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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Have been in the mood for horror lately, and am trying to go outside of just reading Stephen King books all the time. This is my first Koontz, and probably my last...the hook is good, the scenario is interesting (everyone in a town vanishes--it's what made me want to read it) the pacing is good, but the prose is bad, and the characters are flat. I remember some tweet I read recently about how modern popular fiction is defined by the totally style-less prose of Lee Child, and I was like, yes, exactly. So much popular fiction feels totally devoid of style, as if it were the mere literal description of a movie, of how the visual events are unfolding, without style or flourish or personality. James Patterson falls into this category, and I'd add Koontz to that category, too. There's not any personality here. It's OK stuff to read on an airplane, or at the beach, but I should have picked something different to read on my summer stay-cation....but who am I kidding, I'll read this kind of stuff forever...
If there is a person out there that would not find this book eerie, I'd be surprised.
Koontz writes fiercely here, keeping the sentences devoid of overabundant words and pretty phrases. Instead he just delivers the goods, action from page one. His writing style is not overdrawn, but instead is kept minimal to complement the story alone.
The villain is frightening, complex, and powerful. There's enough imagination and depth to it that it stays with you after the last page has been closed. Supporting characters seem real and are easy to care about. They don't chase their tails attempting daring, stupid moves, but instead seem to be genuinely driven. There are slight cliches here and there in terms of characterization, but only obvious cliches where they deserve (and are expected) to be, nothing cheap.
This is one of those books where if you're reading through it, it's hard to imagine how on earth the strings can be tied together to make sense at the end, but somehow Koontz accomplishes this. It's all wrapped up in a satisfying way, and the road on which I traveled to get there was exquisite. The plot is as complex as its villain, each character keeping it flowing instead of weighting it down, the heart and soul of the novel always kept alive by a steady supply of imagination and intrigue.
Filled to the top with suspense, horrid imagery, truly bizarre and horrifying deaths, gory details, a pure mystery, science and intelligence, well-drawn out fear and even small glimpses of hope, this is a horror book that EVERY horror reader owes it to themselves to read. Koontz really made a name for himself, and this is one of the works that accomplished that feat.
Koontz writes fiercely here, keeping the sentences devoid of overabundant words and pretty phrases. Instead he just delivers the goods, action from page one. His writing style is not overdrawn, but instead is kept minimal to complement the story alone.
The villain is frightening, complex, and powerful. There's enough imagination and depth to it that it stays with you after the last page has been closed. Supporting characters seem real and are easy to care about. They don't chase their tails attempting daring, stupid moves, but instead seem to be genuinely driven. There are slight cliches here and there in terms of characterization, but only obvious cliches where they deserve (and are expected) to be, nothing cheap.
This is one of those books where if you're reading through it, it's hard to imagine how on earth the strings can be tied together to make sense at the end, but somehow Koontz accomplishes this. It's all wrapped up in a satisfying way, and the road on which I traveled to get there was exquisite. The plot is as complex as its villain, each character keeping it flowing instead of weighting it down, the heart and soul of the novel always kept alive by a steady supply of imagination and intrigue.
Filled to the top with suspense, horrid imagery, truly bizarre and horrifying deaths, gory details, a pure mystery, science and intelligence, well-drawn out fear and even small glimpses of hope, this is a horror book that EVERY horror reader owes it to themselves to read. Koontz really made a name for himself, and this is one of the works that accomplished that feat.
A Surprisingly High-Quality Chiller from the King of Black-and-White.
The scream was distant and brief.
Dean Koontz is one of those authors you cannot one hundred percent hate or one hundred percent like because of how inconsistent the quality of his books are. While some are original and memorable contributions to whatever genre he is writing in, be it horror or suspense, mystery or sci-fi, others are generic stinkers which are almost impossible to tell apart, built on the same skeleton with the same sarcastic robots beep-booping around and pretending to be people. I think almost every reader who has tasted at least three of his books has a love-hate relationship with Koontz, for diving into his works is like the BeanBoozled challenge: Will this be a GOOD book, you wonder, or will it make me vomit my breakfast out and demand a refund? Luckily PHANTOMS, released in 1983 and concerning urban legends that revolve around disappearing communities, is a novel of the former kind, and may be the best Koontz book that I have read so far.
