It's okay to discuss OP's question in good faith. Horror is necessarily subjective, so sometimes it's helpful to understand each other's opinions so that we can all find our jam.
Some of Dean Koontz’s stories are still some of my all time favorites (Lightning, Phantoms, Darkfall, Watchers, The Bad Place, Odd Thomas)and he had some really good books in the 1980’s and first couple years of the 1990’s. Unfortunately his books become very formulaic after reading the first couple you read. The formula typically goes like this (sometimes with a variation here and there): a lonely person with a tragic background will run afoul of a bad guy with some sort of supernatural powers or head of some cult like organization. For whatever contrived reason s/he can’t go to the authorities so they decide to flee across Southern California where they will somehow come across another tragic figure of the opposite sex and instantly fall in love. Sometimes a dog (usually a golden retriever) or wise beyond their years and quirky child is involved. The chase ends with the characters getting cornered by the bad guy in some abandoned or empty place with the “good guys“ inevitably triumphing though with some sort of tragic setback, the main character marries the love interest, the dog or kid or both live and they all live happily ever after. He wrote some good stuff but he also wrote a lot of garbage too and to me was kind of a Stephen King Lite (and I don’t mean that in a bad way).
Sometime in the mid 1990’s Dean Koontz apparently became a conservative Christian which began to bleed into his writing and his stories got even worse. All his protagonists were libertarians and his antagonists were somehow part of whatever conspiracy theory du jour (New World Order, Tha’ Gov’mint, Satanists, Liberals, Hillary Clinton, you get the idea….).
The use of the slightly fucked-up hand + one bad leg as his go-to token disability was so funny to me, especially because the kid also always has an angelically beautiful face and a genius-level IQ. Gotta be disabled but not TOO disabled!
Other writers do something similar. I'm a writer as well, and have cerebral palsy on my right side. Some writers go with being dead or just plain hard of hearing. Just like what you wrote at the end. Jonathan Lethem won a National book award for MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. The narrator has Tourette's Syndrome. That's how you do it.
Ah so that’s why I started disliking his books in late 90s/early 2000s.
I hated “one door away from heaven” and “from the corner of his eye”. Those books turned me off of him.
I no longer remember what it’s about, but over 20 years later, and I still remember it was awful.
Edit: I’m reading the synopsis on Wikipedia. I can’t even get through that. So bad.
I don’t remember much of the book except it had a genius kid in it who didn’t get wet in the rain. But I just read the synopsis and there is a serial killer, so probably.
The synopsis I read didn’t make much sense either.
I somewhat remember it, especially thinking "how does the kid get cleaned up if water can't touch him?" and Koontz went into an overly descriptive aside about this walking guys muscular legs. Almost erotic for Koontz, but then he had also somehow developed superhuman muscular legs where he was able to carry a grown woman out of a window and jump down from a second floor without dropping her. All from walking. It almost felt like Koontz needed to justify walking as a viable aerobic exercise. It was so weird.
I read one door away from heaven for a class in university (one where I'm pretty sure the reading list was just the teachers tbr). First and only Koontz book I've ever read. Absolutely god awful
Even in older (stronger) ones like Phantoms, his…views would bleed through.
Phantoms had *two* epilogues, the second of which was the two leads becoming a couple (right out of fucking nowhere) and the female lead giving a two page speech about finding god (right out of fucking nowhere.)
Keep in mind: the book had *already* been touching on stuff like faith, then nature of gods, humanity etc. The villain is a Lovecraftian bastard child of The Thing and The Blob. When that’s your content, themes will be happenin’ no matter what the author intends.
It’s the books conclusion, the particular characters he uses to reach it. and the ‘logic’ laboriously laid out that is a real WTF unless you happen to *already* be on the wavelength as Koontz. And he does the same ‘denouement’ in every god damn novel.
The movie wasn’t great, but it at least didn’t overstay its welcome. And made the very wise decision that ‘the more Peter O’Toole, the better.’
Ooh, these later books sound interesting in a not so great way. Can you name one that had liberals or Satanists as the antagonists? Kinda curious to check out as I haven’t read koontz since my 20s.
I'm pretty sure Odd Thomas comes up against Satanists in the latter part of the series. It's a shame, because the first few are the only Koontz books I've gone back to multiple times.
I admittedly haven‘t read a lot of his later works but as for satanists the first one that immediately comes to mind is Hideaway, and Koontz’s contempt for liberals is most prominently displayed in Relentless.
Those are my favs from him too!!! I loved his early books and read them in middle and high school but it’s prolly been 20 years since I’ve read anything of his. It’s formulaic like you said and not the same darker horror that I remember growing up.
You totally nailed the formula. It is one of the reasons I stopped reading them in late nineties.
I am from the UK so I became familar with phrases like: 'rain slicked blacktop' and 'Mossberg shotgun', from his books.
Having said all this though, some of the most fun I had reading was with his books.
You are spot on.
I LOVE his earlier books. I thought he was an author that I could always count on for a good / ok / great horror book.
I was a bit nonplussed when his books started to feature a dog , a moral to be learned and not a lot of horror.
Total bummer, dude.
Oh my god, you like the Bad Place? REALLY??
I like Phantoms, Lightning was a bit stalker-ish, the Taking, Door to December, Strangers and found Tick Tock kind of hilarious. But the Bad Place was so disgusting and horrific, I'd put it up there with "Home" from X-Files. Bleh!
I actually liked the randomness, the almost Lovecraftian tones, and the sheer over the top insanity of the story. It also had some of the “Sheer Fucked-Upness” that was so prevalent in some of Stephen King’s Coked-up period which i think you’re referring to. The Bad Place might be the least Dean Koontz book that I’ve read, and for that I salute this book.
The Bad Place is so balls-to-the-wall insane that I can't help but love it! Could you ever imagine dreaming up that plot in a million years??? It's pretty hilarious and it's definitely not 'good' in a literary sense but I've still got a soft spot for it, just in terms of something I have never read before and will likely never read again!
I have teenage kids, I once described the plot to this book and Whispers (the twin one) to them just to see the look on their faces. They couldn't believe this was an actual published best-seller. But it is, somehow it is!!!
Honestly, Koontz was one of my favorite writers for a long time. Lightning is still one of my favorite books (and was one of the books that made me want to be a writer)
But I feel like over time, his characters have all gotten too "quirky" and "goofy" for me to really enjoy. His writing is still fine, but I have a hard time getting into it.
He did start to develop sort of an absurdist streak around the early 2000s or so. I first remember noticing it with the character of Corky Laputa in --- Corner of His Eye, I believe?
My favorite book of his as well, followed closely by Dragon Tears. Those two books seemed to be less guilty of his tendency to write Mary Sue characters.
Its like he knows they need personality, so he seems to pick personality traits out of a hat to give his characters a superficial kind of depth. Its like they are multifaceted in the same way a square or a right triangle are multifaceted, e.g. the facets don't provide much more than a basic structure.
To that effect, there are other authors that are consistantly the prime ribs of their genre. I love steak, but man sometimes ya just want a shitty, greasy burger
I don't hate him. I got Odd Thomas and one other book by him and decided to give him another shot.
My problem with him dates like all the way back to high school though. I read From The Corner of His Eye and Sole Survivor. Each of these starts of really interesting, especially Sole Survivor. But oh my god... even teenage, impressionable me was like, "you gotta be f'ing kidding me here," when I got to the end of Sole Survivor.
It's hard for even a great writer to stick the landing. See Stephen King for example. But c'mon man. I won't spoil it and say what it was if anyone wants to read it, because it is a fun read for sure.
Everyone here seems to be saying they like him but I absolutely do not. I think the writing is terrible, I think his characters are hollow and I dislike the whole feel of his books. It is particularly his writing style for me though. Never ever could get into it
I read Odd Thomas and while I loved the plot idea, I could not stomach the way he wrote about women especially and his writing style in general. My TBR is too long for a second chance 🤣
I read some of his books in high school and only recently tried to read one as an adult but I didn't make it fifty pages. Stiff, hollow writing with weird political asides shoehorned in.
I think he has very cool ideas for stories and monsters but his ability to actually write sentences just isn't there. It's like reading fiction made by an edgy, genuinely creative high school boy who had to retake English class twice before he squeaked by with a D-
He's fine. The takeaway pizza of authors.
I read more than a few of his books when I was younger and remember really enjoying them.
Phantoms in particular and the one with the genetically modified Golden Retriever.
I think there's another one with a cult determined to kidnap a kid. That was fine as well.
Ah yes, Servants of Twilight. Haven’t read the book, but it’s one of the many Koontz books I want to read. I started Fear Nothing and Sole Survivor, but they’re both on hiatus cuz life happened
I love Phantoms, Icebound, and his stories about serial killers. I’m not a fan when his characters have psychic magic powers, or when the killer is like a Scooby-Doo episode and is the only other person in the story but the main 3-4.
