Seize the Night

Rating:
Summary: Decent, but not what I expect when I pick up a...
Review: novel by Koontz. This was an okay read, but he switches writing styles in this book. He becomes a bit "wordy" and hard to read.

His character, Chris Snow, is fully developed and fleshed out in great detail, almost too much. However, Koontz still displays his trademark witty repartee and does a "good" job.

Not an easy read or a first-timer for new fans, but still an enjoyable ride.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as 'Fear Nothing'
Review: Like any sequel, "Seize the Night" is not as good as the first book "Fear Nothing". It does not mean it's not a good book. It is a great and fun thriller, but the amazing charecters of "Fear Nothing" disorve more than that. This book is a great way to pass a cold and stormy winter night, like most of Koontz's books, but it doesn't have the great scientific logic that makes Koontz's books so realistic. Nice, but Koontz can do better.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely disappointing!
Review: First of all, I'm really a huge Dean Koontz fan (having read app. 30 of his books) and had gotten the impression that his books kept getting better (some of his older work is merely charming and sometimes boring). Having said that, I didn't like Fear Nothing: I felt it was going nowhere and took far too long to get there. Thus, it was with some trepidation that I started in Seize the Night. My fears proved to be correct, because I quit in disgust after just 40 pages! (I sometimes stop in the middle of a book, but I've never done that with an author that I like). The story was boring and unconvincing, the main character was irritating, the dog should have been shot on sight (I'm getting a bit fed up with all these intelligent mutts) and every little action gave rise to pages of boring prose. So, I decided that I had better books to read and quit. I've already bought copies of From the Corner of His Eye and One Door Away From Heaven. Since I DID enjoy False Memory, I'm keeping my fingers crossed....

Rating:
Summary: Garbage.
Review: Can anyone really find suspense within this heap of trash?
I had avoided reading Koontz for a long time, fearing that a "poor man's King" could hold no intrigue whatsoever. (How could I possibly have enjoyed Steven King's books when I was an adolescent?).

When I found myself backed against the wall, with no books in tow and Koontz on the shelf, I took a chance with From the Corner of His Eye- which was actually a fairly good read, demonstrating a depth of character and understanding that I did not expect. Could the same writer have written Seize the Night?
This prose is terrible. It resonates like a cut scene from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Did I miss something by not being scared or mesmerized? The dialogue was too atrocious to take anything else from the book seriously. Avoid this book.

Rating:
Summary: Uh, am I missing something...?
Review: Wow, where to begin. I listened to "Fear Nothing" a few years ago, and it was a truly interesting, compelling, and enjoyable work of fiction. "Sieze the Night," however is another story. I can't even understand how anyone could label this as "the greatest book they had ever read," unless they had never read another book in their entire life.

On the long car trips me and my family undertake rather frequently, book-on-tapes are usually the only thing that keeps us from going mad with boredom. Unlike anything Dean Koontz has ever written, this book was sleep inducing. He kept on going into these elaborate, and often ridiculous, literary devices that would make anybody with at least a high school reading level cringe. All of the action, dialogue, and (sparse)suspense were hindered by drawn out metaphors and similes. Everytime I heard the word "like," I knew we were in for another twenty minutes of unbridled(and extremely pointless) description. After the third tape, I concluded that one of two things were going on. Either Mr. Koontz submitted his unedited first draft for publishing, or someone else wrote this book.

It wasn't all bad, though. I do like the premise, and some of characters. Some moments that weren't cluttered by rampant simile were actually quite suspensful. I definitely could have done without the surfer lingo that polluted the already scarce dialogue, though. For a while, the story is the only thing that keeps you listening, but then you find out that all the stuff that you've just listened to will not have any relevance whatsoever. There are a million things still left unresolved at the end, but I'm sure the characters' guesses at what's going on are absolutely correct(just like they are throughout the entire book). It seemed that no matter how weird the situation got, the characters managed to piece together exactly what was going on. Pretty good for a bunch of surfer-dudes.

