read this book as part of a group read with Koontzland for the month of May, This was an emotional rollercoaster, it was an insight into a grieving father's healing process and it also has a little bit of The firestarter by Stephen King.
I really like this book, It brings to mind elements from Watchers, False Memory, The Eyes of Darkness, Fear Nothing, From the Corner of His Eye, The Silent Corner and Stephen King's Firestarter.
A story of loss and hope, with glimpses of alternate realities,
While Sole Survivor doesn't make it into my personal top ten favorite Dean Koontz books, I find it a fine achievement and a beautiful work.
Favorite Passages:
Out of the thin bloodfiltered light, into the hallway where a funerary stillness of shadows stood sentinel, toward the enormous chandelier that hung in a perpetual crystal rain above the foyer staircase, he ran.
Their eyes were, without exception, calm pools in which he saw humbling depths of acceptance and a kindness like moonlight on water, . .
Everywhere he turned his eyes now, this world was different from the one that he had inhabited all his life, The change had begun the previous day, when he'd gone to the cemetery, Ever since, a shift seemed to be progressing with gathering power and speed, as though the world of Einsteinian laws had intersected with a universe where the rules of energy and matter were so different as to baffle the wisest mathematicians and the proudest physicists.
This new reality was both more piercingly beautiful and more fearsome than the one that it replaced, He knew the change was subjective and would never reverse itself, Nothing this side of death would ever again seem simple to him the smoothest surface hid unknowable depths and complexities,
the white trunks of the paper birches glowed like painted doorjambs, the deeply moody shadows between like open doors to futures best left unvisited,
A bit of Firestarter by Stephen King, A bit of Runner by Patrick Lee, A tragic plane accident turns into something so much more, Koontz takes you on a bizarre spiritual adventure questioning our mortality, destiny, and how far some might go to keep that knowledge/power for themselves and use it for evil.
While this story is packed with action and conspiracy, it will most likely leave you asking a lot of "What if" questions about life as well.
This book was a roller coaster, At first I was bored, then I got into the story and really wanted to know how it ends but then at the end I absolutely hated the direction it went on and considered it to be disappointing mess.
So I am not happy with the book, I will try the author again because while I hated the ending the idea was still original and he is so incredibly popular, So maybe I was just unlucky that this was my first book of Dean Koontz,.My reading experience with Dean Koontz are very mixed, When I love his books I do it with a passion but other time it's just not a winner for me, I did think the story was good but not as good and intensely suspenseful as some other by him Definitely on the short list of Koontz's best work, SOLE SURVIVOR is a wildly entertaining thriller with surprisingly ambitious emotional and spiritual underpinnings.
Not only does it contain one of the most powerful hooks I've ever come across, but, in between scenes of grisly murders and exciting chases, Koontz aims to teach readers a little something about life.
For a suspense novel, however, it all feels a bit overwritten, Koontz tries to imbibe SOLE SURVIVOR with the trappings of "serious literature" but doesn't pull it offeffectively, As a result, Koontz's toofrequent use of complicated metaphors eventually becomes distracting, though he certainly does an amazing job at being descriptive, Classic sitelinkDean Koontz. A good story, some gruesome bits, lots of action and a touch of the paranormal, An undemanding and thoroughly enjoyable read, Wow! My second DK book Intensity which I loved! and hes batting! This one only gets progressively better as you stay with it till the last part of the book where it gets mindblowingly awesome.
Cant wait to read more of his work! I don't believe that Sole Survivor is among Koontz's best works, though it's an okay character study with some intriguing suspense elements.
A man's family is killed in a plane crash, and when he encounters a woman who claims to have survived, his rage drives him to pursue her and search for answers.
The story is told in an odd narrative fashion, and though the experiment may have done what he wanted, I thought it distanced the characters from the story and ultimately from the reader.
It lacks the humor that he usually injects into his fiction, I probably would have been more tolerant if there had been another name on the cover, actually part of the problem was that I didn't get what I expected.