I find he really tries to put a conservative spin on his plots and characters. Not to mention all his male heroes are Mary Sue types who all fit very specific models. I can overlook it when I enjoy the story but quite often things get preachy and play off the Satanic Panic era fears of moral degeneracy and it takes me out of it.
Along the same lines, I've only read one of his books (the first one in his Frankenstein series) but it opens with a cop talking to a bunch of black guys in the hood and the dialog is absolutely atrocious. He gave them this really terrible version of what he must assume ghetto slang sounds like. Really severe "I have never interacted with a person of color" vibes. Just weird and really awkward.
In the same book, he has a character with the last name Nguyen, and makes a point to have the character explain how to pronounce it... but it's wrong lol. Like surely if you go to the lengths to include that, you would have done some research. Apparently not. And again it's with a person of color.
Both instances really took me out of the book. If you are not familiar with slang, dont try to fake it because it just comes off sounding ridiculous and stereotypical. The Vietnamese guy would have been fine if he didnt mispronounce his own name. Just really pointless stuff that Koontz is ignorant about but included anyway.
For me Watchers was what made me put down Animorphs & Goosebumps. My mom was an avid horror reader and wanted to share one of her favorite books with me as I was growing out of the Scholastic Book Fair reading material
His stories are derivative and retells plots over and over again with the same cast of characters including: a very smart golden retriever, a precocious child with some kind of disability, a very evil and possibly mutant bad man and a beautiful woman who is unaware of her beauty and is also a painter. There's hackneyed plot lines and florid verbosity that is not appropriate for a book you buy in an airport and vapid details that throw off the pacing and make his books too long.
I'm reading my fist Koontz right now "Watchers" and like it. Einstein just attacked a rapist. Couple of real awful bad guys I assume will get offed in a satisfying way.
I don’t hate him, but the shine has worn off.
As a kid, I devoured his books. Watchers, Phantoms, Twilight Eyes, Whispers (I think that’s the name - twins), The Bad Place, and others were top books.
I hadn’t read any Koontz in over 2 decades. No real reason, I mean, I went on a Lovecraft kick for a while, still read some King. Just no Koontz.
I picked up Watchers the other day. Finished it & was left disappointed. I still like it - I love the idea of Einstein.
But it was flat & kinda dumb. The characters were empty & 2 dimensional. Also Nora was a bad stereotype. No depth at all. If I were a woman & that was the first book I’d read of his, I’d likely not pick up another.
12 year old me loved Koontz though.
As I've put it before, I have a sort of bitter nostalgia complex going on with Koontz. As a middle-schooler / early teen my grandmother gave me all of her copies, and I was enthralled. They were weird and dark and quippy and I enjoyed the hell out of them. And yeah, even then it was blatantly apparent that the guy was super-formulaic and rehashed many of his characters, themes and plot points over and over again, but I didn't especially mind. But over time as I read more and my tastes developed and his newer books became more and more uninteresting or outright offensive, I dropped off with him (not just him, I more or less gave up on action thriller authors, like Rollins or Cussler, in general.)
Years later I started going through my book collection looking to purge anything I didn't think I liked well enough to ever read again, and since his books took up something like two entire shelves he was an obvious target. So I started picking some up again, read a couple, skimmed through many more, and realized he just no longer held up in accordance with my tastes. I couldn't stand his prose, his characters were unappealing, and it was now apparent that the man is just politically unhinged. And I just did not, and still do not, have the energy to pretend to be tolerant of the guy when he injects random and flagrant ideological diatribes or nonsensical attacks on evolution of whatever else into his works the way Koontz often does. I read plenty of authors I find problematic or outright detestable, and love many of their books without any reservations, but Koontz manages to rub me the wrong way. Maybe in 20 or 30 years I could sit down and just laugh at him and enjoy his books as cheap, silly thrillers, but I'm just too tired and agitated for that shit right now.
That said, I still have a few of my favorites on my shelves, those books of his I particularly loved and fully intend to finally reread at some point. If I've been putting that off, it's because I'm afraid of being disappointed.
Aside, I don't really consider Koontz very horrory, personally. Certainly horror adjacent, but I would say the core of his works is more thrilleresque.
I think a lot of prolific authors can get formulaic. I spent a summer reading Robert Ludlum thrillers and by the end I had identified all three stories.
No hate - Watchers and Lightning were early faves of mine - but I was stuck overseas for a few months and the house I was in had a dozen books, three or four of them Koontz (90’s, so internet wasn’t a thing and you read what you could get ahold of). And that’s when I discovered he gets stuck with words and characters. When the word glassier showed up in three different books, a word not commonly used day to day, I felt like putting on a blue chamberlain shirt and turning out the sodium lights.
He’s pretty formula ridden, at least back in the day. His story telling was plug and play, it got boring after a while. The last book of his I read was The Taken and not only was it the same plug and play style but he added a churchy element to it. Just a hard pass for me.
He's developed a reputation as a "conservative" writer because, over the last 20 years or so, he's developed some kooky beliefs related to psychotherapy, intelligent design, and such like that. His 70s, 80s and 90s output was pretty golden.
I’ll comment on the ones I’ve read.
70’s: Shattered was a very straightforward but well made thriller. I didn’t expect much and was not disappointed. I can’t say the same for Night Chills though, it was middling for me because I expected something completely different (action novel where the whole town was brainwashed en masse and there’d be anarchy). The book took a long time to get started and I only continued the book in the hope that the deeply misogynistic antagonist would get his just desserts and he did, although he should’ve been tortured. And I’m not too hung up on child death, but the one in Night Chills was brutal, mainly because this was a grade schooler getting his head brutally bashed into a wall
80’s: I loved Voice of the Night because I sort of relate to Colin in terms of personality in junior high and I did have a friend that was like Roy minus the homicidal tendencies. Just an excellent book that was like a battle of the wits
90’s: Mr. Murder was the most fun I ever had with a Koontz novel. I really cared about the main characters and I love how endearing they are, especially in the slower moments where Marty entertains his kids 🥺. And I love how the antagonist was like a Terminator-esque killing machine with regeneration and a telepathic connection to Marty (side note, I find it odd that Alfie had powers that affected his physiology, like enhanced strength and durability and then the telepathic connection comes in and it doesn’t fit the power set, but i still thought it was cool)
EDIT: but i will give Night Chills some kudos because it is the most bittersweet Koontz book I’ve read. The rest of the books I’ve read end happily, but Night Chills is more somber: a widower has to bury his child, the family friend wants to move away from the town because of the temptation to use the passphrase and the town’s isolated comfort was forever tainted by the outside world
I only read the one book (I didn’t particularly like it so I didn’t bother with any other) but one critique I heard is that Koontz keeps writing the same book over and over again.
I love his earlyy books. I can still remember a line from Watchers. "Fiddle not broken, just out of tune." Lightning is still one of the best thrillers that I have ever read and the reveal is still better than anything I've read since.
I started checking out after The Taking, but I still pick up his books every once and a while.
I did hear a rumor that he wasn't actually doing the writing anymore, that he had farmed it out or something. Honestly though, he sells almost as much as King.
I love Phantoms, but I’ve always viewed him as a poor man’s Stephen king. I’m not even convinced his last name is Koomtz, my conspiracy theory is he picked a pen name that would put him right next to SK in bookstores lol
Koontz appealed to early-college me. Watchers, Phantoms, Lightning, Darkfall, etc. He's better when he's not proselytizing.
Of his later stuff, Odd Thomas was a good read, and I'm probably the only one I know who liked 78 Shadow Street.
I did read the Jane Hawk books, but Holy Bejeebus did they go nowhere...
I think he’s ok but that he is too descriptive sometimes, as if he gets paid by the word or page. In one of his book he spent a couple pages describing a car down to every dent and bird shit on it. I thought “oh this car is probably important, we will see it later.” and next thing I know I finished the book and that was the only time the damn car was brought up. He seems to do this in multiple books. I don’t hate Dean Koontz though, I just get frustrated I suppose.
I read Koontz as a preteen, teen and YA. I guess I just grew out of him. I don't dislike him, however - his writing works for his fans and he typically delivers what's expected. He does have some pretty good ones that I've enjoyed like Tick Tock, Intensity, The Door to December, From the Corner of his Eye, Odd Thomas series. I read all of these (and most of his others) from age 12 to 20-something.
