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A horror novel about a single mom stalked by cultists who think her darling moppet is the Antichrist.
Part I, sensitively titled "The Hag," introduces the premise and cast of characters.
Christine is a single mom due to the only fling of her life. Her young son Joey is six years old but very wise for his age. He never ever complains or does other normal but annoying kid things. He is extremely handsome to the point where it's normal for strangers to compliment him, polite, quiet, and plays silently by himself for hours. His big flaw is that he cutely can't pronounce February. Reading all this stuff about darling moppet Joey, I began to wonder if Koontz had a hyperactive toddler at the time of writing.
Other than the annoyingly perfect Joey, the setup is cool. An old woman dressed entirely in green accosts them, insists that Joey's birthday is Christmas Eve (it's actually February 2, or so Christine says - I thought this would be a plot point but it's never mentioned again), and says he must die! This scene is genuinely eerie.
Since this is a Dean Koontz novel, they have a golden retriever named Brandy. In Koontz world, all dogs are golden retrievers. Sometimes they are angels or God in the form of golden retrievers.
They go home, where Christine examines herself nude in the mirror because a dude wrote this book. She is generally satisfied, except that her waist is too small, but on the plus side it makes her breasts look bigger.
It's all spoilers from here on out.
THE GOLDEN RETRIEVER GETS DECAPITATED. Normally I would expect that, but Dean Koontz does not normally kill golden retrievers.
Christine sensibly calls the cops, but unfortunately the cop slut-shames her for being a single mom and dismisses her. She then sensibly goes to hire a PI. (I note this because everyone gets increasingly less sensible as the book proceeds.) The PI is named Charlie, and the scene where they meet is super romantic in a hilariously Zoe Chant-like manner. He's decorated his office himself and worries she'll think it or he is weird but she loves it and compliments him. It's very sweet.
Christine tells him her life story. She was raised by a religious fanatic emotionally abusive mom who pushed her into being a nun. (Mom is definitely not the weird old woman who accosted them. That woman is someone else who is running a cult). Christine left the nunnery and had a fling with a dude who called himself Lucius Under. (Totally normal surname.)
L. U. ...cifer!!!!!!
At Joey's urging, they adopt a new dog. Guess what kind. He looks IDENTICAL to Brandy. Joey tries to name the new dog Brandy but his mom wouldn't let him. He's now named Chewbacca. The whole episode is distinctly unsettling.
Koontz is doing some genuinely interesting stuff here. The cult is clearly batshit and totally fine with murder, but by this point Joey's perfection is starting to seem eerie. Is he the Antichrist putting on a supernaturally good front? Did he resurrect his dead dog?
Soon after this, cultists start trying to murder them every thirty seconds and then frame them for the murder of the cultists they killed in self-defense.
One of the fun things about the book is that it's set in a dead-on Los Angeles circa 1980s. So Charlie, Christine, Joey, and resurrected Brandy/Chewbacca flee to Santa Barbara (90 miles or so north) because "no one would imagine we'd leave LA!" Uhhhh.
The cultists do indeed imagine it, forcing them to flee Santa Barbara. They then head for a mountain cabin Charlie owns a share in, because surely the cultists who have thrown a literal army at them, followed them everywhere, and framed them for murder can't figure that out.
Koontz proceeds to make an excellent pitch for moving to Lake Tahoe, with really tempting descriptions of snow and primal forests and a very cozy cabin.
Charlie and Christine leave the darling little tyke/mini-Satan alone in the cabin so they can fetch supplies from the snowbound jeep because there is absolutely no way the cultists could have guessed they're at the cabin THAT HE OWNS.
...but nothing happens. Very disappointing.
But not for long! An army of cultists attack! Charlie snipes multiple cultists, but gets shot in the shoulder and there are unlimited cultists. Joey goes catatonic. Chewbacca/undead Brandy is hanging in there. They stagger around in a cultist infested blizzard for a while, until Christine finds a cave system with a 7 foot Indian drawing of a bear totem.
No one can say this book lacks for incident.
And then, just when the cult leader is about to kill them all...
BATS!
A thunderous, flapping, whirling tornado of bats.
The bats swooped down as if they were a single creature, a cloud of tiny black killing machines. They tore her to pieces.
The cult leader having been disposed of, Joey comes out of his coma and smiles creepily!
Christine tells herself that YES it is possible that bats might do that and NO it was not her darling moppet controlling them!
