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 enlarge | Author: Dean Koontz
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy Used: $0.08
You Save: $26.92 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  207 reviews
Sales Rank: 6862
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 0553804820
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553804829
ASIN: 0553804820
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Dog lover: 5 stars; Koontz fan: 31/2 stars July 24, 2008
As an avid dog lover and an owner of rescue dogs, this book put into words all of the feelings about these beautiful creatures I've ever felt, thought or attempted to explain. (Although this book focused on Goldens, I believe it to be a tribute to any outstanding dog, past or present!) If you've ever had a "special" dog in your life, this book is for you!!!
As a Koontz fan, I agree it did lack a nice and tidy ending...I also felt it was rushed and missing something. Altogether though, it was a good read and made me want to go pet my dogs and spend some extra time tucking my kids in for the night. Kim/OH
 Absolutely foul. Zero stars. July 24, 2008
The plot depends on outlandish coincidence. Wild, distant, absurd, laugh-at-the-author coincidence.
The characters are shallow, undeveloped, implausible.
The ending is a complete failure. I don't want to play spoiler, so I'll just say the author simply could not find a way to finish the story, and relied on utter nonsense to get out of it.
Every now and then he tries to excite the reader with interludes of what you might call AKC Conformance Porn (". . . and her nose was perfect black, not a speck of brown . . . "), laughably ham-handed, and directly in conflict with the supposed pro-rescue subtheme (sure, we luvv to rescue dogs, but secretly we wish they were all perfect Breed Type).
Regrettably, I read all the way to the end, whereupon I was mildly surprised to find myself speaking out loud to the empty room: "Wow. That was really a terrible book!"
Great Narration! July 23, 2008
The Darkest Evening of the Year features Kirsten Kairos reading the novel, and she does a great job of bringin out each character and making the lsitening enjoyable.
not one of his best July 22, 2008
Koontz is my guilty indulgence. He draws you in and makes it impossible to stop reading. He's pretentious, though. In this book, he did a great job explaining how dog rescues work within the context of the story. However, when educating readers about Second Life or the inner workings of lighthouses, he writes in a condescending tone. Granted, his books aren't scholarly works or anything, but should he as the author really be assuming total idiocy of his readership? This is a common problem, not exclusive to this book. A problem with this book in particular is just the way it all wraps up way too quickly and conveniently in the end. One of the things I loved about Koontz was that his books all had a scientific explanation, or if they had a supernatural bent it was more of a suggestion or possibility. I got really frustrated with the lack of mystery in this novel. All that said, I read the book in less than a day and enjoyed doing so very much. GREAT beach read.
The Thrill Is Gone July 5, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
There was a time, not too long ago even, when the sight of a new Dean Koontz book on the shelve sent me to my wallet to see if I could afford an impulse buy. Dragon Tears, Mr Murder, Velocity, Strangers. Each book kept me riveted and I, more often than not, read the book in one or two days.
Sadly, I can still read Mr. Koontz in one or two days, but not for the same reasons. The prose is nowhere near up to the standards of his older novels. The characters are flat, the stories are lifeless, and if you don't happen to love dogs (and I mean REALLY love dogs. Like to an insane degree), the story will just come off as overdone, preachy and pointless.
In this book, he tried to go back to his roots with the psychopathic-for-no-real-reason villain. But I think it's been so long since he did that, that he's lost the ability to do it believably.
Mr. Koontz has inadvertantly published a parody of himself. The thrill I once felt seeing his name on a bookstore shelf has been replaced with a gentle tug of recognition when I see it in a library. I keep checking out his books, hoping for a hint of what I once loved, but so far I have been burned on "The Good Guy," "The Husband" (for the longest time, I could have sworn those two were the same book), and even "Brother Odd," felt like a pale imitation of "Odd Thomas" (which, BTW, may have been the last Dean Koontz book I truly enjoyed. Perhaps the series is an attempt to hold on to that). And don't even get me started on the Frankenstein books.
I'm probably going to keep checking Koontz books out from the library, and they're still probably going to sit, unread, next to my chair until the due date more often than not.
I cannot begin to say how much it pains me to write a review THIS BAD about an author I used to read nonstop. I would finish one book and then immediately head out to find another. I had a Dean Koontz section on my bookshelf at home.
I would hope that Mr Koontz would stop writing books like this, but his two loves at the moment seem to be religion and dogs, and after one or two books, that really starts to wear out it's welcome. I'll mourn the Koontz of old, and sadly shake my head at this new, lovey-dovey dog-lover Koontz that replaced him.
It IS possible to write a love story to dogs and still fit in a great story (just read "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" if you don't believe me). Koontz just doesn't seem willing to take time out of his four-or-five-so-so books a year schedule to write one really great one.
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