If you read my last couple of Koontz reviews you’ll know I was pretty disappointed with The husband, but felt some of the spark returning when I read The Good Guy. So it was that I bought Darkest Evening of the Year on release date, and despite a busy schedule made the time to read the first few chapters, feeling strangely that this book was going to pack the punch that had been lacking in Koont’z previous two offerings.

I’m happy to say I was not wrong! The Darkest Evening of the Year sees Dean Koontz back on form as far as I am concerned, with a spooky and mysterious novel that I was happy to lose myself in over a few nights (I used to read such books over 1 or 2 sittings, but circumstances are different at the moment!). In any case, I was hooked on the plotline, and was pulled forward into the narrative, wanting to know what happened next, and somewhat seduced by Koontz’s sharp, crystal-crafted prose (whatever criticisms are levelled at Koontz, his descriptive powers are second to none)

So, what is the story about? Central character, with a mysterious past, Amy Redwing, dedicates her life to saving endangered Golden Retrievers, and has founded an organisation for just this purpose. Even among dog lovers, she’s a legend for the risks she’ll take to save an animal. One night she ends up at a home where an abusive drunk is doing his thing with wife and daughter, and offers him a large sum for the dog, as the wife and kid are getting out of there – in fact Amy puts herself at considerable risk, but there appears to be an immediate and uncanny bond between this new dog, Christened Nickie, and Amy.

But these happy dog rescuing events are thrown into doubt by some sinister and eerie incidents. An ominous stranger is following Amy, and her home is invaded and robbed of certain items – it appears Amy’s mysterious past may be catching up with her, and her boyfriend Brian has secrets of his own too. As the story progresses, the mystery unravels chapter by chapter, and it was this rush of wanting me to find out what was behind it all that kept me turning the pages.

This novel has a lot of stuff going on, twisted plotlines, shocking events – random murder, sexual perversion, child torture and infanticide; but somehow the characters of Amy and Nickie the Goldren retriever offer some kind of redemption. I will not be forgetting the supremely evil but beautiful Moon Girl in a hurry, one of the baddest girls I’ve come across in a book for a while, and the cold and merciless Harrow also makes the blood run cold. There’s also a strange hybrid character in the form of Billy Pilgrim, who despite being a cold blooded cyncial killer, also appears eminently likeable in a lot of ways, and I love one bit where Koontz, highly aware of plenty of recent criticism on the boards and book reviews sites, muses through the character on some of the benefits of not having become a writer, which was the killer’s initial ambition

The novel does suffer slightly, I feel from an ending that seems rather rushed, and the introduction of deus ex machina may detract from its success to an extent (then again it is nice to see the supernatural element return to Koontz, where it belongs) but like they say, it’s the journey, not the destination that matters, and Dean Koontz’s The Darkest Evening of the Year took me on a narrative ride that I haven’t enjoyed so much in ages.

Just one word of warning, if you don’t like dogs, and have a gripe against dog lovers, this may not quite be the book for you!

I look forward to the next in the Odd Thomas Series, Odd Hours, to be released this summer!

Introducing Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter….

I’ve always loved horror stories, and always enjoyed the age old tale of vampires, beginning with Dracula and moving on to more modern interpretations and retellings. In the form of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Laurell Hamilton has managed not only to create a formidable opponent for the enemy, but also to bring Vampires into the mainstream – in the world of this series, you need a warrant to execute a vampire, and vampirism is legal as long as all parties are of age and consenting! In fact the premise of this story is that someone is killing innocent vampires, and Anita Blake is recruited to help stop them!

Anita is much more than a Vampire Hunter – she also raises Zombies, a kind of “necromancer” by profession. In this first of the series, Guilty Pleasures, as well as the unravelling vampire murder mystery, we also learn how Anita Blake got started, and are introduced to the mysterious Jean Claude, a master vampire and Anita’s arch enemy, but also destined to become very close to her…

Fast paced, humourous and intelligent, quirky and original, this is the book which got me hooked on the series (I am on book 7 now!). More reviews to follow of the rest of the books, but if you haven’t yet discovered the world of Anita Blake and modern day vampires, now might be as good a time as any to start

I was quite surprised to read some of the reviews on Amazon of Lisey’s Story, finding a lot of readers disappointed. Personally I have never been disappointed with a King book, as I always come to them with an open mind, and respect a writer who doesn’t churn out fodder for the bestseller lists, but who writes from the heartmind. Every King book is going to be a little different, he tries new things which may or may not disappoint the constant reader, and in my opinion it usually works, and even his weaker works are way better than the best most writers can output. Ok, so you know I’m biased, but I loved this story, Lisey’s story…

King has tried his hand at pretty much every genre there is, and Lisey’s Story is essentially a love story – but a love story with Kingian twists, especially so as the love story is told from a posthumous perspective, therefore making it also a story of grief. Through Lisey Landon, widow of bestselling author Scott Landon, we learn of a marriage that has its highs and its lows, its beauties and its terrors, and there are many small touches that give our glimpse into the world of the marriage intimacy and reality. Yet the story is as much about the present as the past, and there is plenty going on in the widow Landon’s life to keep her occupied. As I read I felt that the story is as much a ghost story as it is a romance and a thriller – for Scott Landon, although two years deceased at the the start of the novel, has a presence through Lisey’s memory that makes him as much a central character as Lisey.

