From the Corner of His Eye

Rating:
Summary: Ah Mr. Koontz
Review: I miss the good old days.

Dean Koontz had some real winners a few years back. Strangers, Watchers, The Bad Place, The Servants of Twilight, Darkfall, Cold Fire...These were excellent books.

From the Corner of his Eye starts out strange and ends strange in an almost un-Koontz kind of way. Like he is competing with Stephen King's alien/weasel streak (Dreamcatchers).

Junior Cain has a killer's instinct and when he gets the urge to off his wife it is a spontaneuos kind of instinct that gets him into more trouble than he realized. Bart Lampion is born with an incredible gift for achievement and life even though the things surrounding him are enough to break a sane man (or woman). Thomas Vanadium is a man that understands Bart's gifts and is hunting Junior for a crime he knows he committed.

I felt that this whole story was...on a sliding board and the peices were just too many to be put together. So many different people involved and so many different sub plots in the story and it just seemed to make me more dizzy than interested.

Please Mr. Koontz....revert back to your old style stories. The alien thing is past old with King and it is getting cranky with you.

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading...Until the End
Review: I have to agree with Justin regarding the ending of this book...disappointing what happened to Cain. I thought, at least, in the final pages, we would see what actually became of him. I won't go into great detail about the book because the others have done so, wonderfully, but I just couldn't put it down. It was definitely a good read.

Rating:
Summary: well...
Review: At first, this book seemed great! A little boy-genius who has amazing abilities, and a foe he'd never heard of, and a little girl with artistic talents.
Unfortunately, Koontz did a Terrible job in creating this children in a way that would make them believable. Also, the good guys were FAR too good, and seemed faultess, while the bad guy was, well, bad and stupid. He was, however, almost three dimensional, which a lot of authors have difficulty doing(creating "bad guys" who aren't completely flat).
The end of the "bad guy" was sad, a few hundred pages spent building this character until he seemed practically undefeatable, and one sentence killing him.

Rating:
Summary: Either you like Koontz or you don't!
Review: Having read the above reviews, it's clear that you either like Dean Koontz' style or you don't. "From The Corner of His Eye" is somewhat slower in spots than other Koontz books I've read, but still makes for some hard-to-put-down moments. One reviewer complained of the lack of explanation for the Enoch "Junior" Cain character. Koontz often features a psychological type taken to the extreme. Thus, Cain is a narcissist who is also antisocial (that is, he has no conscious). If you miss this, then his behavior becomes impossible to explain. He is a conscience-less man tortured by a name (Bartholomew), and he nearly drives himself insane trying to find and destroy the source of his grief. Similarly, we come to understand the psychological problems of Barty's uncles. Plenty of classic Koontz plot twists, a little bit of gruesome detail. It may not be great literature, but I thought it was a good book. Pay attention to every time that someone uses the phrase, "This momentous Day."

Rating:
Summary: Great Beginning, Horrible Ending
Review: After reading alot of Koontz's work I was a little hesitant to pick this book up, but my sister in law said it was great and that I should read it. So after wasting 5 days of my life in this book I am writing this review. It's not all bad, so don't let the beginning of the review throw you off.

I won't reveal all the betails but this book is about a boy who goes blind named Barty who is being chased by a man named enoch cain. Cain is responsible for the murders of several people and is being hounded by a cop named thomas vanadium. Barty eventually meets up with a girl named Angel and her mother and then the eventual showdown with cain who for some reason is trying to find Barty.

The plot while great for the first half of the book, turns into nothing but semi-religous, spritualistic schtick. By the end of the book I felt like I had listened to a sermon by Preacher Koontz, it was that bad. The ending of this book was terrible, and I mean terrible. The villian just gets sent away to a bad place and everyone pretty much lives happily ever after. Koontz can't even do us the favor of tying all the plot strings in the book togethor for us. Mainly the role of Enoch Cain in the book. There is just no real explanation for his motives. I would also liked to have had more of his history, something to make him more of a believable character.

The characters suffer from the same fate as the plot, they start out with great promise but by the end of the book, they are always extremely one-dimensional which is nothing new for Koontz's characters. The main villian is not much of a villian at all. While adept and somewhat creepy in the beginning by the end of the book he is inept and clumsy. The heroes are even worse, they are all so saccarine filled you can barely stand them. They have no real world personalities and do things that only perfect people would do. The only character I really liked was the cop Vanadium

