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This is the sequel to "Fear Nothing" which introduced Christopher Snow, who suffers from a rare, light-sensitive condition known as xeroderma pigmentosum (XP). Dean Koontz sure knows how to draw you into a story, how to tingle the imagination, chill the spine, speed up the pulse. And, of course, Orson, the intelligent pouch, is a result of those same experiments.Snow's deceased mother had a lot to do with these experiments, which started out to be a search for a cure for genetic disorders, but Fort Wyvern is a military base, after all.
We also met Snow's, sharp as a tack girlfriend Sasha and his surfer pal Bobby. But our gang of good guys fights on and perseveres to the end. Light shortens his life, so he has to live in the dark, in the shadows.
Is it any wonder that the experiments turned to the dark side, any wonder that the super secret types would want to use genetics to turn out the perfect soldier.In no time at all Snow and his pals are up against mutant creatures of several stripes, creatures that will give you the chilly whillies. And of course we can't forget his genetically altered, very bright dog, Orson or the small seaside town of Moonlight Bay, where they all live.Five-year-old Jimmy Wing is missing and Snow and his friends are concerned, especially Snow, because Jimmy's mother is a friend and a former lover. Soon they learn that Jimmy isn't the only missing child in Moonlight Bay and the clues seem to lead to Fort Wyvern, the base where a series of secret experiments years earlier left behind an assorted mix of genetic mutations - super-smart rhesus monkeys, snakes, coyotes and the occasional human, the occasional very strange human.
However you won't have to fight on or persevere through this book that is so good that it seemed to be over before I started. Don't pass this one by.
* * *My Two Cents WorthI am an avid reader and most of my friends know that I am always looking for "new" authors, genres, and writing styles. I didn't like it at all.From page 370 to the climax of the story, the wandering and excessive descriptions of the laboratory became a hindrance to the action. Snow survives a number of threats, from swarming suicidal birds to rabid and super-intelligent rhesus monkeys and genetic mutants, and in the process loses his best friend Orson, his canine companion, himself a product of the bio-engineering that takes place at the Wyvern facility.With the help of some friends, Snow later returns to Wyvern to rescue what he deduces to be a group of missing children, only to find a host of new challenges. SynopsisSeize the Night is the second book of a series featuring Christopher Snow, who suffers from xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), and his frantic search for the missing child of an ex-girlfriend. I will choose another of his books in the future, but this one didn't do it for me. The characters were weak, not to mention unnecessarily odd, and the "surfer dude" dialogue made me crazy.
By the time Snow leaves Wyvern to gather his friends for the return trip (page 208) I had lost interest.The following 130 pages - as we meet the friends who are to accompany him back to the lab - was much too long an interlude in the plot for me.
Many of them recommended I give Koontz a try, so I did.
I found this to be a very weak way to discover some of the missing clues about the evil kidnappers.
XP is a condition that renders Snow extremely sensitive to any form of light, limiting him to a lifetime spent in the dark of night, to which he has adapted and thrives.The search for the child takes him to Wyvern, an abandoned government R&D facility on the outskirts of town, that rumors link to any number of wild genetic studies and, as we find late in the story, time travel experiments.
Finally, as the mystery is being revealed and the action mercifully hits its peak, Snow stops to read newspaper clippings he finds taped to the walls of the dark hallway through his night vision goggles.
Seize the Night was my first Koontz book and I was hindered by the fact that I had no knowledge of the prequel in the series.That being said, I was initially quite pleased by the author's way with words in the first 42 pages, but it was exactly here that my focus was lost.
The clever dialogue, interesting setting, and vivid descriptions of the games that a person's mind plays as they maneuver in a totally darkened environment ended abruptly.Just as the action promised to race, it became mired in wordy and disjointed paragraphs that completely derailed the story line.
I was disappointed and it felt like the author had forgotten to disclose some important details earlier in the plot and threw them in as an afterthought.Koontz is such an accomplished author but I feel like this was the wrong book for me to start with.
Sorry guys.Paperback443 pages6 hours.
When Chris is trapped in the abandoned house with the troop or when Chris and Bobby get caught in the "egg room" feature some of Koontz's best writing, and if you are a fan of the author's earlier more horror-like writing, you'll enjoy this novel.Unfortunately, there are quite a few rambling sections that could easily have been edited out and made the novel more streamlined and a better read. I really liked "Fear Nothing", the first book in the Moonlight Bay trilogy by Dean Koontz. It was a fun book, with lots of twists and turns, and enough suspense to keep you turning the pages."Seize the Night" is the second book in the trilogy, and while it features the same "cast" as "Fear Nothing", it doesn't have the same spirit of the earlier novel. Chris rounds up the usual suspects in order to help find the kidnapped child; his surfer friend Bobby, his DJ girlfriend Sasha, former football player and animal communicator Roosevelt and of course his loyal dog Orson all come along for the ride.There are a couple of pretty tense passages in "Seize the Night", much different than the first novel. Still, I enjoyed the novel, cheese and all. "Seize the Night" is a much darker book than "Fear Nothing".