Surely, Christine tells herself, if she were to dig up Brandy's grave she would not find an empty box! It is not weird that Chewbacca took a seemingly mortal blow but now seems fine! As for Lucius "Luke" Under, She could not believe that Luke had been Satan.
Charlie recovers, but is consumed by doubts. He digs up Brandy's grave and finds...
...a dead Irish setter!
He decides the pet mortician mixed up the bodies, and this is proof of how silly he was being to suspect anything. (What? Do not understand this logic.) Joey is just a regular adorable kid.
Charlie marries Christine, and the book concludes with a very inconclusive scene that is totally happy and innocent if Joey is just a regular kid who happens to not have normal kid flaws, and is incredibly sinister if he's the Antichrist.
The end!
This book had a lot of promise and some excellent bits, but ended up annoying me because it came close to being ambiguous in a good way, but didn't pull it off. The failure mode of ambiguous is obnoxious.
I did like how Joey's implausible perfection first seemed like the author being bad at writing kids in a way that a lot of authors are bad at writing kids, then gradually started feeling sinister.
The Servants of Twilight
Part I, sensitively titled "The Hag," introduces the premise and cast of characters.
Christine is a single mom due to the only fling of her life. Her young son Joey is six years old but very wise for his age. He never ever complains or does other normal but annoying kid things. He is extremely handsome to the point where it's normal for strangers to compliment him, polite, quiet, and plays silently by himself for hours. His big flaw is that he cutely can't pronounce February. Reading all this stuff about darling moppet Joey, I began to wonder if Koontz had a hyperactive toddler at the time of writing.
Other than the annoyingly perfect Joey, the setup is cool. An old woman dressed entirely in green accosts them, insists that Joey's birthday is Christmas Eve (it's actually February 2, or so Christine says - I thought this would be a plot point but it's never mentioned again), and says he must die! This scene is genuinely eerie.
Since this is a Dean Koontz novel, they have a golden retriever named Brandy. In Koontz world, all dogs are golden retrievers. Sometimes they are angels or God in the form of golden retrievers.
They go home, where Christine examines herself nude in the mirror because a dude wrote this book. She is generally satisfied, except that her waist is too small, but on the plus side it makes her breasts look bigger.
It's all spoilers from here on out.
THE GOLDEN RETRIEVER GETS DECAPITATED. Normally I would expect that, but Dean Koontz does not normally kill golden retrievers.
Christine sensibly calls the cops, but unfortunately the cop slut-shames her for being a single mom and dismisses her. She then sensibly goes to hire a PI. (I note this because everyone gets increasingly less sensible as the book proceeds.) The PI is named Charlie, and the scene where they meet is super romantic in a hilariously Zoe Chant-like manner. He's decorated his office himself and worries she'll think it or he is weird but she loves it and compliments him. It's very sweet.
Christine tells him her life story. She was raised by a religious fanatic emotionally abusive mom who pushed her into being a nun. (Mom is definitely not the weird old woman who accosted them. That woman is someone else who is running a cult). Christine left the nunnery and had a fling with a dude who called himself Lucius Under. (Totally normal surname.)
L. U. ...cifer!!!!!!
At Joey's urging, they adopt a new dog. Guess what kind. He looks IDENTICAL to Brandy. Joey tries to name the new dog Brandy but his mom wouldn't let him. He's now named Chewbacca. The whole episode is distinctly unsettling.
Koontz is doing some genuinely interesting stuff here. The cult is clearly batshit and totally fine with murder, but by this point Joey's perfection is starting to seem eerie. Is he the Antichrist putting on a supernaturally good front? Did he resurrect his dead dog?
Soon after this, cultists start trying to murder them every thirty seconds and then frame them for the murder of the cultists they killed in self-defense.
One of the fun things about the book is that it's set in a dead-on Los Angeles circa 1980s. So Charlie, Christine, Joey, and resurrected Brandy/Chewbacca flee to Santa Barbara (90 miles or so north) because "no one would imagine we'd leave LA!" Uhhhh.
The cultists do indeed imagine it, forcing them to flee Santa Barbara. They then head for a mountain cabin Charlie owns a share in, because surely the cultists who have thrown a literal army at them, followed them everywhere, and framed them for murder can't figure that out.
Koontz proceeds to make an excellent pitch for moving to Lake Tahoe, with really tempting descriptions of snow and primal forests and a very cozy cabin.
