Predator meets Waterworld, in Dean Koontz's The Taking
Written: Jun 23 '04
Product Rating:
Pros: A real page-turner, engaging characters, real-world morals and introspective main character dialog.
Cons: Rather short for a Koontz book, too many esoteric phrases and convoluted words.
The Bottom Line: A great Sci-Fi thriller with a unique story from Dean Koontz. Not what fans expect from him, but a good read anyway. It's on the scary side, so be forewarned...
openroad's Full Review: Dean R. Koontz - The Taking
WARNING!!! Very minor plot spoilers contained in this review, if you don’t want to know ANYTHING other than the book jacket, you’d best avoid my review. All others that want to know a little about the book before purchasing read on!
”Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.”
--- T.S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock”
----- Introduction -----
A little after 1:00 A.M. the rain begins to fall without warning over the San Bernardino Mountains. This is no gentle fall shower, but a torrential downpour of Biblical proportions. Unlike a typical rainy night, this rain is not soothing nor is the sound likely to induce sleep. Molly decides the sandman can wait until later, slips out of bed and decides to go downstairs for a while. Her husband Neil sleeps soundly on his side, as he usually does during storms.
Walking down the hall without the aid of lighting, Molly realizes she can see perfectly, although the moon is completely hidden by brooding storm clouds, and the rain itself is to blame for the eerie glow. While it’s still dark outside, the wind whipped streaks of rain appear strangely luminescent to the eye.
Molly knew as on many other nights before that sleep would elude her, so as she usually did she turned to her manuscript. At the young age of 28, she was already the author of four novels, none of which had sold enough copies to guarantee her continued success. Neil was currently a skilled cabinetmaker, which as a career was far removed from his first vocation as a priest. Over the past seven years, Molly and Neil made the most of their perversely opposite personalities, and together they created a relationship that each is able to call a haven from the pressures of life.
Walking to the front door, Molly sees a mass of huddled coyotes cringing on the porch, anxiously trying to press as close to the pine siding as space will allow. Although by nature predators and possessing a strong aversion to human contact, whatever lay in the darkness beyond the reach of the porch light had clearly spooked them. Molly would soon learn this was only the first of many oddities she would witness over the next 36 hours.
As the rain continues to fall at the rate of 6” per hour, strange beings appear in the streets of Black Lake, and citizens of the town are violently dispatched only to reappear in an apparent post-mortem zombie-like state. For the foreseeable future, this is the world in which Molly and Neil must survive… or else become victims to whatever stalks the stormy streets.
----- My comments on the book -----
”But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of bones, and a chuckle from ear to ear.”
--- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
I’ve only been a Dean Koontz fan for about 3 years, after picking up one of his older works at a book sale. I became enamored with his writing style after reading several of his books, which include Phantoms, Lightning, and The Door to December. All of his writings have one thing in common, they are always well constructed and nearly impossible to put down once you start reading. (Actually that’s two things in common, but no one has ever accused me of counting accurately.)
The Taking is written with a different style than his older writings, and is loaded with intricate and complex verbiage. This recent obsession the author has with complicated words is one of the few down sides to this book, and is used in excess throughout The Taking. Numerous times I’d have to pause a few moments and think hard to remember what a recently encountered word actually meant. At first it struck me as clever, but as the endless stream of obscure and labyrinthine words continued it just managed to slow my reading down. I know Koontz has an incredibly large vocabulary (or unlimited access to a thesaurus), but he needs to make his writing flow smoothly for his readers. I shouldn’t need to have a portable dictionary handy to fully enjoy a novel.
On the positive side, I’m still amazed at the ability Koontz has to mix in real-world metaphors and pertinent commentary on the human frame of mind. A typical example is this reflective moment shared between the main female character (Molly) and the reader.
”Many people have difficulty acknowledging the existence of unalloyed evil; they hope to wish it away through positive thinking, to counsel it into remorse through psychotherapy, or to domesticate it with compassion. If they could not recognize implacable evil in the hearts of their own human kind and could not understand its enduring nature, they were not likely to be able to see through the perfect biological disguise of an extraterrestrial species capable of exquisite mimicry.”
As I read that passage, my mind wandered and I thought about recent events and things even further back in history. September 11th, the Washington D.C. Beltway sniper, Columbine and other school shootings, and even Hitler’s concentration camps. Humans are by nature usually good, and in varying degrees look out for their fellow man. The flip side to this is the capacity to completely embrace evil and all it entails. These are the John Wayne Gacys, Charles Mansons, and Jeffrey Dahlmers of the world, and decent people have a natural block about understanding them. Most of Dean Koontz’s books have in turn entertained, frightened, dramatized, and brought out humor in the darkest of situations. They also gently nudge the reader to think about things outside the realm of fiction, which to me is the sign of a great writer. In The Taking Koontz explores the realms of hope and despair, while showing the extreme necessity of the former when surrounded by the latter. In a circumstance that can be only described as “hell on earth”, the moments of normalcy we appreciate every day suddenly seem like tiny windows into heaven for the beleaguered main characters.
I’ll recommend this book purely on the basis that I enjoyed it immensely. The suspense was almost constant, and unlike poorer examples of the genre I was always one step behind the plot. I don’t pay $20 for a hardcover book to guess the next plot direction two chapters before I read it. The story is sufficiently plausible to merit consideration, the main characters are introduced slowly, and Koontz builds the story to a suitably climactic ending. I must say I was surprised with the final conclusion as to the cause of the events, and you as the reader must decide your overall satisfaction with the explanation.
Previous Koontz fans may not initially like this book since it’s a departure from his past novels, both in style and less so in theme. As he states in the early portions of The Taking, we as a culture have been brainwashed by Spielberg, Lucas, and Shyamalan, so the idea of intergalactic contact is not only ingrained in the current generation, it’s almost subconsciously expected. Koontz’s take on the possible cognitive reaction to such encounters is both frightening and eye opening. If you have a few nights with nothing to do, I highly recommend picking up The Taking, just be ready for the ride you’re about to take. And if a heavy rainstorm begins outside, don’t worry… it’s probably just a normal cloud formation…
I’ll close with another paragraph of Koontz expounding on the virtues of living in the moment.
”The dance of life occurs not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that is the present. This truth is simple, self-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment we are in, and every waking hour dream of the future that is to come. What Molly had done thus far in her life was the history of her soul, unalterable, ineradicable. What she hoped to do in the future was of no meaning if she failed to do the wise thing, the good thing, the right thing, moment by moment, here at the still point, here in the dance of life.”
Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment!
Openroad
From the Publisher: In one of the most dazzling books of his celebrated career, Dean Koontz delivers a masterwork of page-turning suspense that surpas...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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