Ahhh, the tease that is Dean Koontz. A new book comes out every year, and after serious consideration about whether or not I think I will enjoy it based on the description, I almost always buy it. It may take years, but I always get it. But why the hesitation?
Because of huge, relatively recent disappointments. Like The Good Guy and the Husband and My Heart Belongs to You. And Relentless. I wish I could scrub that book from my memory. They all started with such promise. And they all fizzled. Bad. Some worse than others. One in particular crash and burned.
Now, I know that he, like King, will never reach his pinnacle again. I doubt we will see such masterpieces as Midnight and Whispers and Phantoms again. I don't know if it is a lack of interest in writing such epic stories, or his simple enjoyment in writing shorter works. Whatever the reason, it doesn't mean that Koontz can not still write fun, engaging books. And that is why I comes always come back. Because for every crappy The Good Guy, there is a fun romp like Life Expectancy. For every dull The Husband, there is a truly frightful The Taking.
After looking at various reviews of my free short stories, "Blink" and "Last Dance of a Black Widow" one of the most common complaints I found is... "I expected more" or "I was hoping for more" or "This would have made a good book but it was too short." Or something similar. People simply wanted more. They enjoyed the story but needed to have more of it. The killer is, these people then give me three out of five stars, not because they didn't enjoy what they read, but because they felt cheated. Now, readers can't feel cheated monetarily because these stories are free, though I guess they can feel cheated time-wise because they spent ten minutes reading something that they thought never really ended... but that's a different issue altogether.
