BREATHLESS is fairly typical Dean Koontz: When you add the good moments to the bleh ones and arrive at a total, it doesn’t equal the sum of the parts. That may sound like an odd judgment on the novels of one of the biggest bestselling authors in the world, but my theory is that the giants in any genre don’t become popular because they’re great, but because they can take the major clichés and conventions of whatever type of book they write and cook up a goulash that is palatable for readers who don’t ordinarily dine on such fare.
Koontz is such a writer. So are Stephen King, Louis L’Amour, J.K. Rowling and Robert B. Parker. I have never known — ever — a hardcore horror fan who thought Koontz was scary.
Last time I looked, he had distanced himself from horror, which is all to his credit, since that isn’t what he writes. BREATHLESS is science-fiction lite with strong doses of suspense. I can’t argue with the statement that he is a master of the suspenseful chapter. There are sections in this novel I zipped through as quickly as I could turn the pages.
But let’s back up a little. In the beginning, Grady Adams and his dog, Merlin, are walking along a Colorado mountain path when they see two peculiar-looking animals with long white fur and large eyes. Adams has never seen anything like them before, and even Merlin is fascinated. When the dog runs after the creatures, they greet him in play as if they had no concept of fear. The animals follow man and dog home, move in with them, and quickly learn how to manipulate door locks and make sandwiches.
Grady phones his veterinarian friend, Cammy Rivers, and asks her to stop by. When she does, she’s just as bamboozled as he is.
The book follows the adventures of Grady, Cammy and these strange visitors for a few days. The creatures appear to learn human ways at an accelerated pace. The only suspense in their story comes from not knowing what they are: freaks, mutations, biotechnical experiments escaped from a lab, even aliens.
The more traditional suspense story comes in a subplot about Henry Rouvroy, a Washington insider who has become convinced that The End Is Near and has come to the mountains to ride out the coming apocalypse. He murders his twin brother and his sister-in-law, and commandeers their house. His plan is to kidnap young women to be locked in the potato cellar and used as sex slaves.
“Before he killed the women he intended to keep in the potato cellar, he would most likely bite them, as part of his play, but he had no intention of eating them. That was so twentieth-century Hollywood, and Henry had as much contempt for clichés as he had for people who ate fast food, people who wore off-the-rack suits, people who believed in things, and people in general.”
Okay, that’s a good paragraph. Very good.
But Henry develops a real problem: Someone or something is loose in the house, whispering his name, opening and closing outside doors at will, and leaving bloody handprints on the walls. He doesn’t know about the strange creatures at Grady’s house, but we do and we can’t help but wonder if there are others at large that might be as dangerous as Grady’s are friendly. There’s a hint of a GREMLINS vibe going here.
BREATHLESS is a fast read and if the destination is a letdown, the journey is fun. Surely, by this time, you know whether or not you’re a Koontz fan. If you’re not, don’t bother with this one. If you are, nothing I can say is going to keep you away. —Doug Bentin
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BROTHER ODD by Dean Koontz
• THE DARKEST EVENING OF THE YEAR by Dean Koontz
• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: BOOK ONE – PRODIGAL SON by Dean Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson
• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: BOOK TWO – CITY OF NIGHT by Dean Koontz and Ed Gorman
• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: BOOK THREE — DEAD AND ALIVE by Dean Koontz
• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: PRODIGAL SON — VOLUME ONE by Dean Koontz, Chuck Dixon and Brett Booth
• DEMON SEED by Dean Koontz
• THE FACE OF FEAR by Dean Koontz
• FOREVER ODD by Dean Koontz
• THE GOOD GUY by Dean Koontz
• THE HUSBAND by Dean Koontz
• IN ODD WE TRUST by Dean Koontz and Queenie Chan
• ODD HOURS by Dean Koontz
• ODD THOMAS by Dean Koontz
• VELOCITY by Dean Koontz
• YOUR HEART BELONGS TO ME by Dean Koontz
Related posts:
- Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son — Volume One
- The Darkest Evening of the Year
- The Husband
- In Odd We Trust
- Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Book One – Prodigal Son
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I lost interest in Koontz about ten years ago when he started letting his political philosophy get in the way of his plots, but back in the late 70s and early 80s (his strongest period) he wrote some pretty creepy stuff. If you haven’t read them, check out “Phantoms” and “Whispers” (my own two favorites). Almost anything from that period is pretty good. And if you have even the slightest affinity for dogs, “Watchers” is an absolute must.
Koontz has this uncanny ability to introduce plot threads that sound utterly silly when one talks about them, such as here (“His plan is to kidnap young women to be locked in the potato cellar and used as sex slaves,” “The animals follow man and dog home, move in with them, and quickly learn how to manipulate door locks and make sandwiches”), yet make perfect sense when you read them.
Okay, maybe not “perfect,” but believable enough.
Stay away from anyone who has a potato cellar. Nothing good has ever happened in a potato cellar.
God, what a snobby review. Guess I’m one of the dumb readers out there who enjoys the ghoulash that these popular writers dish out. Many thanks to enlightened souls like Doug Bentin for setting me straight.
Roddy, you’re welcome. Anything I can do to help . . . . dgb