Wordful Wednesday: Relentless
Yes, I know I normally do book reviews in my Monday Morning Musings posts. But I didn't do one this week, and I wanted to have one queued up for Saturday Book Reviews over at Semicolon. The Fair Elaine suggested I go with Wordful Wednesday, and I think it's brilliant. It has the added bonus of not being a real word as near I can tell. But the best part about it is that it makes nice counterpoint to TFE's Wordless Wednesday. Oh, and I can be a bit more verbose if I give a book its own post.
I may at some point just ditch the whole daily themes thing and just post what I want, when I want. Stay tuned.
So, to the book reviewage!
The title of Dean Koontz's Relentless could describe the author himself as he marches on a two-titles-a-year pace that shows no sign of letting up. Instead, it refers to the antagonist of his latest thriller. Or does it? Wait and see. It could just as easily refer to the pace of this book. Sometimes I like a more cerebral approach to a thriller, though I can't think of an example off the top of my head.
The thing that drives the pace of the book is the peril and the visceral connection it makes with a reader. At least a reader with a young son. Because the book is about a man whose entire family is under threat of gruesome, horrifying death. It starts benignly enough, with an author (Cullen Greenwich, inexplicably nicknamed "Cubby") receiving his first "serious" book review by a leading (read: out of touch) reviewer. Of course, the author finds himself missing some of his viscera after reading the review, and notes how poorly written and factually incorrect the review was. Told repeatedly by his wife to not respond, he opts for the next best thing: he stalks him.
Okay, he doesn't so much stalk him as he tries to get a look at the guy. And then things go badly. There's an unfortunate encounter with the trollish man (Shearman Waxx) in a restaurant lavatory, which ends with one word from the antagonist: "Doom."
Greenwich doesn't take it too seriously, but after a blatant (and nonviolent) invasion of his home followed by a middle-of-the-night (and violent) attack, he realizes he's in deep. Even then, it takes a phone call from another author who received the same treatment (and more, terribly more) to get him moving.
The rest of the book follows Greenwich and his family as they run from Waxx, who seems to be nearly omniscient and omnipresent. What his motivation is, I won't reveal. Who he works for, I won't reveal. But it's certainly a novel idea. Suffice it to say that Waxx represents some very different viewpoints to those expressed in Greenwich's work.
I'm a big fan of Koontz's mostly clutter-free writing, and I'm even a fan of his predictable quirks. This one had a pretty good grab-bag of them. There was a prominent dog, a couple of quick stops at churches (with obligatory mention of the nave, narthex, and sacristy), a gifted child, a main character with a secret past, and a few mentions of architecture.
While reading this one, I picked up on a couple of other things Koontz features that I really approve of. They include:
- A very happily married couple. Koontz seems to believe that traditional families are actually good things.
- Stark contrast between evil and good characters. He's definitely not onboard with moral relativism.
How gripping did I find the book? Well, I strongly considered violating my don't-read-Koontz-after-10pm rule. Why that rule? Well, Koontz is very inventive in coming up with extremely bad bad guys, and Relentless was one of the better examples of his skill. And I'm prone to both vivid nightmares and somnambulance (sleep-walking). These are traits that should not be combined. So instead I try to read something funny or inspirational right before turning in. Not that Koontz's work is bereft of inspiration. But I don't go for scary stuff before bed. You might also gather that I don't do horror movies.
The "secret past" of the protagonist gets its own chapter, and it plays out well (as opposed to the slow unraveling of it in Dark Rivers of the Heart that somehow made something horrifying also very boring, at least on audio). It's all narrated in the first person present, which just seemed like the perfect way to do it. By the way, the entire book is told in first person. Seems like about half of Koontz's works are.
Just as a warning, there was a larger than usual suspension of disbelief necessary here, though not when compared with Odd Thomas or Lightning, I suppose. In fact, the climax of the book had something in common with Galaxy Quest, of all things. Let me know if you find it.
The ending was appropriate if not completely satisfying. Perhaps Koontz could've made a different decision about the scope of the antagonist's conspiracy and gone with a more conventional ending. But it still worked. I particularly admired the last paragraph of the book. I've left out the first sentence of it, as it might be spoilery. But here's the rest of it:
Evil itself may be relentless, I will grant you that, but love is relentless, too. Friendship is a relentless force. Family is a relentless force. Faith is a relentless force. The human spirit is relentless, and the human heart outlasts---and can defeat---even the most relentless force of all, which is time.
I believe this is now my longest non-Theology Thursday book review. Fun!
July 28th, 2009 - 14:42
I just finished the book. I liked it. I like his humor. There are so many things that make me laugh out loud and then I have to read them out loud to Denis as well. The ending was unsatisfying to me, but the rest had me drawn in to the point where it took me only two days to read it and I was loathed to put it down even for meals and bedtime. I’m afraid I was a bad mother for those two days, saying a lot of, “Yes, I’ll get you some water,” but thinking all the time about how to get back to my book as fast as possible. My kids probably won’t be scarred for life, but if they are I’ll just sue Koontz later.
July 28th, 2009 - 16:56
Well, now you can pay attention to them until November, when his next book comes out.