Author: Dean Koontz
# of Pages: 425 (paperback)
Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Suspense
Rating:★★★☆☆
Synopsis: They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California.
Review: I hate anything related to horror.
Stephen King's newest thriller? No thank you. Newly released horror movies just in time for Halloween? Forget about it.
I may be living under a rock in regards to the horror/thriller/suspense realm of media, but I only vaguely knew who Dean Koontz was (as in, his name sounded familiar, but I had no idea what kind of books he wrote). When I saw his book at the library, I thought I might as well give it a shot.
If I truly thought Phantoms was scary, I would have stopped reading it a long time ago. But Dean Koontz's writing, or at least in this book, is not that scary. Yes, he brings up some scary situations (he tries to get pretty crafty in the ways all of the people in Snowfield end up dead), but the way he describes these situations is pretty lackluster (and for that I am grateful, or I wouldn't be able to finish the book).
I wanted to be able to finish this book, so I was grateful for this mediocre thriller. However, the target audience would be searching for the thrill, the creepy elements that usually make me want to curl in ball and die. Readers won't get this from the book at all. I'm confident the movie is 10x more scary than the book because the book can only be as scary as the writer can get the reader's imagination to make it. In this case, I was very underwhelmed.
The problem was not only the writing style; the plot was mostly predictable. Sure, the cause of the death of the Snowfield residents may have not been so easy to guess, but the "jump scare" moments throughout the story was not that hard to predict. "That's part of what makes a jump scare a jump scare!" you might be thinking. While anticipation can make a scary scene even scary, when something is EXTREMELY predictable, it's not as freaky as the author would want it to be. And unfortunately for Koontz, it's a lot harder to write in a jump scare than it is to have one in a movie.
That being said, I wasn't haven't a good time reading this book since most of the events were unpleasant. I was intrigued enough to finish this book in two days, but this may have been partially from my fear of the book becoming scarier than it ever did (and not wanting to have to read the book late at night). Usually when I finish a book relatively quickly, it's a good read, but I wouldn't highly recommend this book most people. If a thrill/horror enthusiast is looking for a light, tame read, they should go for it. Otherwise, look elsewhere.