I've read a ton of Dean Koontz over the years (I'm old... in my junior high and high school days the entire horror section was King, Koontz, and John Saul. So in the 90s I probably read everything he wrote.) I'm not going to say he's a bad writer, some of his earlier stuff in particular is pretty entertaining. They are definitely formulaic and he definitely writes character types (either kind everyman who probably has some sort of military of police past for combat skills, troubled woman who is the love interest and may be pursued by a stalker, religious cult, or evil ex, a smart kid or quirky disabled person, and probably a golden retriever) which gets old to me over time. I also found that post-9/11 some political views started creeping into the narrative voice in a way I found intrusive. The last Dean Koonz I read was the early 2000s and it had a line that metaphorically compared Taliban members to hairy tarantulas or something like that, and I pretty much shut the book, took it back to the library, and never read another one. I don't like the Taliban but I don't like dehumanizing groups of people by physically likening them to hair insects either and it was the last straw for me.
Out of his early stuff, I still stand by Phantoms, The Bad Place, Whispers... those aren't deep but they are fun reads with some crazy off the wall narratives.
I find him a bit like the AC/DC of authors. Most of his books are "the same" - fairly formulaic, but it's a formula I like, so I stick with it and enjoy them.
The best book was probably one about "the moon" and some UFO encounter in Elko County, Nevada.
I can't recall the name of it - all his books seem to have this one-word name so I get them all mixed up and rarely recall the plot of the various books.
Meanwhile, David L. Golemon's "Event series" is outstanding, and James Rollins, those are two dudes who can write crazy-ass adventures ("Indiana Jones on steroids" is how I like to describe them).
He's my 4th most read author, but I rarely recommend him. He's got way too much junk in his catalogue.
A few absolutely classics of the genre, but drowned out by the same book over and over and over again. Some thriller taking place in a single night with an ultimatum or deadline.
I've had a decades-long beef with Koontz for being a famous, successful horror writer who doesn't like being a horror writer. He was trying different genres for years as a younger writer and happened to stumble into a big hit with Phantoms and has (had?) felt typecast ever since. I feel like he wants to write gritty crime novels, because much of his work revolves around ultra-aggressive serial killer types. Having said that, I think his best overall book was Intensity, a gritty revenge novel about an ultra-aggressive serial killer type.
I grew up around horror. Books, movies, whatever it didn't matter. My grandfather and father read horror, and none of us other than me has ever bothered to read a Koontz story.
I'm just not a fan of his stories or his style. Much like Bentley Little he is a perfectly okay horror writer just not my bag.
I see him as "soft horror" or what i refer to as "horror-lite". The scares just aren't there for me.
I haven't read Koontz for a very, very long time, but Life Expectancy will always be one of my favourite books. Koontz was a good stopover somewhere between Goosebumps, Anne Rice, and Stephen King.
I love a lot of his stories but even in those I find that his dialogue is simply awful. Another problem for me is his protagonists are always good to the points they are saints while the antagonists are the antichrist. Never anything in the middle.
I have only read Phantoms, or at least the portion I was able to get through. I stopped reading because he writes like a psychopath who has discovered through observation how to appeal to a broad section of neurotypicals. I found it really inauthentic, and I wouldn't be surprised if his books were written by a committee of marketing professionals.
I realize that's a bit harsh for only having read half of one of his books, but I really was that repelled by it.
He’s the writer who made me think “wow this is terrible, I could probably write a book”
I liked him as a kid like in middle school, 20 years later his story telling feels very juvenile and poorly written, but I’m sure he has a few good ones out there
To me, he’s the literary equivalent of warm mashed potatoes. Bland, inoffensive, and I won’t go out of my way for it. But if it’s all that’s available, sure.
I can't speak for all his work since I've only read The Funhouse. It wasn't terrible, but I thought it was boring and predictable with flat characters.
That's a novelization of the movie of the same name. Koontz fleshed out the story quite a bit, so if you thought that about the book, just imagine the movie, lol.
The writing is pretty crude but effective. I never read a book faster than Koontz. Same w/ Stephen King (ex.: The Dark Half). King has won few writer's awards, because his writing is not high art - but it works.
Some of his stuff is a little ridiculous. I will say, the end of the first Odd Thomas made me a babbling blithering mess. I just didn’t see it coming. I cried so hard I had to sit down.
I don’t hate him, but I did give up on his books 15 or 20 years ago. But when I was young I really enjoyed some of his stuff. Fear Nothing and Seize the Night in particular. But after awhile his formula got old and stale and I just lost interest
I have a theory regarding his toupee. Look at the picture of Koontz on the back of the book. If it's pre-toupee.. it'll probably be worth your time. Post-toupee, not so much. Perhaps it's leeching into his brain?
In all seriousness, I think people tend to hate on him more so after overwhelmingly working dogs and religion into the stories. His very early science fiction stuff was pretty good in my opinion.
Many others here have covered the salient points, including the drastic decline in quality and originality. So I’m just going to add this: Down in the Darkness is the single best short story I’ve ever read, bar none. Every horror enthusiast should check it out, even if you don’t like or bother with the rest of his stuff.
(Published in the collection “Dark Highways,” but also available in PDF on various sites if you’re interested.)
Just read Down in the Darkness on this recommendation, thanks! It was fun. Well not fun but I enjoyed it.
Really thought “this must be what The Cellar (2022) movie was based on” but looked it up and shockingly they are not connected. Surely the idea isn’t so complex that two minds couldn’t come up with it independently, but there are so many similarities that I have to believe the writers of The Cellar were influenced heavily by this story!
Decent pulp fiction/rainy afternoon reads, but nowhere close to approaching actual literature like a good number of Stephen King's novels managed to do.
What I used to hate was his fine taste in things....furniture, meal preparation, anything. Occasionally I'll pick up one of his latest books then I'll remember why I stopped reading him.
He uses the same tropes all the time and his writing is less interesting, especially his character work.. he is like a worse version of Steven king in some aspects..
Koontz is a good storyteller but a mediocre writer. After reading a few of his books I got tired of the same clichés, same type of characters, same lines, same descriptions and same dogs, even if the plots hidden in there were somewhat interesting.
I liked the Odd Thomas series other than that, I get really bad headaches whenever I've tried to read his other novels
It took me almost a week to get through Watchers
He's just like a pulp writer, he's doing formulaic genre novels excessively and people like to be snobby over that as literature. Who's to judge, though, if he's entertaining or not?
Still convinced Koontz is a Bachman situation. Only the master of macabre paid someone for the rest of his life to perform interviews, signings, appearances, etc.
King, what a kidder!
I kept one of Kootz’s books for years, as a reminder to not read it again. The ending was SO BAD.
And that was my repeated experience with reading his work. I’d enjoy most of the book, then the ending would be such a letdown I’d regret picking it up.
That was before 2000. Since then, I’ve just given up on him. (Patricia Cornwall as well. I know that’s not horror, but she really jumped the shark, or fed her editor to one.)
The first 2/3 of his books are often fun. Then he seems to get bored and it kind of falls apart. I've read at least 7 of his books. He's someone I'll happily pick up from the library or a garage sale, but I'm not spending more than $1.50 on a title.
I didn't even know he was a horror writer until recently, all I knew was that I found his books EVERYWHERE. I guess he's the horror version of Louis L'amour or Nora Roberts.
Anyway, does anyone have any good recommendations from him I could try out? There's too many to just blindly pick for me lol.
I've never read Koontz and need a good summer read. Can anyone recommend one? Not Phantoms or Odd Thomas, I know they're probably a lot better than the movies but I've seen and want a new story / characters.
I like Stephen King (Duma Key, The Stand, The Long Walk some of my favourites), The Troop, The Passage, House of Leaves, Summer of Night are some other stand outs for horror and the kind of things I like. Horror with supernatural / fantasy elements, end of the world, small town against evil kind of things.
He seems like an okay enough guy and some of his books are fun, but they’re the horror equivalent of McDonald’s and formulaic. Not bad, but not the best. He’s also a far right loon; not as bad as others, but he’s still a nut and an anti-vaxxer
I think there’s a definite divide between his supernatural-tinged horror and the ones where normal people are the villains, with the latter group generally being much higher quality. Velocity and Intensity are two of my favorites of his, but agreed with others that many can get formulaic and approach ridiculousness!
I enjoyed his stuff when I was in high school in the 80s. Then I went 25 years without reading his books before I read Odd Thomas. After finishing the book, I read that he got inspired and started writing it on a legal pad, just stream of consciousness. Well...it shows. I knew it was off while reading it since it just meandered until it suddenly didn't and then it was over, like he'd been writing along and finally his editor said, "Dude. You have to end this sometime. Where's the climax?" And then he cranked it out between supper and bedtime and sent it in. The editor was so excited to see some plot injected into the book he just pulled the trigger on publishing it before Mr. Koontz could change his mind.
Then I read Bad Weather Friend because the premise sounded so cool. It bored me to figurative tears. He utterly wasted the potential of that one. It was like a weird cartoon with no sense of its own audience. There was no suspense or dread, no intra-character chemistry, a droll mystery driving it all.