Lisey’s Story is not a thrill a minute roller coaster ride as some King novels can be, nor is it filled with gore and insane characters (although there are some!) But the novel is haunting, and progresses at a quiet, unhurried rate, and as always with King novels, I come to care about Lisey very quickly, for it is with the language and the beautiful storytelling that King manages to make his characters so real, so quickly – and this was another old tale by an old friend that I thoroughly enjoyed reading

At the time I was in a real writer stuck in a garret situation and was working on a doomed horror novel (well, I now know it was doomed, but I had high hopes for it once), and we talked about the crowded markets and the competition, and he told me it was pretty hard to break in with a first novel. Things have changed quite a lot since then, and while self-publishing opportunities flourish, it’s probably harder than ever to break into the mainstream, and while some writers make it big, others flounder. It’s quite strange that in a world where a horror writer is the world’s bestselling writer, publishers don’t consider there to be a market for new horror writers, or even most of the existing ones (writers are losing their publishers all the time). The relevance of this? Well, Peter James has recently turned away from horror and has been adventuring with crime novels – a shame, since he has a knack for writing damn good horror novels, like The Truth.

When the bank pulls the plug, John and Susan Carter have thirty one days to find one and a half million pounds, or they will lose everything, their home, their business, everything they’ve worked for. Then out of the blue steps Mr Sarotzini, who offers to solve all their problems on just one condition: Susan must be the father of his child. But who is the mysterious Mr Sarotzini, and why does everyone who asks end up dead? How come he knows so much about the Carters? Why does Susan’s prgnancy hurt so much…

In a novel filled with questions, it is indeed a long time before we learn the truth, but in the meantime the story takes us on a rollercoaster of a ride with some well rounded characters, some subtle plotting, and action that carries the reader along through a chilling, unlikely, yet ultimately plausible nightmare that owes only a little of its chill to the supernatural. Most of the horror comes from very human evil, and I won’t be forgetting the inimitable Kundz for a while – a truly nasty character, capable of some very twisted love

One gets the sense that just around the corner, in any Stephen King novel, you could run into characters or events from any of his books (and sometimes you actually do!), and during the course of reading Cell, I was convinced we were going to run into Randall Flagg at some point, the walking dude, the midnight cowboy! Maybe the Raggedy Man was him, who knows? Anyway, although Flagg doesn’t raise his ugly world-murdering head, I’ve no doubt he has something to do with the horrible event that sets in motion the horrible aftermath which unfolds in this apocalyptic novel. And yes, King comprehensively examined the end of world theme in The Stand, but Shakespeare wrote about regicide more than once, Dickens wrote about poor orphaned children more than once, and I for one was happy to look over King’s shoulder as he visited another version of the end of the World in his mind’s eye

Like many King novels, the action is sudden, preposterous and bizarre, yet all too believable. And King’s quirky observations often carry an eerie sense of verisimilitude. The story opens normally enough with comic book artist Clayton Riddell on his way to a hotel, after closing a deal for his artwork. Like the world around him, Clayton is preoccupied with enjoying the present and anticipating the future, with a sense of potential walking along with him, when the world is suddenly, inexplicably, terrifyingly ended within the space of a few pages. It’s not a bomb, it’s not bullets, and it’s not airplanes flying into skyscrapers. It’s the humble cell phone, and the damage is done as some strange and mysterious signal unencodes the user’s mind and returns it to its most primal, insane vestiges. And that, as you might expect, is when people start to kill each other, and when those who have been untouched (those who either don’t own or have lost their cell phones) must band together to survive.

Clayton, meanwhile, is desperate to get home to see how his wife and child have fared amidst this chaos. Of course, he can’t use a cell phone, and the landlines are down. Much of the story revolves around this journey home, but as with many King novels, it is as much the characters, the humour, the interactions, the observations, as much as the plot that keep it going.

I read Stephen King’s Cell in 2 sittings, the first time I have just sat down and got through a book so quickly in a long time. I am definitely planning to spend some of this summer re-reading a few of the favourites in my collection

It’s fitting that this last novel should be classic Laymon, who comes up with a story as gory as it is original, as shocking as it is twisted, as interesting as it is bizarre! The action involves two separate groups of characters who gravitate towards their inexorable impact in the second half of the novel, and in typical Laymon fashion these characters are as interesting and captivating as they are hateful and mean. Take Boots, one of Laymon’s most bizarre and shocking female characters, the indisputable bad boy Duke (of all he surveys, or so he believes), and the hapless college boy Norman, hoodwinked into a nightmare journey and companionship that could happen to anyone when they just stop off for gas and jerky one day. Seriously, it could. Laymon’s style has never been to dwell on the nicer side of human nature, and in his horror novels even the heroes and heroines often have a thoroughly nasty side – it’s just that the villains are every so slightly nastier! We do have heroes in this novel, but heroes who are completely bizarre, although our heroine Pamela soon finds her lot thrown in with them for better or worse.

As gory as any Laymon novel, The Glory Bus has it’s moments of shock horror, putrefying dead bodies, caved in skulls, shootings, knifings, beatings and the constant threats of such. It also has Laymon’s dark humour underpinning the text throughout; these characters might be hateful bastards, but they’re kind of funny in their own twisted way – Laymon even manages to make the carnage seem funny at times, almost like real life, where certain events are so terrible, you have to laugh to deal with them, or you just can’t stop the hysterics.

The Glory Bus, or Gory Bus, then, is a fast-paced thrillfest of shock and horror with captivatingly nasty characters and good guys with their own morbid twists and secrets. Classic Laymon, as I said, The Glory Bus ends the flow of posthumous manuscripts on a glorious note. Rest in Peace (or Pieces!), Richard, and thanks for all the thrills