What the Night Knows Book

While not as horrible as some of Koontz's latest offerings, What The Night Knows is still pretty bad when compared to his other output, and rather terrible when compared to the output of others.

It actually starts really promising, with an interesting premise and a good opening chapters. I've read them earlier, when they were availible to preview before publication. It turns out after these first four chapters the novel goes downhill and crashes at the end.

There is nothing here that wasn't done before in the genre (and in Koontz's earlier writings). However, it suffers from the dramatic change in tone (from scary and tense to sappy and schmaltzy) that plagues Koontz's offerings from the last ten years.
The writing itself is not very good. A river of adjectives runs through it, obvious plot points are repeated several times (in case someone should miss them with all the exposition going on) all of this adorned in horribly clumsy foreshadowing (something TERRIBLE is going on!) that maintans cheap tension.

In line with the great opening sentence, Koontz never specifies the time period or location for his novel. But then he goes onto his own political tangents and has one character talk about Dr. Phil on TV and events like 9/11.

The characters are caricatures - especially the children. Koontz was obviously never a part in family life, and yet chooses to devote a substantial amount of space to preteen children, and not surprisingly they all are much more mature than their age would suggest, meaning they broadcast author's sentiments - one boy worries about evil dictators in the world an wants to become a marine to protect his sisters from the evil bad guys and he's like 10 years old or less. In fact, the children never watch television, play videogames, follow ANY trend. I am amazed how someone who has no idea how children think, speak and act often chooses to use them in his novels. The adults are all two dimensional - the bad characters are really bad, and the only flaw a Koontz will give his protagonist is at most self-doubt. Now, I like to read about devoted heroes (even if they are idealized) but all of his characters are like that.

It's also rare for anyone in Koontz universe to worry about the allmighty dollar. John, the main cop, is a regular cop who can affordto employ STAFF. He can also take two months off witout worrying about his dough. His wife homeschools their three children and is an acclaimed artist, never tired for spiritual sex with her husband, and has STAFF doing things for her around the house. If you're able to connect to these characters, then good for you. The most human and interesting character is the bad guy.
The voice of the narrator is indiscernible between narrator and character and between character and character, and aside from one figure (the priest) there's no really memorable persona here. The writing is clinical and anemic, devoid of any joy and excitement, and aside from the few lines from the first chapter there are no memorable passages of prose.

The thing is so slowly paced. The family of the protagonist is said to be ideal and extremely close, but when they start experiencing disturbing events they all impropably and conveniently fail to share this crucial information with each other. The novel never builds to any dramatic tension whatsoever. The ending sequences are exhaustivly extended cop-outs composed of incredible coincidences, as in most Koontz novels.

I'm sorry, but I can't recommend this to anyone. Even though it's better than Relentless, Breathless and The Good Guy,it's nowhere near the level of Midnight, The Bad Place or Intensity. What The Night Knows is poorly plotted, derivative (think Fallen) and badly written (every page is obviously carefully composed, but over the years any style or tension has bleached - now it's a cold list of events and dialogues). As it promised a return to Koontz's earlier style, I am sorely disappointed.