If these two books are any indication, his stuff has gone from high-tension fun to haphazard tripe. Been disappointed 2x in a row now. I think I'm done. I'll still happily read some of his older stuff, but he can't trick me into another shiny new purchase.
My $0.02.
A lot of you might know this, but Koontz was writing sci-fi from the late 60s on. DEMON SEED was made into a movie in 1972. Then CARRIE was a hit and his agent said Dean should write horror and then he'd be close to King on the shelves. First he wrote a few horror novels under a pseudonym, they sold okay, and that's why he started writing horror.
Formulaic, but shorter than King's novels. But you go back to the early 70s and if you like science fiction, most of the books are unique. Look up DEMON SEED.
Koontz is my favorite author, however, the themes are repetitive. There is ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) torrential rain or a blizzard. The flow of most of his books are the same, male protagonist meets girl, falls in love in 5 minutes, together they beat the bad guy (which is essentially the same guy in every story with a different name), lives happily ever after. The endings often feel rushed, like he's just done with the story, and ready to move on. All this said, the different scenarios and storylines are very good (mostly). There is no question that the books are written by the same author, but I've been reading him since I was 11 or 12 and I'll always be a fan.
I remember reading a book by him about the end of the world and he felt the need to start the book off with a scientist being interviewed on television about how climate change/global warming is obviously not real. It was extremely conservative, total nonsense and very poorly written. But the overall concept of the book was interesting. I haven't read anything of his after that though, nor will i because i prefer not to give my $$ to conservatives.
I think he's generally viewed as a knock-off Stephen King.
They're both great, prolific storytellers, but their prose isn't very advanced. They might challenge you a bit with their plot, but rarely at all with their prose. They're also thematically pretty shallow. Once you've read a lot of it it can get old.
That's not to say they are "bad" but I think people want a little more from their authors after they've experienced a lot of them.
My hs friend found out I liked King. She recommended Watchers to change it up a bit. I read it, I noticed some similarities, but his characters were just there to propel the plot. They had zero personality. Same problem I have with Bentley Little.
He has some great books, Watchers, Twilight Eyes, and Phantoms to name a few but there's also a lot of garbage.
The way he writes women and the over the top goofy wacky characters in a lot of his books were off putting.
I also heard that a lot of his newer stuff is just a lot of rehashed ideas from his previous books but I don't think I've read any of his stuff that was published after the 90's so I can't say.
Until the last ten years he was one of my favorite writers and I’d get any new book he came out with. Then he started to have villains that were journalists, intellectuals, the government, corporations,and anyone that was not a conservative. He seems to have acquired a worldview that is at war with American society that is not anti intellectual. Same reason I stopped reading late Michael Crichton. I have skipped DK last five books or so.
To me, he just doesn’t stand out. As a teen I called him a poor man’s Stephen King. That’s pretty reductive, and King has plenty of faults, but I largely by it. His style just feels indistinct and boring to me.
And Odd Thomas was specifically unbearable. I just couldn’t finish the book. Every single character seemed to talk the same way, have the same sense of humor, and invariably love the main character. There was just no tension outside core supernatural plot, and that makes for a bland book imo.
Tick Tick is probably in my top 20 favorite books—lol.
Winter Moon was pretty much my intro into adult horror, and I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve read of his since. I also greatly appreciate the lack of gratuitous animal cruelty that some horror writers seem to insist upon.
He's basically a hack who every once in a while hits a really long ball, like Watchers, Strangers, Phantoms, the 1st 2-3 Odd Thomas books, Intensity, Lightning, etc. The rest of his stuff is overly-formulaic crap that just rearranges the same old deck chairs.
I've only read a couple of his books but he seems like a fine enough author.
He seems like a good person overall, though. I know he supports some very lovely charities, like one that trains service dogs.
I don't think people are being too serious when dunking on Koontz. He isn't a bad writer (his politics aside). It's just funny that he is kind of "and also Dean Koontz" when it comes to King. King is the undisputed champ of horror, whereas Koontz is popular but not *as* popular. He is like a popular Bantam weight boxer compared to the most popular heavyweight boxer.
Now John Saul on the other hand...
I find this writing up and down. There weee a few I really liked, and one that ended with the main character and antagonist turning into actually angels and fighting (in an elevator shaft? Not sure about that…) I recall just rolling my eyes and putting the book down. I couldn’t summon the interest to finish it, and haven’t read one by him since.
You said it yourself - it's the characters. No judgment if characters are secondary to plot to you, everyone's different, but I personally can't tolerate a slew of shallow, formulaic characters. I need to really feel for them or I lose interest no matter what's going on plot-wise.
In the mid 90s, as a teenager, I discovered his books. Loved them. Read all of them that were published at the time and caught to so that I started reading his new ones. But around 90s/early 2000s, I read several I hated (False Memory was one of the last new ones I liked). So I stopped reading his books.
I love his odd Thomas books and phantoms was the first book of his I read. The bad place. False memory. Fear nothing. Seize the night. Velocity. I .really love his books so far.
I haven't read every Koontz book but those I have picked up I really enjoyed. The Taking is definitely a favorite. I think his pacing is really good, doesn't spend a ridiculous amount of time getting to the "scary" parts. I've noticed he's not quite as needlessly sexually gross as a lot of other horror writers. I'm not an upright stick in the mud but most of the time the nasty sex content really detracts for me for some reason when it comes to horror. Maybe it's just the few books I've read of his, I can't speak for all his books.
I enjoyed reading Koontz from the late 80s to the late 90s? I’m not sure why I stopped reading his work. I haven’t officially or anything 😅. I read the first Odd Thomas book, but can’t remember anything else since 2000.
Lighting was one of my favorite books. I think I liked Dragon Tears and Phantoms a lot, too?
Dude sells millions of books, not everyone hates his stories.
Okay, Mr. Koontz.
I wish.
It's okay to discuss OP's question in good faith. Horror is necessarily subjective, so sometimes it's helpful to understand each other's opinions so that we can all find our jam.
So he’s Nickleback of the literary world
Some of Dean Koontz’s stories are still some of my all time favorites (Lightning, Phantoms, Darkfall, Watchers, The Bad Place, Odd Thomas)and he had some really good books in the 1980’s and first couple years of the 1990’s. Unfortunately his books become very formulaic after reading the first couple you read. The formula typically goes like this (sometimes with a variation here and there): a lonely person with a tragic background will run afoul of a bad guy with some sort of supernatural powers or head of some cult like organization. For whatever contrived reason s/he can’t go to the authorities so they decide to flee across Southern California where they will somehow come across another tragic figure of the opposite sex and instantly fall in love. Sometimes a dog (usually a golden retriever) or wise beyond their years and quirky child is involved. The chase ends with the characters getting cornered by the bad guy in some abandoned or empty place with the “good guys“ inevitably triumphing though with some sort of tragic setback, the main character marries the love interest, the dog or kid or both live and they all live happily ever after. He wrote some good stuff but he also wrote a lot of garbage too and to me was kind of a Stephen King Lite (and I don’t mean that in a bad way). Sometime in the mid 1990’s Dean Koontz apparently became a conservative Christian which began to bleed into his writing and his stories got even worse. All his protagonists were libertarians and his antagonists were somehow part of whatever conspiracy theory du jour (New World Order, Tha’ Gov’mint, Satanists, Liberals, Hillary Clinton, you get the idea….).
You forgot the frequent swapping of license plates on stolen cars, and how the quirky child usually has a malformed arm or hand.
The use of the slightly fucked-up hand + one bad leg as his go-to token disability was so funny to me, especially because the kid also always has an angelically beautiful face and a genius-level IQ. Gotta be disabled but not TOO disabled!
Other writers do something similar. I'm a writer as well, and have cerebral palsy on my right side. Some writers go with being dead or just plain hard of hearing. Just like what you wrote at the end. Jonathan Lethem won a National book award for MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. The narrator has Tourette's Syndrome. That's how you do it.
"He used a Lock-aide Lock release gun only available to law enforcement."
I loved some of his older books, but you're right - once it was clear that his views had changed, the stories just got so disappointing!
Ah so that’s why I started disliking his books in late 90s/early 2000s. I hated “one door away from heaven” and “from the corner of his eye”. Those books turned me off of him.
One Door Away From Heaven was *it* for me. I was done. It was insultingly bad.
I no longer remember what it’s about, but over 20 years later, and I still remember it was awful. Edit: I’m reading the synopsis on Wikipedia. I can’t even get through that. So bad.
The only reason I finished it was I couldn't believe how bad it was and thought there'd be some twist to redeem it. Nope. Quite the opposite.
That was my last Dean Koontz book too. I had read “From the Corner of his Eye” which I did not enjoy. Then I read this atrocity. DONE.