After picking up her kid sister Lisa, who she is now the legal guardian of after their mother's sudden death, Jenny soon returns to her hometown of Snowfield, California, and thank God for that. Not only is she happy to be back in the small but homely community that has made her happy since the day she moved there, but Lisa too is excited to see the snow that the mountain town is known for being swept by. However, neither expect the silence, the emptiness, that meets them upon their arrival. Everyone in Snowfield is gone...except for the occasional dead body that slumps swollen against cupboards or sprawls across floors, or the severed limbs that bleed across kitchen counters. And yet, despite this, there are no signs of struggle, no excessive violence. So what happened to the dead, and where are the missing? When a group of law enforcement officers led by Sheriff Bryce Hammond arrive from a nearby town, Jenny and Lisa should feel safe...and yet they still cannot help but eye every shadow and wince at every flickering light – they should feel safe, and yet they can still sense some unknown presence following them, slithering about them in the darkness and watched them when they are illuminated by light. With oddities around almost every corner, the group in Snowfield cannot help but fear this unknown enemy...but they know nothing of fear – not yet, but they will.
She hadn’t wanted to admit it. That was why she had not yet shouted “hello” into the funeral streets. She had been afraid no one would answer.
Now she didn’t shout because she was afraid someone would answer.
PHANTOMS mixes a unique brand of the evil-comes-to-a-small-town trope with themes of cosmic terror to create a chilling classic of the genre that I'm surprised hasn’t founded its own division of horror. For make no mistake: no matter what Koontz says, this is a horror novel – and a damn fine one, at that. This books has an interesting premise that is well executed, which is surprising: of all the authors I'd expect to deliver a story that is somehow as good as its unique concept, Dean Koontz sure isn't one of them. I am of course referring to how often a great idea will be ruined by terrible plotting and downright awful characters, such as C. J. Tudor's THE CHALK MAN. However, PHANTOMS is most certainly not a disappointment.
First I am going to talk about the characters, which I am going to do for a few paragraphs. To start with: the grey area. Now, Koontz is known (and loathed) for his knack for writing characters who are either super good or super bad. However, that isn't really the case here; while most of the characters are black-and-white, there are a few who exist in that grey zone. So what? you may be asking. Stephen King writes characters like that ALL the time. True, but when Koontz writes characters who aren't pure good/evil, it's something to be excited about. An example is Wargle, one of the police officers who accompanies Sheriff Hammond to the town. Now, anyone who has read PHANTOMS will know that Wargle is a dick, a corrupt sleazeball whose very language is Disgusting. And yet he is, despite his (many) faults, he is technically one of the good guys. Surprising, right? He may leer at Lisa, piss everyone off, make inappropriate comments at inappropriate times, and just act like an ass, but he is technically a good guy in comparison to the supernatural presence (and the human antagonist who pops up later on in the plot). I absolutely hated Wargle, wishing for a brick to break through his skull during every scene in which he was present (or for some sucker-lined tentacle to wrap itself round his leg and drag him, clawing at the ground and screaming, towards a squid-like beak opening and closing In hunger...) but he is still technically a good guy...just not a very good one. He's definitely on a certain side of that grey zone, but within it he is.
The other part of the characters I'd like to talk about is how realistic they are. Realistic characters in a DEAN KOONTZ novel? Okay, NOW you're talking nonsense, bud. But I'm not, and that's what makes it so delightful: there are realistic characters in a book with Dean Koontz's name on it! What the haaaiiil is going on here? Something good, honestly, so let's not take it for granted. Anyway...All of the characters (well, most of them, anyway) feel like real people, with real fears and quirks that give them proper personalities. One of the police officers is afraid of using his gun and constantly doubts himself because of it, while Lisa is determined to appear brave not only to make her big sister proud, but also to stop bad memories from gushing in and taking control of her (which justifies the stupid-teenage-girl-trying-to-be-irrationally-brave stereotype that made Amity in ELSEWHERE sooooo damn annoying). The characters in PHANTOMS feel like actual people, which makes it a lot more effective when bad stuff starts happening to them. When said bad stuff does start, not only do the characters are realistically, but they don't spend pages upon pages refusing to believe what they have seen, what they know to be true. This is, in fact, realistic in itself: if you were to see a monster, you most likely wouldn’t try to convince yourself that you'd imagine it; you'd realise that you have seen something horrific and try to figure out what to do next. Well, possibly, anyway. You get what I mean, though: the characters in PHANTOMS aren't (all) bumbling idiots who walk into a monster's yawning mouth because they insist that it's a door.
