No. 36 - Velocity

by Dean Koontz

Started: November 9
Finished: November 14

Notes: Something like twenty years ago, I had aspirations to be a horror novelist. To some extent, I suppose I still do, but I tend to think of myself as more of a dark fantasy writer nowadays. Anyway, back then I read as much horror and dark thriller fiction as I could, and that included pretty much everything Dean Koontz had written, probably 20 or so books at the time ... I'm talking the late 80s and early 90s. Eventually, I tired of Koontz. He was a good writer, but his characters started to seem too familiar to me and most of his plots started to sound the same. So, I gave him up, even though I'd been a pretty big fan of his and was well read in his material. Now, it's been at least 15 years since I've read anything by him, and he seems to be a bigger author now than he was then. So, I thought I'd give him another shot and I'd try out one of his more recent novels. Here goes.

Mini review: Not as good as some of the earlier works of Koontz's I've read, but overall not too shabby. The plot is interesting, though it stretches the believability factor sometimes, and after the first hundred or so pages the pace is nice and brisk. The one real problem I had with the story was that I never cared all that much for the protagonist; I didn't hate the guy, and sometimes I even rooted for him, but mostly I just sort of felt ... "If the guy dies, if the guy doesn't die, so what?" The ending, the last 50 or so pages, were quite nice, Koontz at his best. Hope I'm not giving anything too much away here, but what I liked best about the ending was the sort of no-fuss attitude the protagonist had when it finally came down to dealing with the antagonist; there had been some introspection (though not tons) throughout this novel by the protagonist, but when he had to do what he had to do ... well, he just did it and got on with things. I liked that. It was a nice change of pace from overly-thoughtful protags who have to ponder their every little emotion, especially after they've gone through a rough time.