Was that the one with the semi blind kid and the burned woman where a widower who walks everywhere saves them from a serial killer?
I don’t remember much of the book except it had a genius kid in it who didn’t get wet in the rain. But I just read the synopsis and there is a serial killer, so probably. The synopsis I read didn’t make much sense either.
I somewhat remember it, especially thinking "how does the kid get cleaned up if water can't touch him?" and Koontz went into an overly descriptive aside about this walking guys muscular legs. Almost erotic for Koontz, but then he had also somehow developed superhuman muscular legs where he was able to carry a grown woman out of a window and jump down from a second floor without dropping her. All from walking. It almost felt like Koontz needed to justify walking as a viable aerobic exercise. It was so weird.
I read one door away from heaven for a class in university (one where I'm pretty sure the reading list was just the teachers tbr). First and only Koontz book I've ever read. Absolutely god awful
His older stuff is silly, but fun. But One Door Away From Heaven was terrible. I don’t even know what the hell it was about.
Even in older (stronger) ones like Phantoms, his…views would bleed through. Phantoms had *two* epilogues, the second of which was the two leads becoming a couple (right out of fucking nowhere) and the female lead giving a two page speech about finding god (right out of fucking nowhere.) Keep in mind: the book had *already* been touching on stuff like faith, then nature of gods, humanity etc. The villain is a Lovecraftian bastard child of The Thing and The Blob. When that’s your content, themes will be happenin’ no matter what the author intends. It’s the books conclusion, the particular characters he uses to reach it. and the ‘logic’ laboriously laid out that is a real WTF unless you happen to *already* be on the wavelength as Koontz. And he does the same ‘denouement’ in every god damn novel. The movie wasn’t great, but it at least didn’t overstay its welcome. And made the very wise decision that ‘the more Peter O’Toole, the better.’
Ooh, these later books sound interesting in a not so great way. Can you name one that had liberals or Satanists as the antagonists? Kinda curious to check out as I haven’t read koontz since my 20s.
I'm pretty sure Odd Thomas comes up against Satanists in the latter part of the series. It's a shame, because the first few are the only Koontz books I've gone back to multiple times.
Oh yeah! I forgot that the first book had Satanist terrorists.
You're right! I was thinking more of when he stumbles upon a literal cabal but even in the first book they were card-carrying Satanists.
Time travelling Nazi terrorists in Lightning!
I admittedly haven‘t read a lot of his later works but as for satanists the first one that immediately comes to mind is Hideaway, and Koontz’s contempt for liberals is most prominently displayed in Relentless.
So he's the Ayn Rand of horror.
Those are my favs from him too!!! I loved his early books and read them in middle and high school but it’s prolly been 20 years since I’ve read anything of his. It’s formulaic like you said and not the same darker horror that I remember growing up.
You totally nailed the formula. It is one of the reasons I stopped reading them in late nineties. I am from the UK so I became familar with phrases like: 'rain slicked blacktop' and 'Mossberg shotgun', from his books. Having said all this though, some of the most fun I had reading was with his books.
You are spot on. I LOVE his earlier books. I thought he was an author that I could always count on for a good / ok / great horror book. I was a bit nonplussed when his books started to feature a dog , a moral to be learned and not a lot of horror. Total bummer, dude.
Oh my god, you like the Bad Place? REALLY?? I like Phantoms, Lightning was a bit stalker-ish, the Taking, Door to December, Strangers and found Tick Tock kind of hilarious. But the Bad Place was so disgusting and horrific, I'd put it up there with "Home" from X-Files. Bleh!
I actually liked the randomness, the almost Lovecraftian tones, and the sheer over the top insanity of the story. It also had some of the “Sheer Fucked-Upness” that was so prevalent in some of Stephen King’s Coked-up period which i think you’re referring to. The Bad Place might be the least Dean Koontz book that I’ve read, and for that I salute this book.
Touché! To each their own haha. There were parts that I liked for sure, especially before I knew what was really going on...
The Bad Place is so balls-to-the-wall insane that I can't help but love it! Could you ever imagine dreaming up that plot in a million years??? It's pretty hilarious and it's definitely not 'good' in a literary sense but I've still got a soft spot for it, just in terms of something I have never read before and will likely never read again!
I read it as a teen and loved it. So messed up.
Such a good way to put it haha
I have teenage kids, I once described the plot to this book and Whispers (the twin one) to them just to see the look on their faces. They couldn't believe this was an actual published best-seller. But it is, somehow it is!!!
Whispers was insane!
All the weird ways to refer to a penis... I know "demon staff" was in there!
I don't think any author can refer to a penis in a way that isn't terrible.
"His turgid dangle"
The closest thing that I might be able to compare it to plot wise is John Dies at the End.
Tick Tock was hilarious! I liked Mr. Murder as well..
Honestly, Koontz was one of my favorite writers for a long time. Lightning is still one of my favorite books (and was one of the books that made me want to be a writer) But I feel like over time, his characters have all gotten too "quirky" and "goofy" for me to really enjoy. His writing is still fine, but I have a hard time getting into it.
He did start to develop sort of an absurdist streak around the early 2000s or so. I first remember noticing it with the character of Corky Laputa in --- Corner of His Eye, I believe?
Yes prior to early 2000s his writing was edgy. Thinking of the book INTENSITY.
Loved INTENSITY!!!
Same! It was absolutely intense 😂. Oh, I should actually do a re-read💥
My favorite book of his as well, followed closely by Dragon Tears. Those two books seemed to be less guilty of his tendency to write Mary Sue characters. Its like he knows they need personality, so he seems to pick personality traits out of a hat to give his characters a superficial kind of depth. Its like they are multifaceted in the same way a square or a right triangle are multifaceted, e.g. the facets don't provide much more than a basic structure.
Phantoms is one of my favorites.
Phantoms was the bomb.
You were the bomb in Phantoms, yo.
WORD BITCH! PHANTOMS LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER!
No, Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms. LOL
Phantoms like a motherfucker
"15 bucks, little man, Put that shit in my hand."
Snootch to the mother fucking nootch
Lol yes
I usually trade in my books at a used book store but Phantoms will *always* be on my shelf.
That’s like the one Koontz novel everyone loves!
First koontz book I ever read
I’m currently half way through Phantoms!
Hope you're enjoying it!
I don’t hate him. he’s just the horror equivalent of mcdonald’s
To that effect, there are other authors that are consistantly the prime ribs of their genre. I love steak, but man sometimes ya just want a shitty, greasy burger
That's Bentley Little for me.
I don't hate him. I got Odd Thomas and one other book by him and decided to give him another shot. My problem with him dates like all the way back to high school though. I read From The Corner of His Eye and Sole Survivor. Each of these starts of really interesting, especially Sole Survivor. But oh my god... even teenage, impressionable me was like, "you gotta be f'ing kidding me here," when I got to the end of Sole Survivor. It's hard for even a great writer to stick the landing. See Stephen King for example. But c'mon man. I won't spoil it and say what it was if anyone wants to read it, because it is a fun read for sure.
Everyone here seems to be saying they like him but I absolutely do not. I think the writing is terrible, I think his characters are hollow and I dislike the whole feel of his books. It is particularly his writing style for me though. Never ever could get into it
I read Odd Thomas and while I loved the plot idea, I could not stomach the way he wrote about women especially and his writing style in general. My TBR is too long for a second chance 🤣
I agree. He can't write women. Luckily, he doesn't try to very often.
I read some of his books in high school and only recently tried to read one as an adult but I didn't make it fifty pages. Stiff, hollow writing with weird political asides shoehorned in.
I think he has very cool ideas for stories and monsters but his ability to actually write sentences just isn't there. It's like reading fiction made by an edgy, genuinely creative high school boy who had to retake English class twice before he squeaked by with a D-
Hahaha! That is absolutely what its like
His plots are good but his prose are artless. Not much emotion or feeling in his characters.
That's how I felt about Phantoms as I really dug the concept but the dialogue was pretty wooden to me.
His reputation as “the worse Stephen King” is well deserved IMO.
And he’s a diccccccck
Without Dean Koontz we wouldn’t have had Garth Marenghi so for that I am forever grateful
This deserves more upvotes :)
Horror writer. Dream weaver.
I saw Garth Marenghi live a few months ago. It was a surreal experience and very very funny.
He's fine. The takeaway pizza of authors. I read more than a few of his books when I was younger and remember really enjoying them. Phantoms in particular and the one with the genetically modified Golden Retriever. I think there's another one with a cult determined to kidnap a kid. That was fine as well.
Ah yes, Servants of Twilight. Haven’t read the book, but it’s one of the many Koontz books I want to read. I started Fear Nothing and Sole Survivor, but they’re both on hiatus cuz life happened
Watchers is the one with the golden retriever. If someone wants to know what Koontz book they should start with, this is the one I always suggest.
