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interghost's review against another edition
3.0
A book of 2 halves really. - I was really enjoying this book at the start. The mystery and the horror type story of a house possessed and that comes alive every 38 years and tries to kill everyone.
The actuall furst half of this book gave me a pretty horrid nightmare, and was doing a great job.
However... the 2nd half then turns into a "What if AI became self aware and started killing everyone, and then went back in time and killed people too?!" Which just felt like a completely different book. I lost interest with the whole nano-bots and the part machine monsters. - It then started to get a little better towards the very end... but then felt like Koontz was bored, or ran out of ideas to keep it going and the house just jumpped back to normal.
Overall a decent enough book and worth a read. But I just wished it stayed a ghost story and not a sci-fi one!
3 to 3.5 stars!
The actuall furst half of this book gave me a pretty horrid nightmare, and was doing a great job.
However... the 2nd half then turns into a "What if AI became self aware and started killing everyone, and then went back in time and killed people too?!" Which just felt like a completely different book. I lost interest with the whole nano-bots and the part machine monsters. - It then started to get a little better towards the very end... but then felt like Koontz was bored, or ran out of ideas to keep it going and the house just jumpped back to normal.
Overall a decent enough book and worth a read. But I just wished it stayed a ghost story and not a sci-fi one!
3 to 3.5 stars!
sjmyers's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book especially the ending which I cannot say too often. At times I thought the book moved slowly but it could have been because it took me so long to read it thanks to the adoption of my new puppy! I would recommend this book especially to Dean Koontz fans who might be disappointed in some of his newer releases.
dragonlady01's review against another edition
4.0
A fun and exciting book. Definitely not easy to predict what happens in this book. Koontz always delivers on the spooky, exciting, and thrilling.
jetru_'s review against another edition
Each chapter just repeated itself. It seemed like there was very little movement in the plot.
bogdanbl's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting idea, but it gets lost in the details at a few points.
misterfixit2k's review against another edition
1.0
I'm a Koontz fan, but this one has too many characters for me to follow ... after getting halfway through the book and not really enjoying it, I give up.
eeriemusick's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
wintermute47's review against another edition
2.0
As with many of Koontz's more recent books, by the time the plot made sense, I had stopped caring about the collection of random muppets facing inexplicable mortal terror. Another interesting trend I've noticed is that in the Koontzverse, there's a shockingly high proportion of murdering sociopaths. That's not surprising for a horror author, but when you're writing a book about a building full of eldritch horrors, how much worse can you really make it by throwing in Ted Bundy? And the maniacs are never just maniacs--they're maniac government agents, or maniac scientists, or maniac performance artists. Mania apparently is a part-time job in the Koontzverse.
As an aside, budding authors, please, if you plan to have a genius scientist character, please don't have him argue that the suitability of cosmological constants to human life implies the existence of god, because the anthropic principle is very simple and it will just make you look ridiculous.
As an aside, budding authors, please, if you plan to have a genius scientist character, please don't have him argue that the suitability of cosmological constants to human life implies the existence of god, because the anthropic principle is very simple and it will just make you look ridiculous.
jenergizer's review against another edition
3.0
I wanted to really like this book as I'm a huge Koontz fan, but it fell short for me.... some parts were great and others felt like Koontz was kind of laboring through, trying to think of what else to say. An interesting premise that didn't quite make it all the way to what I had hoped for.