Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Review - Innocence by Dean Koontz

InnocenceInnocence by Dean Koontz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Kindle Version, 338 pages
Published December 10th 2013 by Bantam (first published 2013)
Source: Own copy

Synopsis:
'He lives in solitude beneath the city, an exile from society, which will destroy him if he is ever seen.

She dwells in seclusion, a fugitive from enemies who will do her harm if she is ever found.

But the bond between them runs deeper than the tragedies that have scarred their lives. Something more than chance—and nothing less than destiny—has brought them together in a world whose hour of reckoning is fast approaching.


My Thoughts:
So, at first I was really excited to start reading another Dean Koontz novel as he is definitely up there as one of my favourite authors of all time. Unfortunately, Innocence was a bit of a let down to me in the end and all I seemed to experience from the start was frustration with how slow the story moved along.

The main character, Addison Goodheart, is apparently a hideous looking boy who no-one can stand looking at without wanting to kill him. He has to live alone in a bunker and only ventures out at night when he can keep well hidden. This was my first port of frustration as we keep being told time and time again how hideous he is and how he needs to keep himself hidden, but there is never a full explanation or description of what his deformities actually are and what makes people want to kill him.

The next major frustration to me was the mix between current events and flashbacks of the past. This got very annoying at times and seemed to make the story feel extremely disjointed and also made it seem like the story was taking forever to develop.

There were also some supernatural elements mentioned quite a few times within the story that were never really expanded on and on reflection seemed to just be paragraph fillers and not really helpful in developing the story in any way.

Lastly, the ending just made me go 'What the?' It seemed way too rushed in my opinion and again felt very disjointed and even a little confusing. I definitely think the ending could have been expanded on a lot more to explain how things came about to round the story off in a much nicer manner (maybe some condensing of the story in the middle could have made way for more of an ending?) but I guess we'll never know.

I do have to admit that Koontz definitely has some wonderfully poetic writing in this book and it was very similar to read in some parts to the Odd Thomas books. It was such a shame that it just didn't have that excitement I was after or any real sort of page turning suspense.

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