All in all this book started better than the average Koontz book but by the end it was nothing but typical Koontz drivel. I had hoped for so much more, especially since it started so well! I would recommend this book if you like Koontz's work or if you've never read alot of his other books before. If you have read Koontz and don't like his stuff in general I would pass this one by.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Buy Dean Koontz Books Unless You Really Hate Trees
Review: I'd like to say that Dean Koontz is the worst writer of all time, but I'd hate to unwittingly snub some poor slob who lived before the invention of the printing press who may have scratched out boring, unimaginative stories on parchment or chiseled underdeveloped characters on stone tablets.In this "story", our boy Dino conjures up some nonsense about an evil murderer who's afraid of the name Bartholomew. It is never explained why. Really. Coincidentally, Bartholomew is the name of a small, hyper-intelligent boy who has some sort of ability to walk in other dimensions. This "other dimension" business is sketchy and vague at best, ludicrously half-baked at worst. The little boy (a prodigiously smart child, like every child Koontz writes, because KOONTZ CANNOT WRITE CHILDREN. But he insists on writing them!) says that there are countless worlds or realities or whatever just like ours, with all the same people and all the same places, existing at the same time as our reality, each dimension representing a possibility of... oh, sorry, I fell asleep.Oh, yeah, the evil murderer. Right. He murders a bunch of people and is hardly very nice about it. He's almost an interesting character, but is surrounded by such flawless, big-hearted perfect saints in the form of EVERY OTHER CHARACTER IN THE BOOK that you sort of end up rooting for him.This might have actually been an entertaining read at two hundred pages or so. Sadly, D.K seems to be the victim of some sort of deal with Bantam that pays off big only if he hits seven hundred pages. Or maybe he gets a penny a word and has to overwrite to make ends meet. Either way, this novel, like every other Koontz book, is black-and-white proof that quantity is not necessarily quality.I won't spoil the ending for you because it was already spoiled at the publishing house by the people who agreed to publish it the way it was written. All you really need to know is that there's a really, really weak payoff... and then the book goes on for another thirty pages. Huh? Anyway, there's no way you'll finish this book. You've got stuff around the house you need to do, right? Errands to run? Paint to watch dry? Or, how 'bout this: edit this book! Yeah! You could only improve it. Good luck...

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating and torturous
Review: I had a very difficult time keeping myself from throwing this book out. Even with only 30 pages to go I am struggling with finishing it because it is SO AWFUL! The summary on the back of the book is meaningless and it is clear that Mr. Koontz wrote this book with an eventual screenplay in mind... There is so much nonsensical space filler in this book that I have now decided to skip over because I'm tired of reading it. It was really exciting in the middle for about 100 pages... but I'll never ever ever recommend it or read another koontz book again.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best but.....
Review: I think any Koontz fan would enjoy this book. 622 pages long, it could have been cut down. The villain in this book lives his life according to books written by Cesar Zedd. Every time the villain is mentioned, there is always some kind of reference made to Cesar Zedd (too often and sometimes too long). That got very annoying and took away from the story some.
There are many, many characters involved in this book, but the main character seems to be Barty (Bartholemew), who was born after a tragic event. Most of the events take place when Barty is 3, and it had been discovered very early in his life that he is a prodigy, someone destined for much greater things. At the same time he was born, a little girl is born during another tragic event, and she has ties that are yet unknown to some of the charcters in this book. On that same day, you find out who the villain is and meet another character, Tom Vanadium, who has connection to some of these other characters as well.
The story basically strolls along for the first 400 or 450 pages or so with a few suspenseful moments, some surprises, and some sadness as the story begins to bring all that you have read together brilliantly with even more surprises, more suspense, and more sadness. But reading those last 170 to 200 pages is why I gave this book as good as review as I did. This book makes you think & wonder if some of what you read is possible or not.
If you get this book, be prepared for a long read, but when you finally get to the end, well, thats for you to find out.

Rating:
Summary: decent, worth a look
Review: I love a good Koontz book and while this one was good, it was not his best. Most fans of Koontz will like it and I imagine a lot of readers new to Koontz will find a new author to look for when visiting their favorite book store but ultimately this book falls short for what Koontz can deliver. I will not argue with a creative story but at times I felt the characters were throw backs to those in his past books. Cain was an interesting character but I feel like all his female characters are the same mold. I like the mold(strong, smart, resourceful, etc.)but at times it feels like their names could be interchanged and you wouldn't even notice. Other than that, I felt the story was a good one and Koontz's writing is wonderful as always. Some authors dazzle witth their use of language and Koontz is one of them. If you are new to his writing I suggest Fear Nothing first. It is hands down one of his best and will make you a fan for life.

Rating:
Summary: FOUR stars for koontz
Review: This one I would say was one of koontz best so far. The first half of the book was very exciting.
I guess the main point the I get from the book is " whatever you do in your life will come back and hunt you for good or bad ".

As it was in the book " Our deeds will be back magnified "
I think Koontz is at same level as Stephen King.