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This writer is very much capable of "serious" horror novels (the great INTENSITY), but much of his output is either overwhelmingly sentimental or overwhelmingly goofy, or slaved to a pendulum of mood which swings back and forth between the two.
This latest novel, now in hardcover, belongs into the goofy camp -- and gloriously so. It's so goofy that when I realized just what kind of story Koontz was intent on telling, I whooped with disbelief and delight.
The basic set-up is this: three people on journeys elsewhere stop at a hotel in a southwest. They include a young woman named Jilly who is a standup comedian on her way to a gig, and a young man whose name I currently blank on) who earns his living as an artist and who is the sole caretaker for
his travelling companion, his high-functioning autistic brother, Shephard. They are each overpowered in their rooms by a soft-spoken mad scientist type, on the run from assassins out to destroy his life's work. Intent on preserving it, he injects them with an unknown substance, tells them that its effects will be unpredictable but "interesting," and warns them that unless they move fast they will also soon be the targets of implacable assassins.
As the three hook up and start to run, the serum starts to show its interesting effects. It's a given that they don't escape the vicinity of the motel QUITE fast enough to avoid the notice of the mercenaries, and that as they race around the country trying to stay alive they're also being terrified by the changes in themselves.
Koontz provides a familiar science-fictional rationale, but really, it's nonsense: a few pages of hugger-mugger that boil down to the phrase "magic potion." In tone, it's very much a novel of paranoia, with moments of extreme action-movie intensity, and plenty of funny dialogue. The autistic brother, Shep, is treated with Koontz's trademark (and sometimes excessive) compassion, but he also provides much aggravation and humor, with his tendency to go off on obsessive tangents even as the bullets start flying.
More to the point, again, is the realization, slowly dawning for the reader as the novel progresses, that this is ultimately not a horror novel, or even a science fiction novel, but a sneaky specimen of another time-honored genre entirely.
By the last few chapters I was saying, "Oh, God, he IS really going to do this."
By the wrapup, when the nature of the story is not just specified for those who haven't gotten it, but underlined, and italicized, and played for every grace note, I was laughing out loud. My God. He DID do it. What astounding chutzpah!
(28 January 2003)
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