False Memory by Dean Koontz..Idk? HELP!?

[crimes]

I am only on page 40ish and I already want to rip out my eyeballs. Does this crap get good or does the crappy writing just ruin it? I tried reading Demon Seed a few years ago and UGH! WORSE.WRITING.EVER. So opinions on this book if you've read it and Dean Koontz in general? I feel like he is a Stephen King wannabe

Comments

[erunamiryene]

I've found that the only two books of his that I really like are Midnight & Lightning. Other than that, they bore me to pieces.

[idemandjustice]

I haven't read Midnight, but I thought Lightning was just completely different from the other books he'd written. I think that was what made it good.

[erunamiryene]

It really was.

Midnight is mostly "technology goes horribly horribly wrong and humanity just can't handle it", Lightning is ... I don't really know how to classify it, and the rest all seems to be AUTHORITY FIGURES ARE EVIL AND WILL EAT YOUR FACE (at least the ones I've read), and frankly, I read enough news, I don't need more books about how government is terrible. XD

[merchendiver]

I read him when I was younger. I tend to chalk it up to the folly of youth, but that doesn't work as I know a lot of really smart young people these days. I enjoyed Watchers, Night Chill and Twilight Eyes. but that is about it.

[gehayi]

A lot of the narration and inner dialogue in that book is supposed to be haiku-like--five syllables in one line, followed by seven in the second, and five again in the third. I think that the lines you just quoted were by the sexually psychopathic psychiatrist, who fancies himself an artist and who's very disappointed that he's never crafted a great haiku. (He's not an artist. He's into mind control, with which he forces women to be complicit in their own rapes and orders all of his victims, male and female, to commit suicide or murder-suicide in horrible ways.)

Oh, and the doctor's name is Mark Ahriman. Among his aliases are Jim Shaitan, Bill Sammael and Jack Apollyon.

So you intended him to be the innocent boy-next-door type, right? I couldn't tell, Koontz. That was too subtle for me.

[crimes]

This comment made no sense to me because I've only read 40 pages LOL. That quote was just a random page I flipped to. :/ There is a murder? This book is suppose to be about a woman who is scared of HERSELF....I am so confused.

[gehayi]

Ahriman orders a lot of people--men, women and children--to kill themselves and to kill others, both before the novel starts and in the course of the story. He also relishes implanting false memories--hence the title--especially those of sexual abuse. Without getting into too much detail, the woman who suffers from Ahriman-induced autophobia proves to be his undoing. Well...it's not really autophobia as psychologists generally define it so much as it's intense self-hatred and a conviction that she'll blind, mutilate and murder those she loves if she even gets near them.

Oh, and there is a highly intelligent dog in this, because it is a Koontz book.

[crimes]

Well obviously I won't be reading this now.

[daystarsearcher]

I enjoyed Koontz in high school for his ability to combine breezy humor with genuine horror. Then, A) he had a near death experience and started feeling the need to hammer home HEY GUYS THE AFTERLIFE IS REAL in every single story, and B) I realized that he already had some skeezy stuff going on with his kink-shaming and political agendas. Some stories he manages to make his views neatly fit into the characters and situations, but in my experience far more of them are all, "Hey. Let me take a page of inner dialogue to talk about my views, even though they don't really enter into the story."

[merchendiver]

That right there is why I don't read him anymore.

[albijuli]

So THAT'S what happened...

[daystarsearcher]

So my high school librarian told me, anyhow.

[ladyruby07]

I've read some Dean Koontz and liked it. "Life Expectancy" was hilarious and the writing I think is probably a bit easier to read since he wrote that one in a first-person POV. I also really want to read the Odd Thomas series because I've heard so much good about it.

But I haven't read this book and I've heard the comparison between him and Stephen King before. They are similar in genre, and sometimes in writing as Koontz can take just as much time to get to the point as King does IMO.

Though I might still say King is the better author.

[crimes]

I love King (for the most part) so I am kind of sad that there is any comparison. :( He can defiantly go on and on but I don't know..I just think Koontz writing is just bad..

[ladyruby07]

My mom's a HUGE King fan too, but she likes Koontz as an author as well. She owns a good amount of both of them which is how I've been able to read it.