[Zsinj16]

My Aunt has come over this week from Texas to visit, and yesterday she said she was reading a novel that she couldn't put down. I asked her what it was and she said it was a novel by Dean Koontz titled "In the Corner of His Eye" or something like that.
Now my question is, what kind of author is Dean Koontz? From what I've seen about him, he seems to me to be like an author that writes a mixture of sci-fi, horror, and a bit of mystery. So, what kind of an author is he, and what are the opinions of the people on this board regarding him?

[Rob B]

Dean Koontz is most closely associated with Horror, but often his books are a mix of suspense, some horror and some science fiction.

Anyway, I read a lot of his books when I was in Middle School & High School and enjoyed them. Some were very good
Twilight Eyes, Watchers, The Bad Place

However, as I read more of his books, and more in general, I got really tired of his books since they become indistinguishable from each other.

The basic plot of most of his books follows:
Lone man/woman goes through some ordeal meets up with other loner of opposite sex and they go up against mysterious bad guy whose mysticism is actually some technological advancement. One of the two loners above almost always has some kind of dog.

He is one of the best selling novelists on the planet.

[AuntiePam]

Save your money. And your time. I wish I could like Koontz -- there's enough of his stuff to keep me busy for months. I'm thinking maybe he just hasn't written his best stuff yet.

[Corwwyn]

Most of Koontz's stuff is or has horror and I wouldn't recommend it unless you like that sort of thing.

However, little know gem in the pool is a great little novel titled Warlock.

This one is firmly settled in my "must re-read" SF/F bookshelf.

I would rate Warlock his best work by far (and it's not even a fat book).

The Haunted Earth is also intereting, but not as good.

[Zsinj16]

Well, I really enjoy horror, so I would probably love Dean Koontz!!

[Jimmy]

I've read only "Lightning" - it was more thriller mixed with science-fiction than horror. It wasn't anything new, or exepctional, but fine one-time reading.

[Janos]

I think Koontz has some really good ideas for stories but like Rob B said, they really become the same story and hard to distinguish.

For example, Koontz did his research and found out that you could illegally modifiy a sub-automatic Uzi to fully automatic.

So, every single time a character uses and Uzi, Koontz writes some passage about the gun like: "it was illegally modified to be a fully auotmatic weapon." It's not so bad until you read it 20 times. Then it's just annoying.

And his bad guys are really cookie cutter versions of each other. Pick a Koontz book, I'll bet the bad guy has absolutely no respect for human life. They kill people on whim and never display any guilt or hesitation - they're basically kind of insane. And for some reason, they're pissed off at the hero/heroine. It really is the same character.

I think I stopped reading Koontz when I went to the bookstore and bought a couple of his books, only to realize that I already owned a few of them and had no idea that I'd read them before. That's when I really realized that if I looked all of his books on my shelf, I had a really hard time picking out which stories were which.

But like I said, even though his stories start to run together, he still comes up with some pretty interesting plots. From Psychic powers, to Angels and Demons, to your basic bad guy chasing good guy, there's lots of variety. Some of the books kinda suck, some are pretty good. I recommend reading Koontz until you just get tired of them.

I recently was working with someone who was reading a recent Koontz book, Life Expectency. I browsed the first chapter to see if it looked interesting. The main character kind of seemed like a smart ass and it looked a little more humourous than some of his others so I picked it up. I really don't know anything about it, but I figure, why not try. :D

Lightning, Twilight Eyes, and Watchers are my three favorites of his.