Breathless: A Novel

In the Colorado Rockies, Grady Adams and his Irish wolfhound, Merlin, have just discovered two creatures unlike anything they've ever seen before. As they welcome these mysterious animals into their home, they soon discover that their arrival coincides with a wondrous event that will forever change their lives and millions of other all over the world.

Dean Koontz never seems ceases to astonish me with the amount of tricks up his sleeve. Each installment in his illustrious career is unique and otherworldly, with Breathless being no exception. In recent offerings Koontz has come under fire, unfairly so in my opinion, for not being the same guy who once scared us around every turn with evil characters and harrowing plots. Lately, dogs have become main characters more than usual, and for whatever reason a lot of fans and critics alike have not looked kindly upon his change of style. In a bold and effective move, Koontz sticks it to the doubters and transforms familiar elements in a way we never imagined.

Not only is Man's Best Friend featured in Breathless, but in this story animals play a bigger role than most of, if not all, Koontz's previous works. However, fans who feel like they have been missing out will be pleased to know that this is one of the most suspenseful novels Koontz has written in a while, with a fast paced plot laced with just the right amount of dread, wonder, and redemption. We're even treated to some frightening and disturbing scenes that will have many readers looking under their beds and in their closets long after reading. Once again Koontz`s prose and dialogue are delivered at the highest level as we follow several storylines to a powerful conclusion.

In the end we are left with a poignant glimpse into the beauty of nature and the mystery of life and the wonder that connects them. I love what Koontz has done of late, and I particularly love what he's given us here. Breathless is certainly a different kind of animal, but one that is well worth your time.

I've always enjoyed Dean Koontz. I haven't read a whole lot of his books...but probably a good half-dozen of them over the years, and none have ever been disappointments. However, he's managed to leave me disappointed this time. Not because this book didn't have all the elements of a really great book. It did. But simply because it never fully realizes its potential.

Koontz gives a great setup. Lots of characters with rich histories...many of them rooted in deep pain. The gentle furniture maker who used to be a military assassin, the dedicated veterinarian who was the victim of mental and physical abuse for 10 years as a child, the serial killer who's only once come close to being caught and is on the hunt again...as a work for hire, and the twin who is on a gruesome mission to "become" his brother. All strong stuff. And then we've got the overriding mystery...two nearly-indescribable creatures who appear out of thin air and display nobler-than-human behavior. Why are they here? Where did they come from? And will they become guinea pigs in the labs of big, bad Homeland Security?

This really is a compelling set of questions...and it takes about 7 hours and 45 minutes of the 8-hour audio book to get to this place. But then...Koontz seems to weary of the story, or run out of ideas, or something. Whatever the cause, he neatly wraps up many (but not all) of the questions he's raised so quickly that it belies the (at times plodding) pace of the earlier parts of the book. Personally, I was left wanting. There's a gentle-enough sensibility about the book...I'd even describe it as beautiful at points...that I can't believe this was a cynical attempt on the author's part to provide a setup and then not finish the job...but it comes up so short of his usual work that I still had to consider the possibility.

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Dean Koontz is an enigma of a writer. Some of his books have unforgettable plots, characters, and mystery. A few miss one or more of those. "Breathless" lacks all three. As usual, he starts to create a mystery but quickly falls back into colorful description of scenery, people and moods. Count how often he uses color related words such as copper, gold, silver, blue, etc etc etc to describe the sky, the grass, the road, the twilight, a meadow, yadda yadda, yadda. Koontz must get royalties from Crayola.
Once again, he uses a dog as a featured star but this dog lacks the charisma and talent of his dogs in some of his great past novels (i.e.-Watchers). This dog, an Irish Wolfhound and his master seem bewildered about the happenings around them. Mainly, the appearance of two unusual creatures which Koontz describes endlessly without ever creating a true vision for the reader.
Then, he throws in a lunatic, a card counter, a vet, a killer and various supporting characters who come and go and never create a real sense of being.
Endless dialog about chaos theory, man's fear of new evolution and plot lines that wander to and fro without a worthy climax and you have a total mess.
I read every Koontz book and often buy them. I am glad I did not buy this novel because it bored the heck out of me when confusion and boredom reigned.
His last book "Relentless" was much better and he has written lots of great stuff but this is not worthy of this fine writer. If this were the first Koontz book I ever read, I would probably dismiss him as a confused writer unable to create interest. It's not. So let's hope for better work next time and let's hope that young Koontz readers check out his past stuff and dismiss "Breathless" as an ugly hiccup in his writing career.

given the last few books dean has written, and the reduction in both quality and substance, i am going to write his next book here.

there was this conflicted man who owned this special dog. they met an emotionally bruised woman. something amazing happened. a very evil man, who worked for a secret, paranoid branch of the government did some psychotic stuff. man determines what is valuable in his life. he and the special dog befriend the bruised woman. a lot of political/religious proselitizing is expressed. and all the right-thinking. good people live happily-ever-after.

now, send me $10.

this has become koontz's mode of expression over his last few books. generic characters. writing so concise, it's incoherent. go nowhere plots that peter out at the end. my attitude toward people and hobbies that don't satisfy??? BE FUN OR BE GONE. SOOO-no more wasted time or money. bye, dean.

This incredibly disorganized and unconvincing novel won't kill Dean Koontz's successful writing career. But it might sound the death knell for his status as an A-lister. This could be the one that finally drives away his remaining fans still clinging on from his 1980s horror days and even his middle period (circa the Chris Snow novels) and leaves Koontz as a must-read only among his religious and political sympathizers - and of course the golden retriever crowd.

There's almost nothing about it that worked. The human characters were uninteresting and mostly lacked humor. The only exception to that was one newcomer to the book's Colorado setting who experienced some trademark Koontz dark humor shocks. This character's story never went anywhere or linked up with what little overall plot there is, but that's all to the good here. The other major human characters mostly don't interact with each other either, except for the predictable single sensitive male and his female counterpart.

I specified human characters because of course there is a canine one as well, plus two of what I can only think of as Ewoks. They're soft and cuddly and have big soulful eyes. That's how we know they're good! I do wonder that a man of Koontz's age, experience, and religious sensibilities loses all ability for rational thought when it comes to animals - real or imaginary.

I found the pacing of the book extremely annoying. Koontz switches point of view every thousand words or so, which is bad enough as it keeps the reader from ever really settling into a scene. He amplifies this problem by starting a new chapter every time. This relatively short novel had 72 chapters. That's a lot of white space. I would have found it less distracting if he'd for instance kept the chapters to 18 with four sections in each, separated by a blank line is as common.

I had the feeling that either Koontz or the publisher structured the novel the way they did in order to make the finished product seem longer than it is. If Koontz is having trouble writing two novels a year, there's no shame in that. That's a heck of a pace for a novelist to keep up year after year. Maybe he should get together with his editor and restructure his schedule, so that instead of his having to deliver a novel every six months he has whatever time he needs - even if that means he only puts out a book every nine months or once a year.

In any case, I think he'd better take a good hard look at why he's writing. It can't be for the money, so he must still feel he has important things to offer. If so, I'd like to hear some of them - assuming they pertain to the human condition as opposed to the retriever, wolfhound, or Ewok one. The proper study of man is mankind, Dean. I think The Good Guy was the single one of his recent novels that really worked, because it had something true to say about evil and amorality. More Good Guy, fewer cute animals.