This edition has what has to be one of the most boring covers ever: a yellow blob in a red circle on a purple background, ed first at sitelinkBrunner's Bookshelf
I have to say that I am not a huge Dean Koontz fan, My wife was with his earlier work but there came a point when his books just got really weird and our interest faded, I have some of his books that I really liked, Tick Tock and Life Expectancy to name a few, This was another book that kept popping up in my hunt for horro books for the R, I. P. challenge. I figured I would give it a try, Let's just say I was expecting a horror novel and this isn't,
The book is all about a man who is suffering after the loss of his wife and two daughters in a plane crash, Wanting to die he goes to visit the graves one last time, When he arrives he finds a strange woman taking pictures of the headstones and FBI types following him, This opens the book up to what could have been a really interesting suspense thriller, Sadly about half way through the book my interest tanked, I couldn't keep focused and my mind kept wandering, I was mechanically reading just to get through this, It also seemed about this point that the story was just all over the place, My lack of focus might have had something to do with this but I'm not sure, I will own up when my dislike of a book is my own doing but I really tried to like this,
By the end of this book I was so happy to be finished with this, I felt the ending was terrible, It felt like the book started out to be one thing and Koontz forgot how he started the story so it ended as if it was a different story.
I was
really disappointed. This started out with so much potential and then just lost me, It's over and I can move on, I give thisout ofand really it was more like,stars. I also had every intention in including this in my R, I. P. challenge but I'm going to skip it, I have already had enough books to complete the challenge more than two times and this is not what I was expecting being at the top of several horror fiction lists.
So I decided to save this review till after the challenge and just focus on my Halloween week posts, So yeah about that.
Um, well I'm not going to lie, this was a bit over my head, I mean, I think I get it but it was a tad out there and I might be a bit confused on a few things though I really liked the message in the end.
. . at least I think I do,
Again, sorry but it left me wondering about a whole lot, . . and I didn't exactly like wondering what happens to the other party, Is it just me or is there a second book that gives answers It seemed like the beginning of a series but I don't see any other books linked to this one so I'm hoping someone out there can help me figure this out or at least help me clear up the ending.
Anyways, it's a good book overall, very creative and extremely imaginative so kudos to Dean for being so open minded, I liked this book. It was scary in a way that only Koontz can be, I always enjoy trying to open my mind to understand the higher concepts that in our world usually dont exist, Or do they Do people comeback from a fire and a massive aircraft crash Joe who lost his whole family in one sure hopes so, This novel is really suspensfull and well paced, The story revolves around a plane crash where hundreds of people perish in the crash and a man named Joe whos wife and two daughters were on the doomed flight.
Joe has given up on life until he meets Rose who claims to be the sole survivor of that flight, Rose is in fear of her life and the life of everyone she meets, Rose is determined to tell the real story behind the crash, The real story will change the existance of the world as we know it,
The suspense was top notch and I had no idea where this was heading or how it was going to conclude until the final chapters.
Loved it and not a Koontz book I see talked about much, Will definately reread one day, Well my second Dean Koontz was not as good as my first experience,
I was disappointed with this story, I felt for the main character, however, I was just bored with the entire story, The ending was not what I was hoping it would be, Not only that but they didn't tie up any loose ends, it just ended, He takes the time to explain things that do not matter that much in great detail, but then doesn't wrap up the story, Blah. After not reading any of Dean Koontz particular brand of bizarre for quite a while, I probably appreciated this story more than I otherwise might have.
A mystery woman walks away from a devastating plane crash, and then begins to contact the loved ones of the victims, After her visits, these people commit suicide in horrific ways, Meanwhile, very powerful people are trying to find this woman and stop her,
I dont think its one of his better ones, but you kind of cant stop reading until you find out whats going on, Типично произведение за Кунц, с обичайните пет лъжички захар в повече от колкото ми харесва. Все пак си заслужава трите звездички, наймалкото заради идеята, не толкова оригинална от екс мен на сам, но определено залегнала в онова кингово недоразумение "Института", което ще продължавам да се правя, че не съм чел. Още повече, че в двете глави в които описва условията в базата за надарени деца има много повече смущаващи неща от колкото в онази цялата енстотин страници трагедия.
Джо Карпентър е изгубил семейството си в самолетна катастрофа. От тогава депресияята разбива живота и кариерата му на разследващ журналист. Един ден засича мистериозна непозната и всичко се преобръща от надеждата, че малката му дъщеричка е оцеляла. Когато се впуска да я търси, започва да се натъква на странни феномени, а истината за катастрофара звучи все пофантастично. .