This book is not about what I thought it was going to be about. No sad dragons. ::Sigh::Sometimes it’s a good thing when a book doesn’t match your expectations. Being caught offguard by a book—when it isn’t the result of a perfidious marketing campaign, or the product of a particularly deceptive cover or dustjacket blurb—can be positive. A book should surprise you. When it’s done well, you get one of the heights of literary accomplishment.This book does not represent one of those heights. It’s not a bad piece of work by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s also not any stretch of the imagination in and of itself. There are more than a few nicely turned phrases that Mr. Koontz unleashes in his narratives. He has a penchant for detailed descriptions and painting a scene that is often lush, but sometimes crosses that strange, gray line into the tiresome. Normally, the detailed descriptions of character's thoughts and actions builds tension nicely, and gives us a firm mental image. However, we need not know every detail of every move of a character looking around a room, particularly when there’s nothing there. Nothing under the couch. Nothing behind the door. Nothing lurking in places where nothing should be and nothing to be done about the nothing in the first place. Surprise! Right behind you all along. Somebody throw that drowning man a trope.Speaking of tropes. Cops are an overused trope in urban fantasy. Disgruntled cops an overused cop trope. Mismatched emotionally unavailable cops as partners an overused trope of cop tropes. Overall, Mr. Koontz dipping into the trope well isn’t all that desperate a writing technique, but if you’re looking for something different then the main characters are a fail in this book. Mr. Koontz gives the reader more than enough trope to hang himself.(OK, I’ll stop with the trope puns.)Mr. Koontz does have a feel for personality that is quite strong, and he spares neither his readers nor his characters the least analysis. The characters are all motivated by personality traits, not just events, and their overall world view is presented consistently and with aplomb. This isn't a character study, though, so readers must be satisfied with neat freak as a personality type, freedom lover as a personality type, battered wife as a personality type. These are not new forms in modern literary terms, but Mr. Koontz gives them more than enough depth of character to satisfy a thriller.Where this book often goes too far is in its relentless Millennial doomsday theme. Written in the 90s in an attempt to capture some of the clock rollover angst, Mr. Koontz makes the inevitable creeping decline of human civilization the main backdrop of the book. This was a clear attempt to cash into that lowest order of cultural numerology; the fizzle that was the Millennium rollover. I imagine that when the book was published, that backdrop would have read as fresh and edgy. However, reading this book after the 1990s makes that constant theme something of a chore. Two decades on it reads like a dated and overwrought egoism in the guise of pop culture commentary. The 90s being a decade of collapse, decay and malaise is a constant refrain of the book to the point that those of us who lived through that decade have difficulty reconciling their own experience with the vast banking malfeasance, the complete failure of government leadership, and overall decline in the decade that followed. But the steady improvement that occurred in the 90s was not part of Mr. Koontz’s vision. Rather, this book is predictive pessimism in prose.Worse, Mr. Koontz weaves it right into his characters and narration in every major portion of the book, right up into the finale where it borders on the ridiculous:(view spoiler)[“The explosion was muffled, like firing into a pillow, the green glow disappeared in the instant it first arose, and he squeezed the trigger again, both rounds into the troll’s brain. That was surely enough, had to be enough, but you never knew with magic, never knew in this pre-millennium cotillion, these wild ‘90s, so he squeezed the trigger again.” (hide spoiler)]
Haley LattiePeriod: 2AIM English/ Global Humanities1-30-12Dragon Tears Book ReviewtThere are those weird case scenarios in life that you can only imagine would never happen to you. You think that there is only a five percent chance that it could ever happen to you and assume the best, that it is most likely going to turn into someone else’s problem. This I not always the case. Especially in the book, Dragon Tears, by Dean Koontz. tThere are two unsuspecting cops that are partners just doing their job when strange things start occurring in their presence. Like all of a sudden a guy decides to walk into a mini breakfast restaurant and start shooting people he has never met in his life. Soon, weird events start to turn into unsettling recurring “nightmares”. Dean Koontz plays the cop’s roles well when they go on their quest to kill the guy who is so almighty and just might be turning their life as they know it upside down. This novel is about the strange unrealistic happenings of two people and the people they love in the mix getting wrapped up in affairs that could bring them to death. Dragon Tears