“I don’t think it’s a disease,” Lisa said bleakly, echoing Jenny’s own thoughts. “It’s something worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“I don’t know. But I…I feel it. Something worse.”
On that note, however, just because the characters are well-written for a Koontz novel doesn’t meet that they are necessarily well-written for a book on its own. The characters do spout unrealistic nonsense from time to time (Lisa, a teenage girl, somehow correctly uses "our" in a sentence along the lines of "anticipate our standing here" instead of "us"), and a few characters like Jenny or Bryce are annoyingly pure - and, what's worse, the supporting characters never miss the chance to let 'em know it! There is, to be vulgar, a lot of ass-kissing in this book. Don't get me wrong, I loved the books and grew to care about the characters, but they are only realistic in comparison to Koontz's other cardboard cut-outs. There is not really much conflict either: the likeable characters all like each other and hate the annoying characters.
More often than not I can only really complain about three features of a Dean Koontz novel: the characters, the dialogue and the plot. I've already spoken about the characters/dialogue and, funnily enough, didn’t find the plot to be a boring and uninteresting piece recycled trash, so I guess that's my complaining done…so since we're on that track: the plot!
Not only is the premise of PHANTOMS interesting enough to lure in fans of the horror, suspense and mystery genre, but it also has the ability to do such a well-imagined idea justice. Koontz is quite good at introducing a cool plot that he then proceeds to shit on over the course of hundreds and hundreds of garbage plot devices, flat characters and irregular dialogue (I'm looking at you ELSEWHERE and WHAT THE NIGHT KNOWS, you let-downs!). PHANTOMS is, however, not what I consider a let-down (my own opinion). I will split this into a few paragraphs to "analyse" separate aspects of the novel that I enjoyed.
First of all: the pacing. Koontz, as always, throws you into the action from the first page. However subtle the "action" of the novel's first few chapters may be, it is still exciting with the sisters slowly exploring the town and learning of the mystery that cannot be solved by rational explanations. When the police officers arrive, the pacing begins to increase as macabre, mysterious and downright creepy scenes happen. The pacing is not too fast, and yet is fast enough to create excitement and keep readers turning the pages to see what they will bring. Koontz doesn’t cram action down your throat relentlessly, but keeps PHANTOMS exciting enough to lure in readers and trap them for the duration of its length.
Next is something I touched on in the last paragraph but would like to elaborate on: the atmosphere. The first chapter of PHANTOMS is two pages long, and yet it manages to create an effective feeling of eeriness in its short duration. The opening quote of this review is actually the first line of PHANTOMS, and is one of the greatest, most captivating first-lines that I have found in a horror novel; it makes readers curios as to why somebody was screaming, and what made it brief. After this, as Lisa and Jenny explore the town of Snowfield, Koontz manages to rekindle this eerie mood and make your skin prickle at times. However, unlike most of Koontz's books, the action that the reader is thrown into at the start is subtle instead of explosive, quiet in a way that threatens to be split by screams or roars or inhuman laughs. The "action" scenes that occur vary from being bump-in-the-dark to Koontz revealing what is attacking the main characters: within chapters the monster goes from tormenting his prey in the dark to terrifying them in a place where they can see it properly. Koontz utilises two methods of terror, and he does so pretty well. Of course, Koontz doesn’t just use the appearance of the monster to create terror: he uses eerie devices like locked-room murders or impossible noises to send shivers down your spine.