The entire section did little to nothing to progress the overall tale, and came across as simply 50 pages thrown in as filler to the overall tale.There is a healthy amount of Dean Koontz patented "cheese" injected into the novel as well, like when the cat Mungojerrie gives puts out its paw for "high five" after Bobby says something funny.you simply can't help but roll your eyes. I think it was because of the Chris Snow character, and the ties "Fear Nothing" had to my favorite Koontz novel "Watchers". Like when Chris and the gang stop in a neighbor's house on the way to Wyvern (because the cat tells them to). Most of the novel's action takes place on, in and around the deserted Camp Wyvern introduced in the first novel. A dark and creepy setting for sure, and with "Seize the Night" the stakes are much higher than merely satisfying Chris Snow's curiosity, a child's life depends on Chris uncovering more about not only his mother's genetic experiments, but also more about the Mystery Train experiments we learned a little about in the first novel. That type of stuff kills the momentum of the story for me.
And I'm looking forware to reading the 3rd novel to see where things go from here.
Oh, and he got a muscle cramp when he was hiding in a closet. They weren't the best books I've ever read, but most of them were enjoyable to read. I have yet to discover a valid personality flaw.And since Mr. This one, however, made me want to give up and switch to an entirely different book several times.Never have I read a book where the writing style was so pretentious. Holy friggen male Mary Sue, Batman. "I seemed instantly compelled, driven, to travel into ever darker--impossibly bleak--conditions, to the heart of all blackness, where the darkness was as condensed as matter had been the instant before the Big Bang spewed forth the universe, and once there, beyond all hope of light, to be crushed until my shrieking spirit was pressed from my mind and from my mortal flesh like juice from a grape."I wouldn't be so bad if he did this once or twice every chapter. Instead, he goes on and on about every trivial fact regarding nighthawks.
No, he does it once or twice EVERY PAGE. Here is an example. I know Koontz likes to describe stuff and build mood, but he's gone overboard and is drowning in his figurative comparisons (see Koontz, you're not the only one that can use metaphor. Other than that, the only thing that really kept me going through the book were the genetically altered evil monkeys.
Let me start by saying that I've never really had a problem reading Dean Koontz's books before. If I wanted to know what they ate and when their mating season was, I'd look them up on wikipedia or something. Now that I've got that part out of my system, let me tell you about the main character. This guy has everything: a mom that was killed by the government, a genetic disorder that prevents him from being in the sunlight, a hot girlfriend, a dog that's incredibly smart, a strong sense of justice, extensive knowledge of the local abandoned and mysterious military base, and super mad leet surfboarding skills.So far his weaknesses have been his aversion to sunlight and inability to hit his mark when firing a gun. 3/4 of a page devoted to birds. The parallel universe that the characters encounter was quite intriguing and I wish the characters had a chance to explore it further. In an attempt to be clever and witty, Koontz has put long-winded metaphors and similes all over the freaking place. Mary Sue is into surfing, he uses surfing lingo all the time in the most irrelevant places.
You don't need to flaunt it in my face and then shove it down my throat).Also, after a rather pivotal scene, he starts describing some birds. He could have just said that the main character saw some nighthawks in the trees. If I wanted the pages to be riddled with aquatic sporting slang, I'd, you know, pick up a surfing novel.I will give Koontz one thing--he does have some pretty creative ideas in his stories. No I'm serious.
The book seems to take forever to get through those couple of days.On another note, this becoming issue really could have been left out of this entirely. And that's a problem.The story in this book takes place over an even shorter span than the first one. The characters you loved from the first one are here but in even more detail and narrative. Apparently Koontz didn't enjoy these folks enough to follow up. The only problem is that he compresses a week worth of story into basically two evenings. Sadly it left me wanting a follow up book with this rather interesting family of characters.
Intelligent and malevolent monkeys roam the town at night, and to make it worse, even hordes of birds are killing themselves.What's happening in this story is two-fold. People are still becoming. Firstly the inevitable dark downside of the retrovirus. The gift of intelligence is a curse more than a blessing for most of the animals affected by the experiments at Wyvern. Seize the Night is the sequel to Fear Nothing. He immediately suspects it's related to the base in some way. So off into the night he goes, glock and flashlight and faithful dog.Koontz gives us rich detail, a fantastic first person viewpoint, and lovable characters.
Amazing amounts of dialogue, internal monologue and animal communication takes place during that time. This is my biggest complaint. Not being chased by cursed by spiraling depression.The other plot is the kidnapping of children. in this follow up it's months later and things are still strange in Christopher Snow's little sea-side town. There is a whole other mystery going on here worthy of a book all by its self.
Chris runs across swarming birds, packs of wolves, and more marching to their doom. Of course the police aren't going to do much, and honestly, Chris doesn't even wait to see if they will. Another strike against a book that still has some really enjoyable writing in it.All in all, it's not a bad read if you're a Koontz addict and enjoyed the Chris Snow character. Likely due to lackluster response to this long winded second in the series.This will appeal to those that like a bit of psychology mixed with their sci-fi.
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