What made me want to read this book was hearing that it was set in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.  This book is part of Burke’s series of Dave Robicheaux novels of which there have been 18 (this is number 16) published between 1987 and 2010.  Robicheaux, the main character, is a cop in New Iberia, Louisiana.  When Katrina strikes, New Orleans Police Department resources are stretched thin and Dave must take on some of the case load.  From what I gathered of Dave’s character he is a recovering alcoholic and Vietnam veteran.  At the beginning of the book we are introduced to a junkie priest living with a Mexican prostitute. He’s a good priest and wants to help the poor and downtrodden, he just has a drug problem.  He and the prostitute move to the Lower 9th Ward right before Katrina hits.  The other character we are introduced to is Otis Baylor.  Otis lives in the wealthier Garden District of New Orleans. He is an insurance adjuster and lives with his wife Melanie and his daughter Thelma.  The family has deep-rooted problems, however, in that Thelma was raped by a bunch of thugs.  Her date for the prom had run out of gas in a bad neighborhood and left her alone in the car. A group of black thugs subsequently raped her. The cops hadn’t been able to find the rapists, Thelma was scarred for life, and Otis was left feeling helpless but also wanting revenge.

Katrina hits and the Lower 9th is flooded because  the shoddy construction of the levies gives way.  Burke does a good job of representing the anger of the people at the corrupt government and Corps of Engineers who knew that the levy system was no good but did nothing to fix it.  After Katrina came the looters, and what do you know, the black thugs who raped Thelma are taking part in the looting right on Otis’ street. Thelma looks out the window and instantly recognizes them as the men who raped her. Two of the thugs, Bertrand and Eddie Melanchon decide to loot this one house at the end of Otis’ street. Within the walls they find a ton of cash, cocaine, and blood diamonds. They’ve hit the motherlode! Except, and this cracked me up, the house they hit was of a notorious Mob guy Sidney Kovic. As they are escaping in their motor boat down the alley way, their boat runs out of gas.  Eddie goes to Otis’ garage to steal some gas from a gas can and when he gets back to the boat, a shot is fired from the house severely injuring him and killing two of his other buddies on the boat.  Bertrand is still OK.

Here is where Dave and his friend Cletus Purcell get involved. Cletus is a hilarious character. He’s a former cop who is now a bondsman who does whatever he can (legal or illegal) to capture guys who’ve jumped bail.  No one at the police station feels comfortable when he is around, but he is a close friend to Dave.  They start investigating the shooting behind Otis Baylor’s house and try to find the location of the stolen blood diamonds.  Sidney Kovic and his men are doing they’re own searching for these thugs and end up killing every one but Bertrand.  There is also a new guy in town Ronald Bledsoe who is very creepy and immediately gets on Dave’s bad side by harassing his daughter, Alafair.  Bledsoe claims to be a private investigator, but Dave has a strong feeling he is one of Kovic’s men.  The whole second half of the book pursues the stories of who shot the thugs outside of Baylor’s house, where are the blood diamonds, and who is Ronald Bledsoe and what connection does he have with the cases?

The book was really entertaining, especially the first half.  I am definitely going to check out more books from this series. I listened to the audio book from Audible.com and the reader Will Patton did an excellent job.  The slight Cajun accent was absolutely perfect for this book.  He also did other voices really well such as Cletus Purcell and the swarmy, creepy Ronald Bledsoe.

Tina Evans is newly divorced from her husband. Their marriage disintegrated shortly after their son, Danny, died in a tragic bus accident. He was only twelve years old.

Now, about a year later, Tina lives alone in the house that they once shared. She still works at the same casino in Vegas that she always has, except now, instead of a dancer, she is the director of a show that she hopes will be an amazing success. All of her time, efforts, and thoughts are focused on this show. She has plans for more shows after this one ends. This might be Tina’s way of dealing with her grief. At the start of the book, she is convinced that she sees Danny sitting in a car in the parking lot. Her hopes crash when she realizes that the boy she is looking at is not her son, after all.

At first, I thought I was reading a ghost story. Tina has left Danny’s room exactly as it was the day he died. She has a housekeeper who dusts and cleans it, but otherwise it has been untouched. One day, she comes into the room and notices that the chalkboard easel has been knocked over. As she picks it up, she sees that the words “NOT DEAD” have been written on it.

There is an excellent scene where the housekeeper experiences what appears to be poltergeist activity when she is trying to clean Danny’s room. The temperature drops. Ice forms on the window, and flat surfaces of the room. Model airplanes spin, and poster rip themselves into pieces while they are still attached to the wall.