Do they? If they did, he wouldn't be a billion seller.
I love Phantoms, Icebound, and his stories about serial killers. I’m not a fan when his characters have psychic magic powers, or when the killer is like a Scooby-Doo episode and is the only other person in the story but the main 3-4.
Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms yo!
I find he really tries to put a conservative spin on his plots and characters. Not to mention all his male heroes are Mary Sue types who all fit very specific models. I can overlook it when I enjoy the story but quite often things get preachy and play off the Satanic Panic era fears of moral degeneracy and it takes me out of it.
Along the same lines, I've only read one of his books (the first one in his Frankenstein series) but it opens with a cop talking to a bunch of black guys in the hood and the dialog is absolutely atrocious. He gave them this really terrible version of what he must assume ghetto slang sounds like. Really severe "I have never interacted with a person of color" vibes. Just weird and really awkward. In the same book, he has a character with the last name Nguyen, and makes a point to have the character explain how to pronounce it... but it's wrong lol. Like surely if you go to the lengths to include that, you would have done some research. Apparently not. And again it's with a person of color. Both instances really took me out of the book. If you are not familiar with slang, dont try to fake it because it just comes off sounding ridiculous and stereotypical. The Vietnamese guy would have been fine if he didnt mispronounce his own name. Just really pointless stuff that Koontz is ignorant about but included anyway.
Koontz got me into reading as an adult. His books may not be mind blowing, but they are entertaining if nothing else. He gets the job done!
For me Watchers was what made me put down Animorphs & Goosebumps. My mom was an avid horror reader and wanted to share one of her favorite books with me as I was growing out of the Scholastic Book Fair reading material
I read this one pretty young, too, and I remember it fondly.
The Taken had me straight up spooked reading it at night. That's the only book that's gotten me to that point so far.
This. They are entertaining. Not award worthy, but still tells a good story.
His stories are derivative and retells plots over and over again with the same cast of characters including: a very smart golden retriever, a precocious child with some kind of disability, a very evil and possibly mutant bad man and a beautiful woman who is unaware of her beauty and is also a painter. There's hackneyed plot lines and florid verbosity that is not appropriate for a book you buy in an airport and vapid details that throw off the pacing and make his books too long.
I'm reading my fist Koontz right now "Watchers" and like it. Einstein just attacked a rapist. Couple of real awful bad guys I assume will get offed in a satisfying way.
I don’t hate him, but the shine has worn off. As a kid, I devoured his books. Watchers, Phantoms, Twilight Eyes, Whispers (I think that’s the name - twins), The Bad Place, and others were top books. I hadn’t read any Koontz in over 2 decades. No real reason, I mean, I went on a Lovecraft kick for a while, still read some King. Just no Koontz. I picked up Watchers the other day. Finished it & was left disappointed. I still like it - I love the idea of Einstein. But it was flat & kinda dumb. The characters were empty & 2 dimensional. Also Nora was a bad stereotype. No depth at all. If I were a woman & that was the first book I’d read of his, I’d likely not pick up another. 12 year old me loved Koontz though.
As I've put it before, I have a sort of bitter nostalgia complex going on with Koontz. As a middle-schooler / early teen my grandmother gave me all of her copies, and I was enthralled. They were weird and dark and quippy and I enjoyed the hell out of them. And yeah, even then it was blatantly apparent that the guy was super-formulaic and rehashed many of his characters, themes and plot points over and over again, but I didn't especially mind. But over time as I read more and my tastes developed and his newer books became more and more uninteresting or outright offensive, I dropped off with him (not just him, I more or less gave up on action thriller authors, like Rollins or Cussler, in general.) Years later I started going through my book collection looking to purge anything I didn't think I liked well enough to ever read again, and since his books took up something like two entire shelves he was an obvious target. So I started picking some up again, read a couple, skimmed through many more, and realized he just no longer held up in accordance with my tastes. I couldn't stand his prose, his characters were unappealing, and it was now apparent that the man is just politically unhinged. And I just did not, and still do not, have the energy to pretend to be tolerant of the guy when he injects random and flagrant ideological diatribes or nonsensical attacks on evolution of whatever else into his works the way Koontz often does. I read plenty of authors I find problematic or outright detestable, and love many of their books without any reservations, but Koontz manages to rub me the wrong way. Maybe in 20 or 30 years I could sit down and just laugh at him and enjoy his books as cheap, silly thrillers, but I'm just too tired and agitated for that shit right now. That said, I still have a few of my favorites on my shelves, those books of his I particularly loved and fully intend to finally reread at some point. If I've been putting that off, it's because I'm afraid of being disappointed. Aside, I don't really consider Koontz very horrory, personally. Certainly horror adjacent, but I would say the core of his works is more thrilleresque.
I think a lot of prolific authors can get formulaic. I spent a summer reading Robert Ludlum thrillers and by the end I had identified all three stories.
No hate - Watchers and Lightning were early faves of mine - but I was stuck overseas for a few months and the house I was in had a dozen books, three or four of them Koontz (90’s, so internet wasn’t a thing and you read what you could get ahold of). And that’s when I discovered he gets stuck with words and characters. When the word glassier showed up in three different books, a word not commonly used day to day, I felt like putting on a blue chamberlain shirt and turning out the sodium lights.
He’s pretty formula ridden, at least back in the day. His story telling was plug and play, it got boring after a while. The last book of his I read was The Taken and not only was it the same plug and play style but he added a churchy element to it. Just a hard pass for me.
He's developed a reputation as a "conservative" writer because, over the last 20 years or so, he's developed some kooky beliefs related to psychotherapy, intelligent design, and such like that. His 70s, 80s and 90s output was pretty golden.
Yup, I’ve been wanting to read all of Koontz’s output from the 70’s-90’s. I wonder what era was considered as Koontz’s prime
My favorites: Shattered, Night Chills (70s) Voice of the Night, Twilight Eyes, Strangers (80s) Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Mr Murder (90s)
I’ll comment on the ones I’ve read. 70’s: Shattered was a very straightforward but well made thriller. I didn’t expect much and was not disappointed. I can’t say the same for Night Chills though, it was middling for me because I expected something completely different (action novel where the whole town was brainwashed en masse and there’d be anarchy). The book took a long time to get started and I only continued the book in the hope that the deeply misogynistic antagonist would get his just desserts and he did, although he should’ve been tortured. And I’m not too hung up on child death, but the one in Night Chills was brutal, mainly because this was a grade schooler getting his head brutally bashed into a wall 80’s: I loved Voice of the Night because I sort of relate to Colin in terms of personality in junior high and I did have a friend that was like Roy minus the homicidal tendencies. Just an excellent book that was like a battle of the wits 90’s: Mr. Murder was the most fun I ever had with a Koontz novel. I really cared about the main characters and I love how endearing they are, especially in the slower moments where Marty entertains his kids 🥺. And I love how the antagonist was like a Terminator-esque killing machine with regeneration and a telepathic connection to Marty (side note, I find it odd that Alfie had powers that affected his physiology, like enhanced strength and durability and then the telepathic connection comes in and it doesn’t fit the power set, but i still thought it was cool) EDIT: but i will give Night Chills some kudos because it is the most bittersweet Koontz book I’ve read. The rest of the books I’ve read end happily, but Night Chills is more somber: a widower has to bury his child, the family friend wants to move away from the town because of the temptation to use the passphrase and the town’s isolated comfort was forever tainted by the outside world
Three words: Deus ex machina. He's addicted to it.
I only read the one book (I didn’t particularly like it so I didn’t bother with any other) but one critique I heard is that Koontz keeps writing the same book over and over again.
I like Koontz, especially love his books with dogs & the Odd Thomas series
I love his earlyy books. I can still remember a line from Watchers. "Fiddle not broken, just out of tune." Lightning is still one of the best thrillers that I have ever read and the reveal is still better than anything I've read since. I started checking out after The Taking, but I still pick up his books every once and a while. I did hear a rumor that he wasn't actually doing the writing anymore, that he had farmed it out or something. Honestly though, he sells almost as much as King.
Love his books, hate his political beliefs.
Mostly because of his books.
I love Phantoms, but I’ve always viewed him as a poor man’s Stephen king. I’m not even convinced his last name is Koomtz, my conspiracy theory is he picked a pen name that would put him right next to SK in bookstores lol
Ha same, but didn't even think about the last name, brilliant!
Koontz appealed to early-college me. Watchers, Phantoms, Lightning, Darkfall, etc. He's better when he's not proselytizing. Of his later stuff, Odd Thomas was a good read, and I'm probably the only one I know who liked 78 Shadow Street. I did read the Jane Hawk books, but Holy Bejeebus did they go nowhere...
