Post: FUCK YOU DEAN KOONTZ

So, in the apartment building where I live, people will leave “freebie” items in the common area near the parking lot. It’s kind of a miniature version of freecycle, except that if no one claims it, building maintenance steps in and disposes of it in the most appropriate way possible (i.e., leave it piled up next to the dumpster).

I’ve seen a few books down there – thanks to this little giveaway system, I’ve re-read Stephen King’s “It”, and Clive Barker’s “Weave World” – and also scored a perfectly decent replacement office chair. So the fact that a book is hanging out there doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s crap.

It’s been a long-ass time since I read anything by Dean Koontz. Mostly I plowed through his books when I was working as a cashier at a movie theater, and I assure you, there is only so many things your manager can make you clean before its time for the reading rainbow next to the soda fountain. And they were passable, even though they were fairly formulaic in that “everything is going to turn out fine” way. So I cracked it open.

Do you know what this book is about? Fuck spoiler warnings, I’m doing you a goddamned favor here! Consider this a moment of public service… because here’s the plot of this book:

A shadowy government agency shapes the course of the cultural zeitgeist by having homicidal book reviewers write scathing reviews, break them completely or just outright torture and kill them. Said group targets the protagonist and his family (husband and wife are writers, hey, I SEE WHAT UR DOIN HERE DEAN) and their son, who go on the run and eventually thwart them because he teaches the family dog to teleport and make time travel devices out of salt shakers.

One more time: He teaches the family dog how to teleport short distances at will, and manages to use black market microchips to turn salt shakers into miniature time travel gadgets.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. Dean, you’re not even trying – why didn’t the wife suddenly start lactating pure china white or black tar heroin so they could start a drug cartel and take them on, or training a bunch of stolen chimpanzees to “hack the Gibson” and make all their telephones explode when they use them, or MAYBE YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN DRUNK AND MADE OUT WITH THE BLENDER INSTEAD. It’s awful – really awful. It got so bad that I actually pulled up a picture of Dean Koontz so I could imagine him being savagely beaten and tortured by this organization:

Not pictured: His ass, which apparently poops manuscripts

Conveniently, and inexplicably, their son is some sort of genius savant, who can apparently build unheard of technology while they’re on the run for murderous thugs. The wife’s parents just happen to be survivalist gun nuts that can conveniently arm them to the teeth. And jesus fucking Christ, if you’re like me, you’re still thinking “WHAT THE HELL TELEPORTING DOGS”.

If someone had given me this book as a gift, I would have beaten them up, stuffed them in a duffle bag, and mailed them to the south pole. And Dean Koontz? If I ever meet you, you’re going to wake up in a basement and I’m going to force feed you an entire cereal bowl of bees covered in hot sauce.

Dick.