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Breathless by Dean Koontz


ian

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"In the Colorado mountains something miraculus comes into the life of Grady Adams, a strong, gentle man whose past experiences have alienated him from the modern world and driven him to live in the wilds. When he sees it, he knows that one of Nature's great mysteries has been revealed to him."

 

OK, let me be clear - I've read a lot of Dean Koontz' book, and I've always been happy with them. Yes, I will admit that his newer stuff isn't as good as his earlier work, and they have got a bit formulaic. Nevertheless, I've always enjoyed his charactors, both good and bad, as they are generally witty and the writing style is fast page-turning stuff.

 

Something went wrong with this book however. His recent books have all had a moral message. I don't have a problem with that - Mr Koontz is a fellow Catholic, so our philosophies largly agree, but he seems to have written this book AS a moral message, with the story taking a (very) backseat.

 

But the biggest fault with this is that it takes nearly three-quarters of the book to get to the point, after which he takes just a couple of chapters to end the story. Minor charactors, that you spend most of the book wondering what point they have to the major storyline, then come in and out of that storyline in the matter of a few lines. I don't know, but it reads like it should have been a much longer book, that has been severly edited down. Maybe the publishing deadline ran out?

 

It won't stop me reading any more of his stuff, but I will be wary next time.

 

Disappointing.

 

Ian

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I very much agree with you Ian; this was my first Koontz and I was disappointed. I felt most of the book was just an introduction and the resolution was very brief and I didn't really get the moral point. Most of the characters on the periphery were of some interest but too briefly involved. A lost opportunity I think.

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A pity it's your first book by him, but don't let it put you off. Get "Odd Thomas" which is much more representative.

 

Ian

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No, I was still thinking of Dean Koontz. I googled it - it was Life Expectancy.

 

I also agree that Lightning was an excellent story

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yeah. As a teenager I read everything he wrote and bought each new book as soon as it was released. Then I went completely off his stuff for ages, only returning a few years ago. I love the Odd Thomas books, though the last one was pretty dull - nothing really happened, did it? - and I enjoyed The Taking and The Face. But everything else he's released lately has just been the same stuff over and over and over. We get it, you love golden retrievers, you love Tiffany lamps, bougainvilleas, guns, impatiens, architecture, petunias, etc etc etc. The stuff he's writing now is in complete defiance of what less experienced writers are told: don't use the same stuff in every story. He's like Barbara Cartland: change the names, maybe the location, and there's your next story. They all sound great when you read the blurb but all I get from his work now is a feeling of blah.

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I won this book in a competition recently, b ut the synopsis doesn't really grab me.

 

I find Dean Koontz a bit hit and miss. I thought The Face and Life Expectancy were terrific, but then I read The Eyes of Darkness (an earlier one of his) and thought it was awful. I guess I'll get round to reading Breathless at some point, but I'm not going to prioritise it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've followed his career for a while, and it seems that his beliefs are overpowering his instinct as to what makes a good story. Being hit over the head with A Very Important Message is really annoying, and the worst instance (by far) has to be the not-really-an-alien-invasion nonsense (in the truest sense, in that it makes no sense whatsoever) of The Taking. I really do like it when he strips down the essence of the serial killer tropes, but recently he has disappointed with a string of books that serve to spread a message rather than entertain.

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