Charlie and Christine leave the darling little tyke/mini-Satan alone in the cabin so they can fetch supplies from the snowbound jeep because there is absolutely no way the cultists could have guessed they're at the cabin THAT HE OWNS.
...but nothing happens. Very disappointing.
But not for long! An army of cultists attack! Charlie snipes multiple cultists, but gets shot in the shoulder and there are unlimited cultists. Joey goes catatonic. Chewbacca/undead Brandy is hanging in there. They stagger around in a cultist infested blizzard for a while, until Christine finds a cave system with a 7 foot Indian drawing of a bear totem.
No one can say this book lacks for incident.
And then, just when the cult leader is about to kill them all...
BATS!
A thunderous, flapping, whirling tornado of bats.
The bats swooped down as if they were a single creature, a cloud of tiny black killing machines. They tore her to pieces.
The cult leader having been disposed of, Joey comes out of his coma and smiles creepily!
Christine tells herself that YES it is possible that bats might do that and NO it was not her darling moppet controlling them!
Surely, Christine tells herself, if she were to dig up Brandy's grave she would not find an empty box! It is not weird that Chewbacca took a seemingly mortal blow but now seems fine! As for Lucius "Luke" Under, She could not believe that Luke had been Satan.
Charlie recovers, but is consumed by doubts. He digs up Brandy's grave and finds...
...a dead Irish setter!
He decides the pet mortician mixed up the bodies, and this is proof of how silly he was being to suspect anything. (What? Do not understand this logic.) Joey is just a regular adorable kid.
Charlie marries Christine, and the book concludes with a very inconclusive scene that is totally happy and innocent if Joey is just a regular kid who happens to not have normal kid flaws, and is incredibly sinister if he's the Antichrist.
The end!
This book had a lot of promise and some excellent bits, but ended up annoying me because it came close to being ambiguous in a good way, but didn't pull it off. The failure mode of ambiguous is obnoxious.
I did like how Joey's implausible perfection first seemed like the author being bad at writing kids in a way that a lot of authors are bad at writing kids, then gradually started feeling sinister.
The Servants of Twilight
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I laughed!
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But will we get the Zoe Chant take on this with 100% less decapitation of Golden Retrievers??? I mean, PI takes single mom + child + doggo to his private cabin in the woods is some 10/10 Zoe Chant.
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I swear Dean Koontz comes across as a frustrated romance writer sometimes. His carnival goblins book has an extremely swoony romance.
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I am glad Koontz at least knew that after that introduction, if the protagonist and the P.I. did not get together, readers would throw the book across the room no matter what happened with the ambiguous Antichrist plot.
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As for women writing women looking in the mirror: Diana Gabaldon has her protagonist look at herself naked in the mirror and evaluate her own attractiveness, ahead of hooking up with a guy, and wish she knew what her mother's backside had looked like when she was alive.
I know I'm not neurotypical, but do women really stare at their naked bodies in the mirror and mentally compare their backsides to their mothers'? That scene always stuck with me because it was such a moment of "Either I'm from Mars or you are, I'm not sure which," for me.
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This was originally under his Leigh Nichols pen name, right? I snuck it out of my grandmother’s trunk full of 80s romance thrillers, although it’s faded in my memory next to the cheerfully bonkers House of Thunder.
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A Christmas Nightmare
It was the season to be jolly, a time made for all children, and for all grownups who would never grow old. It was the happiest time of the year, a time of renewed friendships, and of strangers being welcomed into the house. It was the time to reflect again on events that had transpired 2000 years ago ... It was not the time for murder.
But Death knows no holiday season, The sight o f happiness can only be answered by bitterness, and the darkest joys. This Christmas would not be a time of peace among men of good will... and the horror of this darkest of dark holidays would live on for fifteen years, live on until an innocent stranger would be caught up by the unforgettable terror of that long-ago Christmas, trapped in a celebration of death!
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Forty days before February 2 is December 24.
So the cult leader got the day wrong but the season right. She just thought that the Antichrist would be born at the beginning of the Christmas season rather than the end.
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I'm NOT kidding. She can heal and resurrect, and she DOES.
And the fact that Nickie's possessed by an angel who happens to be the heroine's dead daughter really doesn't improve matters. She is, for all intents and purposes, a holy vessel filled with divine power who has been chosen by God to save humans and dogs alike. (Well, not all humans. Psychopaths trying to hurt the heroine need not apply.)
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