Rating: 
Summary: The only thing I fear is being forced to read it again.
Review: A huge fan of Dean Koontz (while I haven't read all those out-of-print books, I do own every book listed on the title page of Fear Nothing), I couldn't wait to read Fear Nothing, especially after Dean called it his favorite. Well, I'm still a big fan of Dean Koontz, but I have to say he has bad taste in books. Fear Nothing was just awful. The characters were pretty good (Chris was fine, Bobby was OK, and I really liked Sasha). The plot was shaky and derivative, but could have made for enjoyable if less-than-stellar Koontz fare a la Sole Survivor. But the writing--and it hurts me to say this, for I count Lightning and Dark Rivers of the Heart among my favorite books--was painful to read. For some reason, Koontz has got the impression that readers enjoy at least one long and unnecessary metaphor per paragraph. We're talking grating, here. Like fingernails on a chalk board. The reason he is able to write almost 400 pages about one night is that he compares the night to approximately 2,532,937 different things. As Jack Nicholson said in 'As Good As It Gets,' "People who speak in metaphors ought to shampoo my crotch." This combined with uninspired dialogue, thoroughly uninteresting minor characters, and a superfluous canine (in Watchers, a dog was essential; in Fear Nothing it's there to gain female readership, pardon my sexism) equals one big mistake. Whatever you do, don't buy this book on hardcover. If you really want it, send me five bucks and I'll send it to you. It's just taking up space on my shelf right now, and every time I look at it I get even more annoyed.
Rating: 
Summary: This book was better when it was called "Midnight"
Review: Having read over half of Koontz's novels that are still in print, this book was disappointing. The book contains too many elements from past (and better) novels, such as Midnight and Watchers. With regards to such a prolific writer like Koontz, I could accept some similarities, but it seems that this book was no novel on it's own accord, merely a piece of a trilogy. The novel also held only a limited amount of suspense. Although the reader is kept guessing as to what is going on, there is never any heart-pounding situations or thrills. The only reason that this receives a 6 is due to the creative character of Snow and Koontz's superior writing style and language.
Rating: 
Summary: a seat of your pants ride!!!
Review: Koontz is finally back on track! With the exception of INTENSITY his last few books have been lacking "something". Not so with FEAR NOTHING, the ingenious plot kept me riveted. Chris Snow is a great protagonist. I didnt care for the surfer dude lingo, and even though it is bk 1 in a trilogy the ending could have had more closure. I cant wait for bk 2!
Rating:
Summary: "Fear Nothing" falls fearfully short.
Review: Being a Dean Koontz fan, I very much looked forward to this latest book. As with so many others he has written, the pace was swift and the timeframe of the story is very short (24 hours). Those are the about the best things in this latest Koontz offering. The ending is very anti-climactic, the cast of characters is not one in which you come to invest much care about, and the premise, though somewhat interesting, doesn't deliver the punch I am used to with Koontz. If you must get it, at least wait until paperback!
Rating:
Summary: give him a break
Review: sure, it wasn't the best book he's every written, but considering that he has written over forty books, is it that surprising he might slip a little? And don't forget that this is the first of a trilogy, so we'll probably learn more about this story in the next two books.
Rating:
Summary: Watchers Recycled (badly)
Review: Well, I just finished "Fear Nothing" and I thought it was awful. Dean Koontz has written some excellent novels; Watchers, Lightning, Strangers. This was *not* one of them, merely a cheap knock off of some of his earlier work, spliced with howlingly bad surfer dialogue. The surfer dialogue is particularly annoying because it doesn't appear until nearly 150 pages into the book when Christopher Snow meets his surfer friend. After that meeting, bizarre surf metaphors and similes figure regularly into the main character's speech. Forget the lame "genetic infection" plot, what really scared me was the idea that surfer-speak might be contagious.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disapointment.
Review: I've been a fan of Koontz's earlier books and had stopped reading his most recent ones, which were not close to the suspense and character development as his earlier ones. I was quite disappointed with "Fear Nothing", especially after hearing good reviews of it. I think that the pretense of the story was promising, but most of the book was spent in Mr. Snow's mind, trapped among endless questions and thoughts. The plot dragged on and on and by the time you got to the middle of the book, you were yearning for some kind of knowledge. I wished Mr. Koontz spent more time and detail about the actual experiments and about "becoming", instead of beach lingo, and empty characters.