There are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in velvet-draped rooms of a plushy carpeted funeral parlour, which is far different from the bleak and terrible silence of grief in a widower’s lonely bedroom. To Jenny, it seemed curiously as if there were cause for grieving in Snowfield’s silence; however, she didn’t know why she felt that way or even why such a peculiar thought had occurred to her in the first place. She thought of the silence of a gentle summer night, too, which isn’t actually a silence at all, but a subtle chorus of moth wings tapping on windows, crickets moving in the grass, and porch swings ever-so-faintly sighing and creaking. Snowfield’s soundless slumber was imbued with some of that quality, too, a hint of fevered activity—voices, movement, struggle—just beyond the reach of the senses. But it was more than that. There is also the silence of a winter night, deep and cold and heartless, but containing an expectation of the bustling, growing noises of spring. This silence was filled with expectation, too, and it made Jenny nervous.
Next: Koontz's prose. Now, a lot of people usually complain about his "purple prose"; for those like me who don’t really know what that is, purple prose is prose (duh) which is seen as too poetic, if you will, and with too many words in a sentence. An example would be a four-line-long sentence of metaphors and similes that describes one or two things, which is annoying especially when only a few words could be used instead of dozens. In other books I have experienced this purple prose of Koontz's, which is made even more grating by how one paragraph would be filled with purple prose and the next written in short, casual language, being almost schizophrenic in nature. While Koontz's prose is poetic in places but casual in others, the transition is rarely sudden and only occasionally annoying. Such can be said for the "purple prose" in this book: while it is there, it isn't as annoying as it is in other Koontz novels.
The prose also serves the story quite well: it succeeds when the horror is required to be subtle or to create atmosphere, while providing descriptions that are punched forcefully into your brain, no matter how horrifying the images are: with his style, you just can't help but feel a cold tendril brush against the back of your neck, can't help but picture the empty streets of Snowfield - or the horrors that inhabit it.
Even vague illumination of that fluttering monstrosity was too much. What Bryce saw on the other side of the glass—what he thought he saw in the kaleidoscopic multiplicity of light, shadow and shimmering moonlight—was something out of a fever dream. It had a three- or four-foot wingspan. An insectile head. Short, quivering antennae. Small, pointed, and ceaselessly working mandibles. A segmented body. The body was suspended between the pale gray wings and was approximately the size and shape of two footballs placed end to end; it, too, was gray, the same shade as the wings—a moldy, sickly gray—and fuzzy and moist-looking. Bryce glimpsed eyes, as well: huge, ink-black, multifaceted, protuberant lenses that caught the light, refracting and reflecting it, gleaming darkly and hungrily.
So, to end this review: PHANTOMS is not only the best book of Koontz's that I have read, but it is also a strong horror novel in its own right. And what's more: it doesn’t have a golden retriever!
The scream was distant and brief.
Dean Koontz is one of those authors you cannot one hundred percent hate or one hundred percent like because of how inconsistent the quality of his books are. While some are original and memorable contributions to whatever genre he is writing in, be it horror or suspense, mystery or sci-fi, others are generic stinkers which are almost impossible to tell apart, built on the same skeleton with the same sarcastic robots beep-booping around and pretending to be people. I think almost every reader who has tasted at least three of his books has a love-hate relationship with Koontz, for diving into his works is like the BeanBoozled challenge: Will this be a GOOD book, you wonder, or will it make me vomit my breakfast out and demand a refund? Luckily PHANTOMS, released in 1983 and concerning urban legends that revolve around disappearing communities, is a novel of the former kind, and may be the best Koontz book that I have read so far.
After picking up her kid sister Lisa, who she is now the legal guardian of after their mother's sudden death, Jenny soon returns to her hometown of Snowfield, California, and thank God for that. Not only is she happy to be back in the small but homely community that has made her happy since the day she moved there, but Lisa too is excited to see the snow that the mountain town is known for being swept by. However, neither expect the silence, the emptiness, that meets them upon their arrival. Everyone in Snowfield is gone...except for the occasional dead body that slumps swollen against cupboards or sprawls across floors, or the severed limbs that bleed across kitchen counters. And yet, despite this, there are no signs of struggle, no excessive violence. So what happened to the dead, and where are the missing? When a group of law enforcement officers led by Sheriff Bryce Hammond arrive from a nearby town, Jenny and Lisa should feel safe...and yet they still cannot help but eye every shadow and wince at every flickering light – they should feel safe, and yet they can still sense some unknown presence following them, slithering about them in the darkness and watched them when they are illuminated by light. With oddities around almost every corner, the group in Snowfield cannot help but fear this unknown enemy...but they know nothing of fear – not yet, but they will.
