The House of Thunder

Where to start? This was an awful mess of a novel, lazily written with horrible plotting and unnatural interactions. My fiance read this recently and complained how bad it was and challenged me to read it as well. Well, she was right.

Firstly, the characters are just so unlikable. The main protagonist is supposed to be some clever scientist but comes across as dimly paranoid, before making giant leaps of conclusions based on practically nothing at all. The doctor figure creates an entirely inappropriate relationship with his patient.

Next we have the writing. Dean Koontz seems to have a love of listing every single thing in incredible detail. This book desperately needed a good editor to cut down the overly flowery description into something more manageable. A lot of these descriptions are just lazy repeats of the same description too. The book reads like a piece of verbal diarrhea

Then there is the plot. The ‘big twist' at the end is one of the laziest writing tropes I have ever scene. If there was any merit in the previous section three quarters of the book it is completely annihilated by the mess at the end.

Is this the worst book I have ever read? No, not by a long shot. But is it worth reading? No, not by a long shot either. This was my first Dean Koontz book and I have no desire to read anything else by him based on this. I kind of want the time I spent reading this back...