Book Review

By the Light of the Moon

Last year around this time, I wrote a review of Dean Koontz's previous book, "One Door Away From Heaven" (now out in paperback). I didn't much care for it, nor have two re-reads over the course of the year changed my opinion.

Absolutely undeterred by this, the prolific and amazing Mr. Koontz is back with a new hardcover. His trick of releasing the books bare days before Christmas - December 24th with this latest one - is probably quite clever, catching everyone who received bookstore gift certificates or good old cash money in their stockings.

In our family, it worked out well because we celebrate Christmas twice. Once on the actual day, and once a week later when Tim's family pays their holiday visit. So, I got "By the Light of the Moon" as a slightly belated present.

Actually, I was rolling in books, and many of them by Koontz. I also unwrapped a print copy of "The Paper Doorway," a collection of funny little poems, which Becca immediately commandeered because we've had an audio tape of them for some time now and she knows them all by heard. I also got "Dragonfly," a spy thriller under a Koontzonym, and the 1981 "How to Write Best-Selling Fiction."

It was the contrast between the how-to book and the brand-new novel that struck me as the most ironic. In the intervening 22 years, Koontz has continued his phenomenal track record … but the most recent books have broken many of the rules he himself set forth. Like the "message" rule. More and more, it seems that the author is using his novels to get across sermons on the ills of the modern world. That was especially blatant in "One Door Away From Heaven."

But here we are, several paragraphs into this review and I've yet to say anything about "By the Light of the Moon." Onward!

It may come as a shock to long-time readers who didn't think he had it in him, but Dean Koontz has managed to get through an entire book without a dog character! He couldn't entirely go cold-turkey; his beloved golden retrievers do turn up as the subject of a jigsaw puzzle. The sidekick spot this time is filled not by a dog, or even a cat, but a jade plant named Fred.

Koontz's marvelous command of language is as always in profuse evidence. The descriptions are beautifully-crafted, though they do go against his guidelines for "simplicity" on page 198 of the Style chapter: "excessive adjectives and adverbs, overly complicated phrasing, too elaborate metaphors and similes included solely because the writer is showing off."

The premise of "By the Light of the Moon" is another normal-people-sucked-into-conspiracy, with the mad-scientist villain, the gutsy tough-as-nails heroine, the sensitive-but-all-man hero, and the endearing but impaired kid. The good guys end up on the run from mysterious MIBs after being injected with an unknown substance by a doctor who claims that the substance will either kill them, or drastically alter them for the better.

Dylan O'Conner, our hero du jour, is an artist and the guardian of his autistic brother, Shep. Maybe it’s me - no, I know it's me, because I'm a selfish and self-centered shrew - but I found it hard to relate to Dylan, who basically sacrifices everything for the sake of keeping his brother out of a care facility. Good for him; I wouldn't be able to do it.

Shep, who hearkens to Skeet from "False Memory" (just as Leilani from "One Door Away From Heaven was a flimsy copy of Regina from "Hideaway) is autistic with a knack for being a walking thesaurus. Pages are spent on his recitation of synonyms for whatever word happens to be lodged in his mind. Interesting at first, but this quickly palls.

Our heroine, caretaker of the silent but screen-present Fred the Jade Plant, is Jillian Jackson. Jilly, a comedienne brimming with knee-jerk anger at anything she perceives as a slight, runs afoul of the mad doctor and then discovers that she and Dylan are both subjects in his scheme.

Together, the three of them - poor Fred gets left behind as their odd post-injection abilities continue to develop - start off on the run but are led into various vigilante heroics by Dylan's budding precognition. The action is nicely paced and exciting, but the conclusion of the book was unsatisfying. It reminded me too much of the ending of "Out of the Corner of His Eye."

If Stephen King is talking about retiring because he's worried that he's going to start repeating himself, I'm afraid that Dean Koontz had better look out for the same thing. After the colossal body of work he's produced, some recycling is bound to happen, but these last few books have seemed more and more like he's going over the same ground, or at least plucking pieces from here and there to re-combine, with less than winning results.

Overall, it was certainly worth the time it took to read, and I liked it much more than I did "One Door Away From Heaven." I spent a lot of time admiring the skillful description (though that in itself is a problem because it distracted me from the story). Koontz fans should find it an enjoyable way to pass an evening or two.

review by Christine Morgan