Rating: 
Summary: What's next?
Review: This is another boonie dog book review by Wolfie and Kansas. "Fear Nothing" by Dean Koontz picks up a couple quick strikes, but ends up with extra bases.The narrator in "Fear Nothing" is Christopher Snow, who has xeroderma pigmentosum. Mr. Koontz is a little behind the curve in the hero-with-a-rare-congenital-condition genre. Chris Snow is okay, but less interesting than Kay "Bug" Farrow, the achromat in David Hunt's "The Magician's Tale", or Paul Skoglund, the Tourette's Syndromed hero of Daniel Hecht's "Skull Session". The pace of "Fear Nothing" is sometimes maddening. Almost the entire story takes place in one night, yet the book is 391 pages--nearly a page per minute. When Chris Snow walks down a hallway, there is a step-by-step, foot-by-foot, inch-by-inch description. This device can only build suspense so many times in one book. The minute-by-minute approach of a book describing a single night worked well in "A Night To Remember", Walter Lord's nonfiction account of the sinking of the Titanic. However, Lord's book had less than half as many pages as "Fear Nothing", and a much larger cast. Only Dean Koontz could drag scenes out as much as he does here, and still keep us reading. What finally elevated this book was a shift of focus nearly two-thirds of the way through, away from Chris Snow and towards his canine companion, Orson. Dogs have produced great poetry, such as Skipper's "Complacencies of the Fenced Yard" in Hempel and Shepard's "Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs". Dogs have produced great drama, such as the play about Didi and Gogo, two boonie dogs thinly disguised as humans, written under the pseudonym Samuel Beckett. Still, until one of our kind writes the great canine novel, we will have to rely upon the handful of human novelists who can portray us competently. Dean Koontz was an alpha in that pack with characters like Einstein in "Watchers" and Rocky in "Dark Rivers of the Heart". Koontz then displayed a miscaninthropic streak with the bad dogs of "Intensity". In "Fear Nothing", once Orson takes center stage and Chris Snow is relegated to a sidekick role like Lassie's Timmy, Koontz regains his former glory. Even better, there are hints that Orson may be back in a sequel. We may be reading too much into a passing reference, but Orson could even be teamed up with Einstein or Einstein's pups. There is even a hint that Koontz may be working towards a world similar to that in the closing chapters of Clifford Simak's "City". Dean Koontz bears careful watching and sniffing from his canine fans for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: *Goosebumps* for grownups - awful
Review: FEAR NOTHING is perhaps the worst of the Dean Koontz canon -- and this, coming from a confirmed fan! The book is a pastiche of old horror themes and creaky plot mechanisms: the intelligent animals who are out to take over; the hero who by blind luck manages to eavesdrop on a conversation that tells him HALF of "what's going ON around here?," then manages to stumble upon someone's secret journal that tells him the REST of "what's going on around here...," the Frankenstein-monster-like genetically altered animals who are torn between reverence for and hatred of their "creator"...What a mess! Previous Koontz books focused on protagonists who led real lives; FEAR NOTHING focuses on a dude who is, luckily, able to support himself without the need to clutter up the plot with a real-life job; rather, the hero has nothing better to do than skulk around his town every night, "investigating." This unlikely lifestyle may facilitate the movement of FEAR NOTHING's plot, but makes it hard for the reader to identify with and care about the protagonist. One of the loveable qualities of past Koontz heros/heroines was their triumph over their personal histories -- the poor boy who builds his own private investigator practice, the orphan girl who becomes a best-selling author, the single mother who runs her own business while raising a son alone, etc. I found it hard to care about Chris Snow, hiding behind his disability and simply allowing his parents to finance an unproductive life. The book provided no character analysis, no explanation of how and why Chris Snow acquired the two friends who stand with him to the end. For these many reasons, the book fails.
Rating:
Summary: I enjoyed this book very much.
Review: Fear Nothing is one of Koontz's best books in a long time. It kept me riveted (especially the scene in Angela Ferryman's house) and was very chilling at times. Koontz seems to be back on a good track, and most people will enjoy this book.
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