http://www.fnordinc.com/2009/11-14/au...

still sick.. bear with me if my grammar and such sucks today…

on a recent trip to california for a wedding, jenn and i decided to spend the whole trip not talking to each other. no no no, it wasnt because of bad stuff, it was because audiobook goodness was going to make the long car drive easier.

12+ hours of audio, the unabridged audiobook of Dean Koontz “Lightning”.

Lightning is the story of a woman, Shane, who’s destiny is altered repeatedly by a stranger. at key points of her life a pale stranger, Stefan, arrives and aids her. his only goal is to make sure she lives. through muggings, abuse, and accidents, he assists her. what he doesnt know is that his help will bring men with machine guns her way.

- Lightning details how each of these events is mysteriously associated with erratic weather patterns.

- it details how destiny does not like to be led, and will attempt to revert back to its original shape.

Turned out to be a pretty decent book.

ultimately, the plot line is fairly easy to predict. there were points that jenn and i were both frustrated waiting hours for the obvious to occur. there even a few curve balls thrown in that misled rather well. its worth while to either listen to it or read it. Lightning was enjoyable, predictable, but enjoyable.

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i have only two main complaints.

1) koontz has one repeating heavy handed phrase which gets used about 400 times in the last 10 chapters. by the end, if i heard it again, i would have smashed the car window, slit my throat on the glass, then died peacefully as i bled out driving down Interstate 5.

2) the audiobook reader, Christopher Lane, cant do little girls or little boy voices worth a damn. all little girl (with the exception of the main character) sounded utterly and undeniably like flamboyant gay males. the you male voices came out sounding like girls. this kind of visually tainted some scenes from the book.

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side note: why is there a man on the front cover instead of Shane, the female protagonist?

- FNORDinc.com ( )

Laura has a guardian angel who throughout her life helps her through trials & saves her from disaster. Turns out her "angel" is actually a time traveler from 1944 Berlin, Germany. She is an author & writes several books. Her "angel" falls in love with her & tries to save her & her son, Chris, from SS/KGB agents trying to kill them. ( )

This book is hard to review without giving away the plot twists; I can't even explain what the book is actually about without ruining it. I love this book. I have read it multiple times. For anyone who enjoys romance (without fluff,) and action, I recommend it. The heroine in the story is wonderfully strong. No fifties Lois Lane here. The hero is fantastic. ( )

This book is hard to review without giving away the plot twists; I can't even explain what the book is actually about without ruining it. I love this book. I have read it multiple times. For anyone who enjoys romance (without fluff,) and action, I recommend it. The heroine in the story is wonderfully strong. No fifties Lois Lane here. The hero is fantastic. ( )

Lightning was recommended to me by a friend who said I would love it--it's a great piece of science fiction and suspense that was supposed to keep me enthralled.

Unfortunately, Lightning fell far short of that mark. I found it neither suspenseful nor particularly engaging, drawing as it did on so many cliches and predictable elements. The first part of the book is by far the better half: it introduced a somewhat interesting phenomenon, and while the characters and situations were not anything particularly inspired, they sufficed to keep the plot moving and me reading. The premise was interesting enough to overwrite the workmanlike prose and people.

However, I felt like the second half of the book was a letdown even from the popular-fiction standards the first half seemed to meet. After the plot 'twist' that explained the stranger's appearance at important moments of the protagonist's life, the book went sharply downhill. The explanation just didn't seem to live up to what preceded it, and after that, the book turned into one long, drawn-out chase sequence that was neither suspenseful nor interesting: I had to slog through the last quarter or so, instead of being the easy read of the earlier parts.

Final thoughts: nothing new or novel, though a passable premise is let down by the ending. My first experience with Koontz, and based on it, I won't be picking up any more of his books. That said, it would probably make decent beach reading and it certainly didn't make me want to gouge my eyes out, like many other popular writers do. ( )

It's been awhile since I've read a Koontz book even though I have quite a few on the shelf. This was a pleasant read. I wouldn't really consider this in the horror genre as he's typically grouped, but more of a suspense novel with a touch of sci-fi thrown in for good measure.

Without giving too much away, it's basically a time-travel story with good character development. I really felt for the characters and was intrigued how things turned out for them. There was a twist about 2/3 in that I didn't expect though looking back, may have been hinted at and I was just not paying enough attention. This is also not a typical sci-fi time travel novel in that time travel is purely a plot element to move the story forward. So for you hard-core sci-fi readers, nothing new here and in fact there are some inconsistencies in the time-travel that you may pick up on if you pay attention.

I did enjoy this and this just affirms why I enjoy Koontz so much. ( )

A fantastic novel, my first Koontz book and one of my favorates. The last third of the book wasnt quite as good as the rest, got a little too action/shoot em up for me, kind of brought the book down. But overall, a fast paced suspense novel that is impossible to put down. ( )

Koontz uses a dimension-based time-travel device to travel between Nazi Germany and the present. ( )

This is my very favorite book by Dean Koontz. It is exciting, fun, uplifting and imaginative. There is also a lot of drama and it spans several decades. When I pick it up to re-read it I am always amazed that it isn't longer because there are so many memorable incidents in it that it seems like it should be huge. ( )

I absolutely loved this book. I also read it when I was 15. I'd be curious to read it again to see if it has the same impact. ( )

http://malaysianatheist.blogspot.com ( )