This book takes place in Moonlight Bay, a small coastal town in California that Mr. Koontz has written about before. Christopher Snow lives life in the dark. He has a rare disease called xeroderma pigmentosum—XP for short—a genetic disorder that makes its victims super susceptible to cancer from almost any kind of light. Chris's nightmare begins when his father's dead body is stolen from the morgue by a strange man, and he then gets chased by phantoms. At first, I thought the author was taking me down a familiar road of crazy genetic scientists gone mad (and I wasn't far off), but soon, the plot took a couple of twists that pulled me in and kept me reading. The characters were pretty standard for all of DK's books; however, I still found them intriguing. Bobby Halloway is the grooviest dude ever, Sasha is the most fabulous girlfriend on the planet, and Orson, of course, is the smartest of dogs. Since the author left this book open-ended, I must immediately read the sequel, Seize the Night. ( )

Very good suspense/mystery about secret gov't experiments to make animals more intelligent.

To celebrate Halloween this year I thought I'd break from my usual and do a little horror, by reading Koontz's Moonlight Bay trilogy and am glad I did.
This was a great read that flowed very well, was engaging, and maybe because I identified with Snow got me to care about the characters right off the bat.
Very much looking forward to Seize The Night!


( )

Hmmm. The story was interesting and kept me reading, but I felt it lead me to the edge of a long plain, stretching ahead and then stopped. More horror than mystery with some science and surfer philosophy thrown in, it would have been better (for me) if the "what next?" had been written. ( )

I usually like to wait a bit before posting a review. However, I just want to be done with this terrible book. I cannot with how slow and boring it was and how there was no development to any character we meet! At one point I was having a flashback to another Koontz book where there is a super dog, a man and woman, and an other thing that wanted to kill the dog. No I don't care what book I am thinking of, I am just writing that to prove the point that Koontz repeats himself. In addition this whole book is like a prelude to the Odd Thomas series. Christopher Snow acts like Odd Thomas's long lost brother in so many ways I kept getting confused. The ending was a joke. I know there is a second book in this series, well too bad, I have no intention of reading it.

"Fear Nothing" had an interesting premise. A young man who has a rare genetic disorder cannot be out in the sunlight. He has lived his life at night and under the moon. He somehow has a super hot girlfriend who is a deejay, and also knows her way around guns (like most female characters in Koontz's books). He has a cool dog named Orson and apparently parents who loved him. He also has a best friend who is a surfer that talks like he's in his 50s though he is the same age as Christopher (late 20s).

Koontz pitches you into something dark and nasty right away when we find out that Christopher's father is dying and he goes to the hospital to be there when he passes away. Apparently his father dying was the last thing keeping things in the community of Moonlight Bay together. After Christopher witnesses people stealing his father's body, he is on the run for his life and hiding from long time friends he has known since he was a boy.

There are also monkeys. Sigh.

Christopher is Odd Thomas and Odd Thomas is Christopher. Not quite a Gary Sue here, but pretty freaking close. He talks in metaphors and similes and made me wish for his character's death. He also is Too Stupid to Live (TSTL) as shown by him running from place to place and not telling anyone what is going on. when he does talk to his girlfriend, Sasha, he doesn't tell her what's going on for plot reasons.

He does have a break and go to his best friend's house where surfer talk reigns and where I once again hoped for the death of both of these characters.

The secondary characters are merely there to prop up Christopher or throw some random saying at him.

Christopher's girlfriend is just there. She has no personality at all besides she's a deejay and she loves Christopher and calls him Snowman. The dog had more of a personality than she did.

Christopher's best friend Bobby is kind of a jerk. He doesn't like to listen to unpleasant things and just tells Christopher to forget about things. And then randomly throws out how his estranged girlfriend thinks she's the reincarnation of an Hawaiian goddess. And maybe he is a god. I don't know. My brain shut off at that point and watched a British baking show which I am now obsessed with.

There are multiple bad guys and evil animals and it was just not very well done. We had one character talk about raping his granddaughter and my bile rose up. This didn't make it horror, just something unpleasant that was trying too hard.

The why behind all of this is beyond stupid. I could not with the reveal.

The writing is late in his career Koontz. There just seems to be pointless dialogue between characters and them people running. There is a gunfight in the end and I maybe laughed cause the whole thing was peak absurd.

The flow was awful. This was a struggle to keep reading and to stay on top of while I was reading too.

The setting of Moonlight Bay must have only 20 people that live there since that is all who seemed to make up this book.

The ending was a hot mess. Not really an ending and I am guessing using to set up book #2 which is "Seize the Night." ( )