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Seize the Night

Seize the Night

List Price: $39.95
Your Price: $26.37
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Confusing, long
Review: While I enjoyed some of the chatter between the characters in the book, it really was not a very credible way of communication. The story got so confusing in the end--hallways, stairs, time travel, flashing lights--it was just too much. My imagination just couldn't put it all together.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Lots of Fun
Review: As there are so many good which explain the story and plot of Seize the Night, I won't bother to reiterate the story here. I will just add that this story is very fast paced, tightly knit, and tons of fun. Readers are strongly encouraged to read Fear Nothing before picking up Seize the Night. While it's not absolutely necessary, you will get much more out of the story if you do. All the characters in this book, while somewhat difficult to believe (but hey, it's fiction), are very interesting and lots of fun. While some reviewers found Bobby's suffer lingo annoying, I actually found it lots of fun. It's nice to see a character with his own personality and some different adjectives for a change.

Read Fear Nothing, then read Seize the Night. You'll have lots of fun.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Fear an average sequel
Review: Fear Nothing was a sensational book but the same can't be said for the sequel. Fear Nothing had multiple parallel stories occurring which all linked as the story progressed, each with interesting unique characters. The story is a one story novel revolving around the most interesting character from the first novel Christopher Snow, the character with xerederma pigmentosum whose condition only allows him to walk around at night. His side kick Orson (the extremely intelligent dog) is not in most of this book. In fact that's the main plot of this book. Snow and a few of his friends set off to find him and some Moonlight Bay kids who have gone missing. Along the way they encounter genetically engineered monkeys, time travel and other stuff at the ex military base on the outskirts of town.

Seize the Night is not in the same league as Fear Nothing and a lot of this book rehashes Snow's and Moonlight Bay's past to explain them to those reading this book as a stand alone novel. If you've read Fear Nothing this can get rather boring and annoying. I found Christopher Snow an exceptional interesting character in Koontz's Fear Nothing masterpiece and looked forward to reading a second book with him in it but to be honest was extremely disappointed. This book seems to be written as a quick fix to satisfy Snow fan's desires to read more with him in it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Halfway Decent Sequel
Review: I read "Sieze the Night" shortly after having read "Fear Nothing" because I enjoyed reading "Fear Nothing", which was not necessarily the best novel I have ever read, nor one of my favorites among the Dean Koontz novels that I have read, but it was still a good read. "Fear Nothing" left a lot of the conflicts unresolved, however, and so I wanted to read the sequel "Sieze the Night" to see if any of them might be resolved or expanded upon. Some of them were resolved in their own way, at least partially, but I won't get into that, to avoid spoiling anything for you.

I have to say, though, that I enjoyed reading "Fear Nothing" a bit more than "Sieze the Night" overall. Don't get me wrong, the story in "Sieze the Night" there were parts in "Sieze the Night" was not unbearable that I enjoyed, but for me, it just didn't hold up to par with "Fear Nothing."

Christopher Snow is back on his quest (or lack thereof) in stopping some of the adverse effects regarding the experimentations in the now defunct military base Fort Wyvern, this time trying to get the missing children back that were mysteriously kidnapped. This time we actually get a deeper look into Fort Wyvern and all the underground labs and such, which is something we are denied in "Fear Nothing." That part I did enjoy overall, and of course, we get a return of those killer Reesus Monkeys, adding to the suspense. I also liked how the book at one point toward the beginning freaks the reader out when Christopher Snow believes that he has finally succumb to skin cancer after living with his rare genetic condition throughout his 28 years of existence.

The beginning of the book was pretty good actually, and throughout the novel there were parts that kept my interest and that I enjoyed. For example, when Christopher Snow and Bobby were listening to the tapes that they had recovered from Fort Wyvern, than that was deliciously disturbing, and I enjoyed that immensely.

But I couldn't really get into the book at times as much as I could on "Fear Nothing" and on certain parts I literally had to struggle through. The passages of "surfer lingo" were nothing short of tedious and annoying to read through, but then again, that was the case with "Fear Nothing" as well, unfortunately.

The characters, as with "Fear Nothing" (indeed it was all the same characters as in "Fear Nothing" for the most part) remained interesting. Christopher Snow, and his plight with XP (and I'm not talking about Microsoft Windows) was compelling, and we got to see more of the supporting cast--such as Sasha, Bobby, Roosevelt, etc. in "Sieze the Night" than in "Fear Nothing."

What really rubbed me the wrong way about this book was the way that it ended. As much as I want to go over point by point how this book ended and explain why it was so lame in a detailed fashion, doing so would spoil it for future readers, so I will resist the urge to get into any detailed rant regarding my problem with the resolution. I will, however, say that the ending was not only a disappointment, but a slap in the face to a lot of the events that had happened throughout the novel (though not all of them), rendering them completely meaningless in every way possible.

I am not trying to dissuade anyone from buying and reading "Sieze the Night" if you wish to do so, and indeed it would be interesting for you to know what happens after the point where "Fear Nothing" leaves off, if you enjoyed reading "Fear Nothing" that is.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Seize This Book
Review: Whenever I have to take a long, boring road trip I buy a book-on-tape to make the journey easier. Well, I should have learned a lesson from buying "Fear Nothing". But, no, with a long trip to Cleveland ahead of me, I picked up a copy of "Seize the Night". Again, I was so engrossed with the characters and the story that I found myself sitting in parking lots at the hotel, at restaurants, at the client's business--just listening to the story on the car cassette player.