She hadn’t wanted to admit it. That was why she had not yet shouted “hello” into the funeral streets. She had been afraid no one would answer.
Now she didn’t shout because she was afraid someone would answer.
PHANTOMS mixes a unique brand of the evil-comes-to-a-small-town trope with themes of cosmic terror to create a chilling classic of the genre that I'm surprised hasn’t founded its own division of horror. For make no mistake: no matter what Koontz says, this is a horror novel – and a damn fine one, at that. This books has an interesting premise that is well executed, which is surprising: of all the authors I'd expect to deliver a story that is somehow as good as its unique concept, Dean Koontz sure isn't one of them. I am of course referring to how often a great idea will be ruined by terrible plotting and downright awful characters, such as C. J. Tudor's THE CHALK MAN. However, PHANTOMS is most certainly not a disappointment.
First I am going to talk about the characters, which I am going to do for a few paragraphs. To start with: the grey area. Now, Koontz is known (and loathed) for his knack for writing characters who are either super good or super bad. However, that isn't really the case here; while most of the characters are black-and-white, there are a few who exist in that grey zone. So what? you may be asking. Stephen King writes characters like that ALL the time. True, but when Koontz writes characters who aren't pure good/evil, it's something to be excited about. An example is Wargle, one of the police officers who accompanies Sheriff Hammond to the town. Now, anyone who has read PHANTOMS will know that Wargle is a dick, a corrupt sleazeball whose very language is Disgusting. And yet he is, despite his (many) faults, he is technically one of the good guys. Surprising, right? He may leer at Lisa, piss everyone off, make inappropriate comments at inappropriate times, and just act like an ass, but he is technically a good guy in comparison to the supernatural presence (and the human antagonist who pops up later on in the plot). I absolutely hated Wargle, wishing for a brick to break through his skull during every scene in which he was present (or for some sucker-lined tentacle to wrap itself round his leg and drag him, clawing at the ground and screaming, towards a squid-like beak opening and closing In hunger...) but he is still technically a good guy...just not a very good one. He's definitely on a certain side of that grey zone, but within it he is.
The other part of the characters I'd like to talk about is how realistic they are. Realistic characters in a DEAN KOONTZ novel? Okay, NOW you're talking nonsense, bud. But I'm not, and that's what makes it so delightful: there are realistic characters in a book with Dean Koontz's name on it! What the haaaiiil is going on here? Something good, honestly, so let's not take it for granted. Anyway...All of the characters (well, most of them, anyway) feel like real people, with real fears and quirks that give them proper personalities. One of the police officers is afraid of using his gun and constantly doubts himself because of it, while Lisa is determined to appear brave not only to make her big sister proud, but also to stop bad memories from gushing in and taking control of her (which justifies the stupid-teenage-girl-trying-to-be-irrationally-brave stereotype that made Amity in ELSEWHERE sooooo damn annoying). The characters in PHANTOMS feel like actual people, which makes it a lot more effective when bad stuff starts happening to them. When said bad stuff does start, not only do the characters are realistically, but they don't spend pages upon pages refusing to believe what they have seen, what they know to be true. This is, in fact, realistic in itself: if you were to see a monster, you most likely wouldn’t try to convince yourself that you'd imagine it; you'd realise that you have seen something horrific and try to figure out what to do next. Well, possibly, anyway. You get what I mean, though: the characters in PHANTOMS aren't (all) bumbling idiots who walk into a monster's yawning mouth because they insist that it's a door.
“I don’t think it’s a disease,” Lisa said bleakly, echoing Jenny’s own thoughts. “It’s something worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“I don’t know. But I…I feel it. Something worse.”