Anway, I could ramble on about this book for a while, but I just had to see if anyone else had shared this disappointing experience. If you liked "Fear Nothing," pick up the cheapest edition of this book, and skim it. But under no circumstances should you pay the extra money for the book-on-tape!

Hopefully the next book in this series will live up to its potential.

Rating:
Summary: Great read!
Review: Sieze the Night, second installment in the Moonlight Bay series, is a great read and I enjoyed it very much. The story centers on the search for more answers to the mysteries of what is going on in the town of Moonlight Bay and how Christopher Snow and his family fit into the mysteries. Koontz has crafted another page turner here!! The characters are well crafted and are easily likeable. The action is well paced and my interest was held throughout the book. The writing is great and I love the symbolism that the author imparts.

Rating:
Summary: Surfboards At Midnight
Review: Koontz must have re-read his own horrorshow, Midnight, after polishing-off his quirkily enjoyable Ticktock, and ended up splicing the two together in Seize the Night.

It's Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau, as performed by surfer dropout versions of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the characters are hip and flip, the situations nightmarish. An odd mix, to be sure, but Koontz is up to the task in this uneven surfboard curler.

The one real flaw in the Christopher Snow books is that they're all but plotless. They're more like an ongoing odyssey around a central theme. You can expect a lot of eerie, bloodthirsty action enacted by a wild variety of characters, and a conclusion to whatever is established as the immediate threat, but it's all rather random and aimless. Given that this is supposed to be the second book in an eventual trilogy, perhaps Koontz is intending to wrap things up in a more thorough sense along the way. But for the moment, nothing ends up explained, just hinted at.

In the meantime, it's Koontz, it's good fun. If you like the author, Seize the Night won't disappoint. And if you don't, well, you have a pretty good idea the sort of thing it is and can decide for yourself whether it's your cup of tea.

Rating:
Summary: Ubridled Splice of Comic Book and Sci Fi Thriller!
Review: Christopher Snow is back, along with his flame Sasha and his tide-tied buddy Bobby! Orson, the intelligent dog, isn't in this one because he's been kidnapped, along with the little boy of Chris' ex-flame and a bunch of other kids and pets!
Back to the forbidden realm of Fort Wyvern Chris must go to chase wierd half-monkies and suicidal flocks of birds through a weird and wonderful adventure with amok time-portals and genetically mutating people and creatures!
Even wierder than it's prequel, "Fear Nothing", this book is just as much fun and all the more satisfying because here, in this volume, we finally get some answers! And with his usual flare Koontz is able to tie together all the disperate loose ends in a way that is logical if not always very plausible.
But then why do we read fiction if not to be entertained with what isn't but could have been, hmm?
Please, read "Fear Nothing" first, and this one will be all the more entertaining for you. Read my review of "Fear Nothing" and you'll see it is every bit as much fun to read this one, but give some background you absolutely need in order to get the full impact of Sieze The Night.

Rating:
Summary: Long & Drawn Out
Review: The book is a memoir type account of the character Christopher Snow.

Snow is a young man who suffers from xeroderma pigmentosum (XP). The bodies of people who suffer from XP are unable to repair the damage done by light, thus their life is restricted to the darkness. The book revolves around a simple plot with some pretty cool, but commonplace science fiction type twists. A friend of Christopher's son is kidnapped. Chris along with a couple friends set out to look for the missing child, several other missing children, and Chris' missing dog. The town in which they live is the site of a closed military base, in which the children and dog are suspected of being in. The catch is that the base was the site of many advanced scientific and biological research projects.

While the ending of the book was good, most of the time the book was a slow, pointless read. It takes about the first 350 pages for a kidnapping to take place and 75 pages for a rescue. The ending kind of left you hanging, similar to a movie trying to leave the possibility of a sequel open.

I though the book was just OK. I cannot say NOT to read the book, but it is not a book that I highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: the story continues
Review: I would suggest reading the first of Christopher Snow's adventures "Fear Nothing" before you read this one. They are both fast-paced and exciting reads with the usual Dean Koontz trademark humor. The ending leaves you kind of hanging but Koontz promises us a third sometime in 2002. I can't wait to see what happens next!