Phantoms - A promising book, but runs out of gas halfway through.
Written: Jul 15 '09
Product Rating:
Pros: Excellent suspense, mystery instills perfect fear, charcters are satisfying.
Cons: Conclusion very dissatisying. Amount of profanity and some sexual content may discomfort some readers.
The Bottom Line: While the climax was hardly what it should have been, it does not destroy the novel. For the most part, excellent horror writing that most will enjoy.
mythwriter's Full Review: Dean R. Koontz - Phantoms
When an author gathers a respectable body of work, the blessing and curse that comes with that is certain expectations from both old and new readers alike. Dean Koontz in particular has made his name very well known in the horror and suspense genres. So when Phantoms catches a readers eye for any reason, these expectations are probably going to prejudice the reader long before the cover is opened. Putting that aside, however, all novels have to be judged independently, not against what has been done magnificently elsewhere. So, simply as a horror novel, what does Phantoms have to offer the hungry reader?
The story opens with a bizarre cry for help in Snowfield, an isolated, small town hidden in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Before the cause can be ascertained, the lone police officer investigating turns to confront something, and the account ends suddenly on a cliffhanger. The perspective then shifts to follow the primary protagonists, Jenny and Lisa Paige. Jenny has just taken custody of her younger sister following the death of their mother, and both are returning to Jenny's home in the same town of Snowfield - seemingly just after the events of the brief prologue. When they arrive, the entire city is deserted. There are no people about, and not even any visible bodies to indicate a problem. Soon, however, the girls stumble upon a grim corpse, uninjured save for unnatural bloating and inexplicable bruising. Upon discovering the phone is also useless, the two venture back out into the town in an effort to find help - or even just survivors. As the story unravels, it is known that all the town's residents have suddenly suffered a shared fate. All appear to have been engaged in normal activities, when suddenly their lives ended. Some did not even have time to notice their death had come, frozen in gruesome poses of normal activity. Others had died in the moment that the horrible truth was just glimpsed before the end. Still others had foreknowledge, and fled briefly in total terror before death found them. Finally, the girls manage to contact another city's police department, which sends six men, led by Sheriff Bryce Hammond, to discover the truth. It seems , however, that whatever has destroyed the town has only just begun its vendetta. Events begin to escalate against the police and the sisters, as whatever agent responsible begins affecting impossible events, such as fiddling with city-wide systems and apparently being in multiple places at once. Soon, horrible monsters manifest, followed by eerie sounds, mysterious phone contacts and even the resurrected dead. Though explanations ranging from terrorist bio-weapons to groups of serial killers are proposed, the truth is a far more powerful and ancient evil than any sane human in our century could believe in.
Phantoms is a book that begins incredibly. The suspense factor is perfectly built, with every answered mystery raising a dozen more questions. The reader will need every light in the house on, imagining the stalking horror that is always just out of reach, but always felt in Snowfield. It does not grow stale at first, for long before the current shock has worn off, something new and dreadful is revealed that banishes the memory of the old. Thankfully, Koontz does not rely on more "primitive" methods in horror writing; these include constantly trying to surprise the reader with some new, gruesome gore fest, or else hammering the novel with explicatives and sexuality. These tactics are far too common, and their absence alone drives the quality of Phantoms far above most horror works. Let the cautious reader know that there is some profanity and sexuality, but it is kept to a minimum and isn't really a factor for most of the book. While the gruesomeness of the corpses in some areas is very graphic, it is not over the top simply for the sake of shock. As a result, the characters are both adequately crafted with diverse personalities and enough back-story to make them real and their motives understood. From everything to concern for the protagonists to disgust with one police officer in particular, Koontz creates a truly believable human condition in such a small group.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Koontz couldn't quite keep up with his own work. The escalating activities reach an adrenaline-pumped peak, but that peak wasn't meant to be the highest. It happens somewhere between halfway and two-thirds of the way through, but something dies in the novel and the rest is simply filler. Perhaps the suspense was carried just too far with the same carrier elements, and finally did grow stale. But most noticable is a certain lack of progress in the mystery. While Koontz must be credited for keeping his readers in the absolute dark as to the nature of the perpetrator, he is rather guilty of the opposite fault: too little is ever revealed, and most of it turns out to be irrelevant conjecture anyway. The effect is similar to becoming stumped on a puzzle that cannot be solved - engrossing for awhile, but without progress, the audience becomes disinterested.
This puzzle metaphor carries through to the conclusion, where, realizing his audience cannot make headway with the mystery, Koontz simply tells us the solution. The result is an anticlimactic revelation and generic ending, which creates a huge flaw in the novel. At the risk of spoilers in the following lines, (consider yourself warned here) Koontz attempts what is so rarely done successfully, blending spirituality and science. As the reader is kept guessing about the antagonist, the expectation of what we fear the enemy to be is far higher than what Koontz ultimately gives. The resolution following his explanation is even more so, and the addition of rapist motorcycle gang turned religious cult feels included just to give the novel a false ending. Sadly, even that falls flat, as by that time, we all know what is going to happen anyway. Perhaps this was an experiment for Koontz, and for some, it works very well. The novel has received excellent feedback, so it is not entirely a bust either. But amongst readers who favor mystery and/or paranormal suspense as opposed to scientific explanations in horror fiction, other novels will satisfy better. The whole concept of fear is that we fear what we do not understand, and when Koontz gives us a fully explained, material nemesis, it ceases to be a terrifying agent of evil and descends to a B-horror film creature. This is where Phantoms fell from what had promised to be a very great height among horror novels.
Phantoms is certainly not a bad novel - far from it. Still, the resolution is often what makes or breaks a novel, and that of Phantoms certainly hurts it, at least for readers of certain preferential dispositions. Too little explanation followed by too much simply brings the entire effect down. But, overall the novel certainly does offer a good read, and if the reader can ignore or does not mind a give-away, seemingly thrown-together ending, it is well-worth picking up.
One of Koontzs most chilling bestsellers--the tale of an abandoned town and the unimaginable truth behind its silence--is available on audio for the f...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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