[these comments are taken from a mailing list discussion and contain spoilers]

[on chris snow]

I’m only halfway through the first half and so far I’m not especially enamoured with him. His illness seems to be the most interesting thing about him and I think that’s explained well enough.

I didn’t understand his reaction to witnessing the body swap. I guess if he’d done something sensible then we wouldn’t have a book to read but I’d have preferred it if he had tried to do something sensible before heading off on his own. When he went to see his friend at the police he was given a good reason for not going in by seeing one of the baddies but I got annoyed with him at the hospital for indulging in generic character putting himself in danger type behaviour without any justification.

He isn’t really working for me as a first person character. I really like the idea of a character who can only go out and about at night but so far this book isn’t doing it for me.

[on koontz’s writing style]

I’m afraid that this book is fast becoming one of those books where - once I’ve decided I’m not enjoying it - every little thing starts to annoy me. I’m just finding it silly when it’s supposed to be suspenseful and I’m picking holes in the actions of every character. I was initially interested in what was going on but now I’ve got as far as Angela’s monkeys I’m just preparing myself for the worst and I expect the resolution (if I get that far) to be something far fetched. I don’t think Koontz’s *style* is that bad, it’s the content that’s bugging me.

[on giving up]

I also gave up on this book I’m afraid. I put it down part way through the first half and picked up a couple of books I was longing to read and the Koontz never got another look in. I didn’t deliberately stop at the point I did, I just got into other stuff and forgot about it.

If I’d picked up this book to read by myself, or even read it before the discussion had started, I think I would have read it through but the discussion only backed up my presumption that the book was going to get worse rather than better. I wasn’t feeling any suspense or fear from reading it but just found it laughable. I can see why it could be an enjoyable book if you’re willing to suspend disbelief a little (and I am willing to do that in other books) but this one just didn’t work for me.

I’ve already read the other two discussion books for January and think that they are both excellent so I knew I wasn’t going to be being negative all month and that was another reason I didn’t feel too bad about giving up on one out of three.