On that note, however, just because the characters are well-written for a Koontz novel doesn’t meet that they are necessarily well-written for a book on its own. The characters do spout unrealistic nonsense from time to time (Lisa, a teenage girl, somehow correctly uses "our" in a sentence along the lines of "anticipate our standing here" instead of "us"), and a few characters like Jenny or Bryce are annoyingly pure - and, what's worse, the supporting characters never miss the chance to let 'em know it! There is, to be vulgar, a lot of ass-kissing in this book. Don't get me wrong, I loved the books and grew to care about the characters, but they are only realistic in comparison to Koontz's other cardboard cut-outs. There is not really much conflict either: the likeable characters all like each other and hate the annoying characters.
More often than not I can only really complain about three features of a Dean Koontz novel: the characters, the dialogue and the plot. I've already spoken about the characters/dialogue and, funnily enough, didn’t find the plot to be a boring and uninteresting piece recycled trash, so I guess that's my complaining done…so since we're on that track: the plot!
Not only is the premise of PHANTOMS interesting enough to lure in fans of the horror, suspense and mystery genre, but it also has the ability to do such a well-imagined idea justice. Koontz is quite good at introducing a cool plot that he then proceeds to shit on over the course of hundreds and hundreds of garbage plot devices, flat characters and irregular dialogue (I'm looking at you ELSEWHERE and WHAT THE NIGHT KNOWS, you let-downs!). PHANTOMS is, however, not what I consider a let-down (my own opinion). I will split this into a few paragraphs to "analyse" separate aspects of the novel that I enjoyed.
First of all: the pacing. Koontz, as always, throws you into the action from the first page. However subtle the "action" of the novel's first few chapters may be, it is still exciting with the sisters slowly exploring the town and learning of the mystery that cannot be solved by rational explanations. When the police officers arrive, the pacing begins to increase as macabre, mysterious and downright creepy scenes happen. The pacing is not too fast, and yet is fast enough to create excitement and keep readers turning the pages to see what they will bring. Koontz doesn’t cram action down your throat relentlessly, but keeps PHANTOMS exciting enough to lure in readers and trap them for the duration of its length.
Next is something I touched on in the last paragraph but would like to elaborate on: the atmosphere. The first chapter of PHANTOMS is two pages long, and yet it manages to create an effective feeling of eeriness in its short duration. The opening quote of this review is actually the first line of PHANTOMS, and is one of the greatest, most captivating first-lines that I have found in a horror novel; it makes readers curios as to why somebody was screaming, and what made it brief. After this, as Lisa and Jenny explore the town of Snowfield, Koontz manages to rekindle this eerie mood and make your skin prickle at times. However, unlike most of Koontz's books, the action that the reader is thrown into at the start is subtle instead of explosive, quiet in a way that threatens to be split by screams or roars or inhuman laughs. The "action" scenes that occur vary from being bump-in-the-dark to Koontz revealing what is attacking the main characters: within chapters the monster goes from tormenting his prey in the dark to terrifying them in a place where they can see it properly. Koontz utilises two methods of terror, and he does so pretty well. Of course, Koontz doesn’t just use the appearance of the monster to create terror: he uses eerie devices like locked-room murders or impossible noises to send shivers down your spine.
There are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in velvet-draped rooms of a plushy carpeted funeral parlour, which is far different from the bleak and terrible silence of grief in a widower’s lonely bedroom. To Jenny, it seemed curiously as if there were cause for grieving in Snowfield’s silence; however, she didn’t know why she felt that way or even why such a peculiar thought had occurred to her in the first place. She thought of the silence of a gentle summer night, too, which isn’t actually a silence at all, but a subtle chorus of moth wings tapping on windows, crickets moving in the grass, and porch swings ever-so-faintly sighing and creaking. Snowfield’s soundless slumber was imbued with some of that quality, too, a hint of fevered activity—voices, movement, struggle—just beyond the reach of the senses. But it was more than that. There is also the silence of a winter night, deep and cold and heartless, but containing an expectation of the bustling, growing noises of spring. This silence was filled with expectation, too, and it made Jenny nervous.
