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walzkiddo 's review for:
Dragon Tears
by Dean Koontz
Oh, man. Koontz, you're killing me.
I write a lot. I've written since I was eleven years old, everything from thriller to horror to nonfiction to fantasy, and I'm all the better for it now, more than seven years later. I don't think my writing was very good a year ago, and I'm still not convinced it's that great today. This book, Dragon Tears, reads like it was written by an eleven-year-old kid. Assuming, of course, that I know what an eleven-year-old kid writes like. For instance: random plot twists that make no sense in the context of the story. Characters that seem to edit themselves for a particular age, using words like "geek", "peabrain", and "jerk", when just slightly stronger language would have cut right to the core. Dialogue that would never, ever emanate from any living person's mouth, under any circumstances (my personal favorite: "More like teleportation. It goes from one place to another, poof, without physically traveling the distance in between." And then, as if that weren't bad enough, his partner proceeds to throw up her hands and shout, "Beam me up, Scotty!"). A host of characters with inexplicable relationships that link up at the end to form a completely unpalatable deus ex machina (or rather, deus ex dog) climax (or rather, anticlimax). An antagonist that is not in the least bit scary, nor threatening, nor unpredictable. Main characters with drab personalities, token life histories, and no particular reason for any of the deeds they commit, fair or foul. This is writing for the sake of writing, dull horror-thriller slag for the sake of publication and profit. You were great in your prime, Koontz old pal (i.e., The Mask, Demon Seed, The Bad Place, essentially everything before 1992), but you've fallen way off. Sorry.
I write a lot. I've written since I was eleven years old, everything from thriller to horror to nonfiction to fantasy, and I'm all the better for it now, more than seven years later. I don't think my writing was very good a year ago, and I'm still not convinced it's that great today. This book, Dragon Tears, reads like it was written by an eleven-year-old kid. Assuming, of course, that I know what an eleven-year-old kid writes like. For instance: random plot twists that make no sense in the context of the story. Characters that seem to edit themselves for a particular age, using words like "geek", "peabrain", and "jerk", when just slightly stronger language would have cut right to the core. Dialogue that would never, ever emanate from any living person's mouth, under any circumstances (my personal favorite: "More like teleportation. It goes from one place to another, poof, without physically traveling the distance in between." And then, as if that weren't bad enough, his partner proceeds to throw up her hands and shout, "Beam me up, Scotty!"). A host of characters with inexplicable relationships that link up at the end to form a completely unpalatable deus ex machina (or rather, deus ex dog) climax (or rather, anticlimax). An antagonist that is not in the least bit scary, nor threatening, nor unpredictable. Main characters with drab personalities, token life histories, and no particular reason for any of the deeds they commit, fair or foul. This is writing for the sake of writing, dull horror-thriller slag for the sake of publication and profit. You were great in your prime, Koontz old pal (i.e., The Mask, Demon Seed, The Bad Place, essentially everything before 1992), but you've fallen way off. Sorry.