This 2nd addition to the Chris Snow series totally blew me away. It has all the qualities of a great video game--searching the mysterious Fort Wyvern for your lost dog. I loved almost everything about this book--the suspense(the monkeys in the burning house, the chase through the backyards, the fight with the priest, etc); the characters (Chris, Sasha, Orson, and Bobby--and even the retired football player and his super intelligent cat, Mungo Jerry). I think Dean did an awesome job of fleshing out his characters from the previous novel. I also think that the story line took on a new depth, as we were let in on some of the secrets that "Fear Nothing" kept from us.

Yes, there is a ton of weirdness. The "flights of the birds" is disturbing and somewhat prophetic--are we humans, too, going to realize that we are "changing" and smash our heads against a wall?

This novel was a sidetrack on the "Fear Nothing" tale. That one explored the genetic research projects at Ft. Wyvern and revealed that the world will now "change" because the US government unleashed an oh-so-special virus into the world. "Seize the Night" explores Chris' journey into Ft. Wyvern; this journey takes him and his companions into past/future/parallel universes. We learn a lot, and have awesome adventures along the way.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Very poorly written
Review: and without a doubt the worse Koontz book I've ever read. The dialogue between characters was simply idiotic. Racing against time to save a child and a beloved pooch, all the moronic banter between Snow and his socially misfit friends is an insult to the intelligence to any reader. My suspicion is Koontz did not write this book himself.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: NIGHT CRAWLERS
Review: SIR DEAN KOONTZ (my title for him) reins supreme once again with his magnificantly presented science fiction tale of horror. If you have not read KOONTZ before, as it were with me, are you going to be pleasantly surprised.

Moonlight Bay once was an exciting and bustling town before the police turned their backs on the town people. As a result, Chris Snow and his band of self policing buddies take up arms to protect their families, friends and the town people. Now if you are asking yourself how could three or four people protect a whole town, you have some idea of the task the writer has taken on. Nonetheless, the story threds on.
Chris is a night crawler due primary to his rare disease, xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP for short. As a result of the disease, he cannot allow a ray of sun light to shine on his skin. Now my brothers/sisters, if you think you have been treated differently because of the color of your skin, walk a mile in this man's shoes. Restricted to nightlife, Chris masters his world like no one you could ever imagine. He learned to see at least 5 different shades of darkness and could describe any movement or action within those shades.

Serving as the "King of Night" this book centers around how Chris with is faithful sidekick rid the town, always at night, of moguls, thieves, scientists gone bad, human eating apes or baboons, storms of attacking bats and all other forms of decay.

KOONTZ flexed his verbose muscles and pulled off this absolutely wonderful read. But remember, I told you up front this man can describe a dime to you which would take up 20 pages of type--reallly skilled at his art.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: good characters
Review: The storyline was interesting, and its obviously well written, but this books strong point is the characters. All the characters in this book are interesting and deep. I was more interested in reading this book because i wanted to see what the characters would do then because i wanted to see how the story would unfold. i also reccomend reading the prequil to this book first.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What? Koontz isn't a horror author?
Review: Once in a while Patricia Cornwell manages to get out a novel that doesn't feature Dr. Scarpetta. Once in a while King writes something more biographical than horrible. Anne McCaffery writes historical fiction with nary a dragon to be found in it. The public HATES it. Do people REALLY wonder why Doyle KILLED Holmes?
No, Dean Koontz is not just "the poor man's Stephen King." Rumor has it that he might have even tried his hand at writing (gasp!) romance. The sad fact is that many very talented authors get pressured into writing only within a very narrow spectrum. If they are lucky enough to even find a publisher for something that isn't "a classic Koontz book" (insert popular genre author of choice), they have to face rabid fans screaming "Why isn't this just like all your other books?!!!" Why the masses always seem to favor books, television, movies, music, clothes, wars, pop icons, breakfast cereals, so on and so on and so forth that are EXACTLY the same as the last one has always been one of the great mysteries of the universe. One can only assume it's a comfort factor. If you are looking for a screaming gore-fest don't bother with this series. If you are looking for more "King-like" horror -go read some King horror -though a dare say you'll be disappointed there too, because King's writing is evolving these days too (Gasp! Is nothing sacred? Something HAS to stay the same!).
"Seize the Night" and the Christopher Snow series is charging locomotive into dark fantasy. It's cerebral science fiction giving very personal perspective of the End of Days. This isn't horror -it's haunting. The world as we know it is quietly slipping away, echoed by Koontz's moody prose. In this case it is appropriate that each moment is held up and examined in slightly manic detail -it is the trivial babble that occurs after a train wreck -before people have to admit to the corpses. It's the forced small talk at a disaster shelter -so you don't have face those still missing. It's laughter at a wake, celebrating each moment, because we refuse to acknowledge yet that our beloved is gone. When the author -and his characters, stop to dwell a while on both the beautiful and the ugly, they are capturing time in a bottle, because the world is passing away and the human race isn't ready to admit it yet.
I actually read "Seize the Night" first out of the series, and enjoyed the fact that it stands alone. I would only recommend reading "Fear Nothing" first because you may find yourself growing impatient with things that are a "known fact" by "Seize the Night". But BOTH books are still worth reading in either order. "Seize the Night" introduces new layers to what you thought you knew by the end of "Fear Nothing" but it also has a strong storyline unto itself -something so lacking in many "middle" books that you can often skip them and hurry up and get to the end in Part 3 (Would it be bad to mention "The Empire Strikes Back" here?...)
"Seize the Night" is a side trip, then, in the world of Moonlight Bay. Christopher Snow and his friends are back, but facing a new adversary in addition to the old, and "Seize the Night" is well worth reading to the end to find out which lives are lost or saved.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Don't read this before reading "Fear Nothing"!!
Review: This is the sequel to "Fear Nothing," so you'd better read that first.
Here, Koontz continues the conspiracy with excellent narrative and description told from the unique view of the main character. I highly recommend it, one of Dean Koontz's finer works.


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