Author Spotlight: Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is often considered the Pepsi to Stephen King’s Coke-Cola, which isn’t quite fair. I think Dean Koontz has his own unique brand of thrillers and horror novels, which while similar to King in some ways, still has its own flavor. If Stephen King is rock music, Dean Koontz is Christian rock. Koontz has more hope in his novels than King.  He has a great if a hokey sense of humor that make his proses crackle and his reads a fun read. Here are some Dean Koontz books worth reading.

 

Watchers

“Watchers” is the ultimate novel for dog lovers. Anyone who is a regular reader of Dean Koontz will know Koontz loves dogs. Dogs who are brave, or in the case of this novel, a super genius. Koontz often poses on the back of his novel with his current golden retriever. “Watchers” is the story of a normal but unfulfilled guy and an awkwardly shy woman who come together when they encounter a golden retriever who escaped from a lab, and displays an almost supernatural level of intelligence.  It’s a solid page-turner and a good introduction to many of Koontz’s themes.

Demon Seed

“Demon Seed” is one of Koontz’s scariest books. It’s the story of a woman who lives in a house that is ruled over by an artificial intelligence network, which becomes obsessed with her. To make the novel even scarier and more claustrophobic, the novel is literally narrated by the artificial intelligence network itself.

Odd Thomas

Odd Thomas is one of Koontz’s most beloved creations. A young fry cook who can communicate with the dead, who hangs out with dead classic Americana icons like Elvis, as his friends, while also inhabiting a quirky town that is very protective of him. Odd Thomas is an everyman. He dreams of simple things like owning an ice cream store or a tire shop, yet because of his supernatural ability, he is forced to become a hero. There are seven books in all with Odd Thomas as the main character by Koontz, and it's a great series read.

Life Expectancy

One of my favorite Koontz novels, because it’s like reading Koontz’s take on Stephen King’s classic tomb, “IT”. Like “IT”, this novel does have its own evil clown. A baby is born, and on its birth, a mysterious figure hands the father a list of things that will happen over the baby’s lifetime. Next to him, another baby is born, and this is the baby who ends up stalking the future adult throughout his life, dressed as an evil clown. This is one of Koontz’s quirky best, and says a lot about fate, and if it’s real or not.

These are some good novels to start with if you want to start reading Dean Koontz. Koontz has written over 100 novels, so if you do choose to pick him up, and look at him as more than a Stephen King clone, I think you’ll find something worth reading.