The Taking by Dean Koontz
Blah blah blah. We know I don’t like Koontz anymore. What we don’t know is why I keep reading him. I guess I’m just so disappointed. I don’t think there’s ever been an author I liked so much whose later work turned me off so bad. I’m finding these newer novels nearly unreadable due to choppy paragraphs combined with pointless purple prose and characters we’re told about rather than learn about.
The Taking also suffers from the worst case of deus ex machina I’ve ever witnessed. The machina literally turns out to be deus. You’re reading along about 15 pages from the end thinking there must be four or five volumes to go and then bam! All better. Never mind. It might as well be Pam waking up with Bobby in the shower.
OK, I swear. No more new Koontz books ever. If I get in a Koontz mood I’ll re-read something from his glorious past.
Some purple prose snippets:
“The certainty of purpose that characterized her approach to life seemed, however, to be less firm than usual, turning soggy under the influence of the deluge, so quickly washed thin and bleached of its former intensity.”
“Like cloud-fluttered moonglow in a dream rich with psychosis, orange firelight rippled across the rain-soaked lawn, over the loathsome bulbous fungus that now seemed obscene in its slimy tumescence.”