Next: Koontz's prose. Now, a lot of people usually complain about his "purple prose"; for those like me who don’t really know what that is, purple prose is prose (duh) which is seen as too poetic, if you will, and with too many words in a sentence. An example would be a four-line-long sentence of metaphors and similes that describes one or two things, which is annoying especially when only a few words could be used instead of dozens. In other books I have experienced this purple prose of Koontz's, which is made even more grating by how one paragraph would be filled with purple prose and the next written in short, casual language, being almost schizophrenic in nature. While Koontz's prose is poetic in places but casual in others, the transition is rarely sudden and only occasionally annoying. Such can be said for the "purple prose" in this book: while it is there, it isn't as annoying as it is in other Koontz novels.
The prose also serves the story quite well: it succeeds when the horror is required to be subtle or to create atmosphere, while providing descriptions that are punched forcefully into your brain, no matter how horrifying the images are: with his style, you just can't help but feel a cold tendril brush against the back of your neck, can't help but picture the empty streets of Snowfield - or the horrors that inhabit it.
Even vague illumination of that fluttering monstrosity was too much. What Bryce saw on the other side of the glass—what he thought he saw in the kaleidoscopic multiplicity of light, shadow and shimmering moonlight—was something out of a fever dream. It had a three- or four-foot wingspan. An insectile head. Short, quivering antennae. Small, pointed, and ceaselessly working mandibles. A segmented body. The body was suspended between the pale gray wings and was approximately the size and shape of two footballs placed end to end; it, too, was gray, the same shade as the wings—a moldy, sickly gray—and fuzzy and moist-looking. Bryce glimpsed eyes, as well: huge, ink-black, multifaceted, protuberant lenses that caught the light, refracting and reflecting it, gleaming darkly and hungrily.
So, to end this review: PHANTOMS is not only the best book of Koontz's that I have read, but it is also a strong horror novel in its own right. And what's more: it doesn’t have a golden retriever!
When you're reading your library book and realize you've already seen the movie. #damnit #bibliophile #mrsowlssonreads I thought it seemed familiar.
Eerie.
Creepy.
Scary.
Weird.
AWESOME!
"Something" is killing the people all over a city, and a small group of survivors come together to find out what it is.
A mystery, definitely.
A *hint* of a love story.
The author gives such depth to the main characters, as would a bystander observing their adventures.
While reading it, you'll think "What the crap kind of monster is able to do this kind of stuff!?!"
Creepy.
Scary.
Weird.
AWESOME!
"Something" is killing the people all over a city, and a small group of survivors come together to find out what it is.
A mystery, definitely.
A *hint* of a love story.
The author gives such depth to the main characters, as would a bystander observing their adventures.
While reading it, you'll think "What the crap kind of monster is able to do this kind of stuff!?!"
I had a hard time getting into the book. It was a little slow at first. It got better but the ending wasn't as great as it could have been. It felt a little rushed
3/10 και πολύ του είναι.
4η και λογικά τελευταία ευκαιρία που δίνω στον κύριο. Πιο πολιτικά ορθός πεθαίνεις. Ευκολίες και κενά στην υπόθεση για γέλια. Και ένα τέλος σα να βγήκε από το μικρό σπίτι στο λιβάδι. ΑΣΕ ΜΑΣ ΚΟΥΚΛΙΤΣΑ ΜΟΥ. Αν αυτό είναι τρόμος, εγώ είμαι ο Μαραντόνα.
4η και λογικά τελευταία ευκαιρία που δίνω στον κύριο. Πιο πολιτικά ορθός πεθαίνεις. Ευκολίες και κενά στην υπόθεση για γέλια. Και ένα τέλος σα να βγήκε από το μικρό σπίτι στο λιβάδι. ΑΣΕ ΜΑΣ ΚΟΥΚΛΙΤΣΑ ΜΟΥ. Αν αυτό είναι τρόμος, εγώ είμαι ο Μαραντόνα.
This did not hit the mark for me. There was no depth to the characters or the storyline. I'm a bit disappointed I wasted my time reading this. Predictable.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It was like Stephen King's "The Mist" but no Mist and no crazy preachy lady.