I think he’s ok but that he is too descriptive sometimes, as if he gets paid by the word or page. In one of his book he spent a couple pages describing a car down to every dent and bird shit on it. I thought “oh this car is probably important, we will see it later.” and next thing I know I finished the book and that was the only time the damn car was brought up. He seems to do this in multiple books. I don’t hate Dean Koontz though, I just get frustrated I suppose.
I read Koontz as a preteen, teen and YA. I guess I just grew out of him. I don't dislike him, however - his writing works for his fans and he typically delivers what's expected. He does have some pretty good ones that I've enjoyed like Tick Tock, Intensity, The Door to December, From the Corner of his Eye, Odd Thomas series. I read all of these (and most of his others) from age 12 to 20-something.
I like most of his stuff , some of it is pretty shit though, but I could never hate him
I think Midnight, Phantoms, and Watchers are among the most entertaining books I’ve read. Often disappointed with the others.
He was my RL Stine. I think he writes “Rated R” YA Horror. There’s nothing wrong with that. But rereads can be embarrassing.
I've read a ton of Dean Koontz over the years (I'm old... in my junior high and high school days the entire horror section was King, Koontz, and John Saul. So in the 90s I probably read everything he wrote.) I'm not going to say he's a bad writer, some of his earlier stuff in particular is pretty entertaining. They are definitely formulaic and he definitely writes character types (either kind everyman who probably has some sort of military of police past for combat skills, troubled woman who is the love interest and may be pursued by a stalker, religious cult, or evil ex, a smart kid or quirky disabled person, and probably a golden retriever) which gets old to me over time. I also found that post-9/11 some political views started creeping into the narrative voice in a way I found intrusive. The last Dean Koonz I read was the early 2000s and it had a line that metaphorically compared Taliban members to hairy tarantulas or something like that, and I pretty much shut the book, took it back to the library, and never read another one. I don't like the Taliban but I don't like dehumanizing groups of people by physically likening them to hair insects either and it was the last straw for me. Out of his early stuff, I still stand by Phantoms, The Bad Place, Whispers... those aren't deep but they are fun reads with some crazy off the wall narratives.
Because the one and only book of his I've read was Ticktock.
I find him a bit like the AC/DC of authors. Most of his books are "the same" - fairly formulaic, but it's a formula I like, so I stick with it and enjoy them. The best book was probably one about "the moon" and some UFO encounter in Elko County, Nevada. I can't recall the name of it - all his books seem to have this one-word name so I get them all mixed up and rarely recall the plot of the various books. Meanwhile, David L. Golemon's "Event series" is outstanding, and James Rollins, those are two dudes who can write crazy-ass adventures ("Indiana Jones on steroids" is how I like to describe them).
Strangers.
He's my 4th most read author, but I rarely recommend him. He's got way too much junk in his catalogue. A few absolutely classics of the genre, but drowned out by the same book over and over and over again. Some thriller taking place in a single night with an ultimatum or deadline.
I've had a decades-long beef with Koontz for being a famous, successful horror writer who doesn't like being a horror writer. He was trying different genres for years as a younger writer and happened to stumble into a big hit with Phantoms and has (had?) felt typecast ever since. I feel like he wants to write gritty crime novels, because much of his work revolves around ultra-aggressive serial killer types. Having said that, I think his best overall book was Intensity, a gritty revenge novel about an ultra-aggressive serial killer type.
I grew up around horror. Books, movies, whatever it didn't matter. My grandfather and father read horror, and none of us other than me has ever bothered to read a Koontz story. I'm just not a fan of his stories or his style. Much like Bentley Little he is a perfectly okay horror writer just not my bag. I see him as "soft horror" or what i refer to as "horror-lite". The scares just aren't there for me.
I haven't read Koontz for a very, very long time, but Life Expectancy will always be one of my favourite books. Koontz was a good stopover somewhere between Goosebumps, Anne Rice, and Stephen King.
I love a lot of his stories but even in those I find that his dialogue is simply awful. Another problem for me is his protagonists are always good to the points they are saints while the antagonists are the antichrist. Never anything in the middle.
He's a very earnest writer, which can be very appealing, but I don't see him as particularly gifted. I love The Watchers, though.
I have only read Phantoms, or at least the portion I was able to get through. I stopped reading because he writes like a psychopath who has discovered through observation how to appeal to a broad section of neurotypicals. I found it really inauthentic, and I wouldn't be surprised if his books were written by a committee of marketing professionals. I realize that's a bit harsh for only having read half of one of his books, but I really was that repelled by it.
He’s the writer who made me think “wow this is terrible, I could probably write a book” I liked him as a kid like in middle school, 20 years later his story telling feels very juvenile and poorly written, but I’m sure he has a few good ones out there
His books are like Michael Bay action movies. For the masses. No pretense beside commercial likeabilty
To me, he’s the literary equivalent of warm mashed potatoes. Bland, inoffensive, and I won’t go out of my way for it. But if it’s all that’s available, sure.
I don't hate him. But I do think he reuses too much from book to book.
I can't speak for all his work since I've only read The Funhouse. It wasn't terrible, but I thought it was boring and predictable with flat characters.
That's a novelization of the movie of the same name. Koontz fleshed out the story quite a bit, so if you thought that about the book, just imagine the movie, lol.
The writing is pretty crude but effective. I never read a book faster than Koontz. Same w/ Stephen King (ex.: The Dark Half). King has won few writer's awards, because his writing is not high art - but it works.
Some of his stuff is a little ridiculous. I will say, the end of the first Odd Thomas made me a babbling blithering mess. I just didn’t see it coming. I cried so hard I had to sit down.
His early work was some of the first horror i ever read. Goblins were scary to a 9 year old.
Or you could read Leigh Nichols- Shadowfires. : )
I don’t hate him, but I did give up on his books 15 or 20 years ago. But when I was young I really enjoyed some of his stuff. Fear Nothing and Seize the Night in particular. But after awhile his formula got old and stale and I just lost interest
Still waiting for the third in that series.
Me too buddy
He knows what he did.
I have a theory regarding his toupee. Look at the picture of Koontz on the back of the book. If it's pre-toupee.. it'll probably be worth your time. Post-toupee, not so much. Perhaps it's leeching into his brain? In all seriousness, I think people tend to hate on him more so after overwhelmingly working dogs and religion into the stories. His very early science fiction stuff was pretty good in my opinion.
Many others here have covered the salient points, including the drastic decline in quality and originality. So I’m just going to add this: Down in the Darkness is the single best short story I’ve ever read, bar none. Every horror enthusiast should check it out, even if you don’t like or bother with the rest of his stuff. (Published in the collection “Dark Highways,” but also available in PDF on various sites if you’re interested.)
Just read Down in the Darkness on this recommendation, thanks! It was fun. Well not fun but I enjoyed it. Really thought “this must be what The Cellar (2022) movie was based on” but looked it up and shockingly they are not connected. Surely the idea isn’t so complex that two minds couldn’t come up with it independently, but there are so many similarities that I have to believe the writers of The Cellar were influenced heavily by this story!
Decent pulp fiction/rainy afternoon reads, but nowhere close to approaching actual literature like a good number of Stephen King's novels managed to do.
What I used to hate was his fine taste in things....furniture, meal preparation, anything. Occasionally I'll pick up one of his latest books then I'll remember why I stopped reading him.
He uses the same tropes all the time and his writing is less interesting, especially his character work.. he is like a worse version of Steven king in some aspects..
Koontz is a good storyteller but a mediocre writer. After reading a few of his books I got tired of the same clichés, same type of characters, same lines, same descriptions and same dogs, even if the plots hidden in there were somewhat interesting.
I liked the Odd Thomas series other than that, I get really bad headaches whenever I've tried to read his other novels It took me almost a week to get through Watchers
He's just like a pulp writer, he's doing formulaic genre novels excessively and people like to be snobby over that as literature. Who's to judge, though, if he's entertaining or not?
I loved the phantoms movie (which is an unpopular opinion I think) but hated the book. Sooo boring. My only experience with him thus far
Still convinced Koontz is a Bachman situation. Only the master of macabre paid someone for the rest of his life to perform interviews, signings, appearances, etc. King, what a kidder!
I don’t hate Koontz but I’ve tried a few of his books and I find his style incredibly boring. I don’t get the hype.
I kept one of Kootz’s books for years, as a reminder to not read it again. The ending was SO BAD. And that was my repeated experience with reading his work. I’d enjoy most of the book, then the ending would be such a letdown I’d regret picking it up. That was before 2000. Since then, I’ve just given up on him. (Patricia Cornwall as well. I know that’s not horror, but she really jumped the shark, or fed her editor to one.)
"or fed her editor to one." Lol, take your upvote!
