the kid be a stubborn, in the way, make situations more difficult to survive, normal kid. It would impress me just a bit more than kids who talk like adults and are way smarter than its parents.
With luck my patience will never run out before I do
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote FinalExam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: August/29/2009 at 2:36am
Yes, I agree about the children thing, if you judge fiction, every other child is a genius.

It seems almost to me that Koontz gets all caught up in having these people chased and tormented by some nefarious group, but he doesn't give any thought as to what this group is or WHY they are chasing the main characters. Then he gets to the end, realizes he has to throw some explanation in, but in order to cover up that he didn't really plan that, he just speeds through it.
We are not strangers to ourselves, we only try to be. --Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
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