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A review by sohare1981
Elsewhere by Dean Koontz
2.0
I went into this story not knowing anything about it. It's been in my to-be-read pile for a while, and when I saw it at my local library, I decided it was time to try. The story is told from several points of view but it mainly revolves around the characters, the 11-year-old Aminty and her father, Jeffy.
They're living their simple lives years after their wife/mother walk out on them and seem to be content in their quiet little world when an eccentric man thought to be homeless leaves Jeffy with "the key to everything" and asked him to keep it for him, but not use it. When accidentally activated, they're thrown into a dangerous life-risking life hiding from the shadow state and thrown into parallel worlds where evil things have taken place that their timeline hasn't.
I was a little put off by the many different narrators. Yes, Jeffy and Aminty were featured more, but then the author likes to what I call head-hop. A few scenes from Jeffy, one or two from Aminty, then throws you into the main antagonist of the story Fallack, then occasionally into an ed-point, and a different timeline Michelle, to some Fallack's teammates, to a random hotel security guide. It seems like every time Koontz introduced a character; he then put a scene in that character's point of view. A bit unnecessary, and I think limiting it to two, maybe three points of view would have been sufficient.
Not only that, because it is a "parallel world" story, you have to keep track of what world they're in though Koontz tends to call these timelines, which I think is a whole different concept. But I may just be nit-picking at that terminology. So you really have to pay attention to who and where they are. The head-hops got to be a little too much for me, but overall the story was good. There were surprises, and I would like maybe one or two worlds or more interaction with the worlds. This is my first read of Dean Koontz, and I feel intrigued enough to consider reading some of his other works.
They're living their simple lives years after their wife/mother walk out on them and seem to be content in their quiet little world when an eccentric man thought to be homeless leaves Jeffy with "the key to everything" and asked him to keep it for him, but not use it. When accidentally activated, they're thrown into a dangerous life-risking life hiding from the shadow state and thrown into parallel worlds where evil things have taken place that their timeline hasn't.
I was a little put off by the many different narrators. Yes, Jeffy and Aminty were featured more, but then the author likes to what I call head-hop. A few scenes from Jeffy, one or two from Aminty, then throws you into the main antagonist of the story Fallack, then occasionally into an ed-point, and a different timeline Michelle, to some Fallack's teammates, to a random hotel security guide. It seems like every time Koontz introduced a character; he then put a scene in that character's point of view. A bit unnecessary, and I think limiting it to two, maybe three points of view would have been sufficient.
Not only that, because it is a "parallel world" story, you have to keep track of what world they're in though Koontz tends to call these timelines, which I think is a whole different concept. But I may just be nit-picking at that terminology. So you really have to pay attention to who and where they are. The head-hops got to be a little too much for me, but overall the story was good. There were surprises, and I would like maybe one or two worlds or more interaction with the worlds. This is my first read of Dean Koontz, and I feel intrigued enough to consider reading some of his other works.