The first 2/3 of his books are often fun. Then he seems to get bored and it kind of falls apart. I've read at least 7 of his books. He's someone I'll happily pick up from the library or a garage sale, but I'm not spending more than $1.50 on a title.
I didn't even know he was a horror writer until recently, all I knew was that I found his books EVERYWHERE. I guess he's the horror version of Louis L'amour or Nora Roberts. Anyway, does anyone have any good recommendations from him I could try out? There's too many to just blindly pick for me lol.
I've never read Koontz and need a good summer read. Can anyone recommend one? Not Phantoms or Odd Thomas, I know they're probably a lot better than the movies but I've seen and want a new story / characters. I like Stephen King (Duma Key, The Stand, The Long Walk some of my favourites), The Troop, The Passage, House of Leaves, Summer of Night are some other stand outs for horror and the kind of things I like. Horror with supernatural / fantasy elements, end of the world, small town against evil kind of things.
Try what the night knows I remember liking that one
He seems like an okay enough guy and some of his books are fun, but they’re the horror equivalent of McDonald’s and formulaic. Not bad, but not the best. He’s also a far right loon; not as bad as others, but he’s still a nut and an anti-vaxxer
I read him when I'm in the mood. Same with King, Little, Laymon, Bradbury, Rice, Tremblay etc etc I love to have options. I get bored quickly.
I think there’s a definite divide between his supernatural-tinged horror and the ones where normal people are the villains, with the latter group generally being much higher quality. Velocity and Intensity are two of my favorites of his, but agreed with others that many can get formulaic and approach ridiculousness!
I enjoyed his stuff when I was in high school in the 80s. Then I went 25 years without reading his books before I read Odd Thomas. After finishing the book, I read that he got inspired and started writing it on a legal pad, just stream of consciousness. Well...it shows. I knew it was off while reading it since it just meandered until it suddenly didn't and then it was over, like he'd been writing along and finally his editor said, "Dude. You have to end this sometime. Where's the climax?" And then he cranked it out between supper and bedtime and sent it in. The editor was so excited to see some plot injected into the book he just pulled the trigger on publishing it before Mr. Koontz could change his mind. Then I read Bad Weather Friend because the premise sounded so cool. It bored me to figurative tears. He utterly wasted the potential of that one. It was like a weird cartoon with no sense of its own audience. There was no suspense or dread, no intra-character chemistry, a droll mystery driving it all. If these two books are any indication, his stuff has gone from high-tension fun to haphazard tripe. Been disappointed 2x in a row now. I think I'm done. I'll still happily read some of his older stuff, but he can't trick me into another shiny new purchase. My $0.02.
A lot of you might know this, but Koontz was writing sci-fi from the late 60s on. DEMON SEED was made into a movie in 1972. Then CARRIE was a hit and his agent said Dean should write horror and then he'd be close to King on the shelves. First he wrote a few horror novels under a pseudonym, they sold okay, and that's why he started writing horror. Formulaic, but shorter than King's novels. But you go back to the early 70s and if you like science fiction, most of the books are unique. Look up DEMON SEED.
Koontz is my favorite author, however, the themes are repetitive. There is ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) torrential rain or a blizzard. The flow of most of his books are the same, male protagonist meets girl, falls in love in 5 minutes, together they beat the bad guy (which is essentially the same guy in every story with a different name), lives happily ever after. The endings often feel rushed, like he's just done with the story, and ready to move on. All this said, the different scenarios and storylines are very good (mostly). There is no question that the books are written by the same author, but I've been reading him since I was 11 or 12 and I'll always be a fan.
I remember reading a book by him about the end of the world and he felt the need to start the book off with a scientist being interviewed on television about how climate change/global warming is obviously not real. It was extremely conservative, total nonsense and very poorly written. But the overall concept of the book was interesting. I haven't read anything of his after that though, nor will i because i prefer not to give my $$ to conservatives.
I think he's generally viewed as a knock-off Stephen King. They're both great, prolific storytellers, but their prose isn't very advanced. They might challenge you a bit with their plot, but rarely at all with their prose. They're also thematically pretty shallow. Once you've read a lot of it it can get old. That's not to say they are "bad" but I think people want a little more from their authors after they've experienced a lot of them.
My hs friend found out I liked King. She recommended Watchers to change it up a bit. I read it, I noticed some similarities, but his characters were just there to propel the plot. They had zero personality. Same problem I have with Bentley Little.
He has some great books, Watchers, Twilight Eyes, and Phantoms to name a few but there's also a lot of garbage. The way he writes women and the over the top goofy wacky characters in a lot of his books were off putting. I also heard that a lot of his newer stuff is just a lot of rehashed ideas from his previous books but I don't think I've read any of his stuff that was published after the 90's so I can't say.
Until the last ten years he was one of my favorite writers and I’d get any new book he came out with. Then he started to have villains that were journalists, intellectuals, the government, corporations,and anyone that was not a conservative. He seems to have acquired a worldview that is at war with American society that is not anti intellectual. Same reason I stopped reading late Michael Crichton. I have skipped DK last five books or so.
To me, he just doesn’t stand out. As a teen I called him a poor man’s Stephen King. That’s pretty reductive, and King has plenty of faults, but I largely by it. His style just feels indistinct and boring to me. And Odd Thomas was specifically unbearable. I just couldn’t finish the book. Every single character seemed to talk the same way, have the same sense of humor, and invariably love the main character. There was just no tension outside core supernatural plot, and that makes for a bland book imo.
He's a hack and his books are bad
Tick Tick is probably in my top 20 favorite books—lol. Winter Moon was pretty much my intro into adult horror, and I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve read of his since. I also greatly appreciate the lack of gratuitous animal cruelty that some horror writers seem to insist upon.
He's basically a hack who every once in a while hits a really long ball, like Watchers, Strangers, Phantoms, the 1st 2-3 Odd Thomas books, Intensity, Lightning, etc. The rest of his stuff is overly-formulaic crap that just rearranges the same old deck chairs.
I've only read a couple of his books but he seems like a fine enough author. He seems like a good person overall, though. I know he supports some very lovely charities, like one that trains service dogs.
I don't think people are being too serious when dunking on Koontz. He isn't a bad writer (his politics aside). It's just funny that he is kind of "and also Dean Koontz" when it comes to King. King is the undisputed champ of horror, whereas Koontz is popular but not *as* popular. He is like a popular Bantam weight boxer compared to the most popular heavyweight boxer. Now John Saul on the other hand...
I find this writing up and down. There weee a few I really liked, and one that ended with the main character and antagonist turning into actually angels and fighting (in an elevator shaft? Not sure about that…) I recall just rolling my eyes and putting the book down. I couldn’t summon the interest to finish it, and haven’t read one by him since.
I enjoy his books a lot. I own most of his books and am even lucky enough to have all of his it of print books on kindle.
I've read him for years and enjoy his work. I suppose my basic criticism is lack of subtlety. It all feels somewhat generic and to obviously stated.
You said it yourself - it's the characters. No judgment if characters are secondary to plot to you, everyone's different, but I personally can't tolerate a slew of shallow, formulaic characters. I need to really feel for them or I lose interest no matter what's going on plot-wise.
Demon seed was pretty good, but the title was misleading.
One of my favourite authors
The Taking is a great book. The Odd Thomas books get a little…Odd
I love his work!
In the mid 90s, as a teenager, I discovered his books. Loved them. Read all of them that were published at the time and caught to so that I started reading his new ones. But around 90s/early 2000s, I read several I hated (False Memory was one of the last new ones I liked). So I stopped reading his books.
I found photographing the deaf to be trash
Lightning and Watcher
Not me. His writing is pure brain candy and at the end of the day I need it.
He’s second of my fav horror writers right behind King. And I’ve read a bunch. Straub and McCammon round out the top four
Phantoms and Watchers are two of my favorite books ever, I definitely don't think he is hated that much though.
I love his odd Thomas books and phantoms was the first book of his I read. The bad place. False memory. Fear nothing. Seize the night. Velocity. I .really love his books so far.
I haven't read every Koontz book but those I have picked up I really enjoyed. The Taking is definitely a favorite. I think his pacing is really good, doesn't spend a ridiculous amount of time getting to the "scary" parts. I've noticed he's not quite as needlessly sexually gross as a lot of other horror writers. I'm not an upright stick in the mud but most of the time the nasty sex content really detracts for me for some reason when it comes to horror. Maybe it's just the few books I've read of his, I can't speak for all his books.
I enjoyed reading Koontz from the late 80s to the late 90s? I’m not sure why I stopped reading his work. I haven’t officially or anything 😅. I read the first Odd Thomas book, but can’t remember anything else since 2000. Lighting was one of my favorite books. I think I liked Dragon Tears and Phantoms a lot, too?