demonstrates the fiction side of writing in this way exactly. The theme of this book is actually popular because it kind of is like “the monster coming to kill you in a certain amount of time” type of thing. Throughout the story, the main antagonist always reminds the victims that he is coming back for them in a set amount of time.tKoontz develops the main protagonists so well that you feel like you are in their shoes and you visualize everything they are going through in your mind. Harry Lyon and Connie, his partner for justice, both have the feeling that something wrong is gong on behind the scenes of the real world. Time seems to stop when he is terrorizing them and everything goes dead silent. All they hear is him coming after them. Often times in the book, Connie and Harry are together when the “monster” comes to get them, which strengthens their bond even more. Koontz does this on purpose to get you to feel like you know exactly where they are going next with everything. Harry was the soft spoken follower in the beginning of the book, but in the end, he was telling Connie exactly what was happening and how they were going to do it. I liked this book because you can see the characters change form one scene to the next in a flash. In the beginning of the book I felt like Harry needed to toughen up a bit and be a man, but near the end, his attitude satisfied me. I also liked this book because I felt like the stereotype that men have to be the tough ones, was proved wrong and the gender roles were reversed.tAll in all, Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz proved to be an interesting read that kept me going. I couldn’t seem to put the book down, even when I wanted to. Harry Lyon and his partner will never grow old and I will always be able to visualize exactly how they got through their whole dilemma together. This book was great and I would recommend it to anyone who like fiction and fantasy writing.
What do You think about Dragon Tears (2006)?
I used to love a good Koontz, but this is another one that really did not do it for me (am I growing out of his books?). This one felt a bit preachy at times, yes the world is a terrible place sometimes and people do horrible things to other people, but you don't need to list various crimes. I did not really connect with any of the characters and am still undecided as to if the perspective of Woofer the dog was a good thing or a bad thing. There was an attempt of suspense at the end, but it fell a bit flat for me. On the plus side, this did not require a huge amount of brain power and was a pretty quick read.We are going to California next year and this is the only part of the book that made me cringe and wonder if our holiday destination is such a good idea. Southern California, a dessert before man brought in water and made larger areas of it habitable, was a perfect breeding ground for tarantulas, but they kept to undeveloped canyons and scrublands.
—Kingfan30
It's a pulp novel and I've seen copies floating around for years. I finally picked one up and made a mistake. I don't mind a mindless thriller that makes me turn every page. What I do mind is sloppy writing that pulls me out of the story. Dean Koontz adds to this fault his supernatural twist. From page one you know things will turn out in the main character's favor. I didn't care about the cardboard characters. I didn't care about anything in this book. It didn't seem like a work done out of passion and love, but a work done because of a deadline. Don't waste your time reading it, he's got better novels. But if you want to see a summary of the time I wasted with it, it's here: The Plot Spot summary of Dragon Tears
—Trent
A pair of detectives and three homeless people are stalked by a vargrant, who utters a haunting warning: "Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn..." Time runs short, and it soon becomes obvious that the vargrant was no ordinary vargrant. Dangers arise everywhere, and the world changes for the five people: they will do anything and try to understand what is going on, a quest which will lead them to the sanctuary of a new, terrible god...Dragon Tears is typical early 90's Koontz; fast-paced, imaginative and entertaining. Even the "90's are bad" attitude which Koontz sports liberally throughout the text is not too bad. The plot is captivating if formulaic, with enough suspense and twists to hold the reader to the very end. I'm a fan of Koontz's writing style from that period, Hemingwayesque no-frills prose which is sorely missing from his newer output. He could describe the scene like few others in his field, but these days are long gone.The best thing about Dragon Tears is the villain, who's...but you've got to discover that for yourself. Also, as a testament to Koontz's love of dogs there's one in this book, and some chapters are narrated from his point of view. This sounds utterly ridiculous, but Koontz really pulls that off and they are a definite highlight of the novel.To sum up, Dragon Tears is fun. It won't change your life but it's a good way to spend some hours. Back in the day, Koontz was still considered "weird" and this book shows why. If there's something like "Classic Koontz", then this is it.
—Maciek
