Review of Dean Koontz's Fear Nothing
An Evaluation of Koontz's Critically Acclaimed Novel
The mark of a good suspense novel is (obviously) suspense. Unfortunately, too much of a good thing can turn a good novel into a bad one. Dean Koontz is normally a master at judging the amount of suspense that should be present in a great thriller.
Take Odd Thomas, for example. In this book, an unusual young man that can see the future through his contact with spirits must risk his life in order to save those whom he holds dear. The plot is like a finely crafted piece of music. The tension and excitement build and build until finally everything explodes into a crescendo of action at the climax before falling back to a comfortable pace with a satisfying ending that answers all of your questions, but still leaves you wanting more.
Fear Nothing, on the other hand, merely meanders along lazily, causing you to ask many questions that you think are important to the plot, but are never given answers in the text. It is as if Koontz believed that the reader could not only read his prose, but also his mind, and therefore assumed that they knew everything he did about the story and its characters.
Christopher Snow
The story that Koontz attempted to tell was that of Christopher Snow and his battle to rid his hometown of the failed experiments that his mother created before her death two years previous. Her aim had been to discover a cure for the disease xenoderma pigmentosum, which renders its victims vulnerable to light in any form. Exposure to even fluorescent lighting is enough to seriously damage the skin and cause much pain. This disease plagued her son, Chris, which was why he was left to walk the night with only the company of his beloved dog, Orson.
Despite her hope to use the vaccine she had created to cure her son’s XP, the serum was taken from Mrs. Snow by the military and used to produce a multitude of super-smart animals, including canines like Orson. Most of these creatures were not as kind and loving as Orson was, however. Though they were bred to go behind enemy lines to attack and kill the unsuspecting opposing army, most of the animals ended up with a rage and a desire to kill not only their country’s enemies, but everyone who was involved in their creation, all the while spreading a deadly virus that no one had realized that they carried.
Fear This Book
Lansing State Journal raves that this novel is "A nervous, bone-chilling ride through the darkness", and Amarillo Sunday News-Globe praises Koontz language and style, saying that it contains, "Beautifully descriptive prose [and] page turning suspense." Billboard touts that this this is "A riveting tale", and this is absolutely true. This book was definitely a thrill-ride, forcing one to keep turning its pages long after they had intended to stop reading.
Unfortunately, all of that page turning comes to naught. The ending of this four hundred and thirty-two page book is summed up hastily in less than ten pages, and nothing is resolved, leaving the reader wondering why they even started reading the book in the first place. While Dean Koontz is a superb novelist, this book is not one of his better works.
Fear Nothing Published by Bantam Dell 1998. ISBN 978-0-553-57975-8
Fear Nothing (paperback cover)
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