The housekeeper is a no-nonsense woman. Koontz takes the time to fully describe her and her life, and I really enjoyed the short story about the housekeeper. She remains undaunted by the freaky events in Danny’s room. Here is my favorite paragraph from this book:

“But she didn’t believe in ghosts. There were no such things. She believed in death and taxes, in the inevitability of slot-machine jackpots, in all-you-can-eat casino buffets for $5.95 per person, in the Lord God Almighty, in the truth of alien abductions and Big Foot, but she didn’t believe in ghosts.”

Tina at first, believes that her husband is the one who has been breaking in, and writing on the chalkboard in Danny’s room, in an effort to mess with her head. Later, she changes her mind, and is concerned that a stalker is following her. She tells her concerns to a man she recently met, and has started to date, named Elliot, who just so happens to be a lawyer. Suddenly, the ghost story turns into a full blown thriller. There are secrets, explosions, and hastily made escape plans.

I was kind of disappointed when I realized this wasn’t a ghost story. I wasn’t prepared to be reading a thriller, all of a sudden. Later, the book gets a science fiction flavor, and then it became interesting again. The ending answers the main questions that were posed at the beginning of the story, which worked pretty well. However, I was still left wanting to know what happened next. I would have liked to read the sequel, except I don’t think a sequel to this book ever got written. (At least, I am not aware of it).

I didn’t love this book, but I did enjoy it. It kind of jumped around with genre, and I didn’t feel like it completely pulled off each genre equally well. However, there were some real gems within these pages. I really enjoyed the mini story about the housekeeper. The book was written in 1981, and I found the scenes describing the computers the characters were using, (with the blinking cursors, and dot matrix printers) to be nostalgically entertaining. It’s a quick read, and there is a lot going on at the same time. But, it just didn’t grab me in the way that a good ghost story would have.

Have this ever happened to you? You meet a complete stranger, and for some unexplained reason, it feels like you have known that person your whole life. The two of you connect right away, and one of the first conversations you have includes the phrase: “Where do I know you from?” Sometimes you find out that you used to attend the same school years ago, or that you briefly met at some party through some mutual acquaintance, and you forgot. Sometimes, though…. there is no explanation for the bond that you and this stranger are feeling. It happens to a lot of people. It certainly has happened to me! This is the kind of experience that leads people to explore religious and mystical ideas about what, exactly, is the source of this strong connection. It is this intriguing concept that is explored in Stones Skipping on Water.

John Kincaide attends an art show, and sees the beautiful Vanessa Dean for the first time. The two are instantly attracted to each other, and this attraction quickly leads to a passionate relationship. Vanessa has been making art that centers around her need to find a familiar face in a crowd, and then exploring that connection. Each of the lovers has found a little piece of what was missing from their lives in the other person, as lovers often do.

Their bliss is broken when Kincaide gets an urgent phone call from one of his employees. Kincaide owns a company that has been manufacturing and testing a new drug called ClearThought. The drug was designed as a memory aid, something that would eventually be marketed to college students, graduate students, and other people who have the need for a temporary memory boost. John learns, from this frantic phone call placed in the wee hours of the morning, that something has gone terribly wrong.

Gordon Bischof, the inventor of ClearThought, appears to have gone crazy. Bischof has been secretly sampling ClearThought, and the result is that he has lost his mind. He is sitting in the lab, with a gun, and a bottle of alcohol, demanding to speak with Kincaide, and calling his coworkers by names that are not actually their names. The most terrifying aspect of this extremely unsettling scene is that Bischof believes that ClearThought has enabled him to see and experience past lives.

As if that weren’t bad enough news, there is more. Bischof firmly believes that he has discovered exactly who Kincaide was in a past life, is angry about what transpired, and is interested in settling the score. It is a grudge held onto from a lifetime ago. Passion and rage, multiplied by time, equals an imminent explosion.

What follows is an intense roller coaster ride of a story, as Kincaide, Vanessa, and Bischof try and make all the little pieces fit into the big picture. The reader sits somewhere inside Kincaide’s head, as he struggles to figure out what is fact, what is fantasy, and what the right move is as the situation continues to intensify. There are many chapters that ended with statements so shocking that it literally made me gasp, and quickly devour the next chapter, dying to know what happens next. Readers who appreciate stories that do not fit neatly into a categorical box created by big chain bookstores will greatly enjoy this book. Those that crave a thriller with a touch of metaphysics will not want to miss this book.

In some ways, Arson, is a typical teenager. He has a part time job at an ice cream shop, with a horrible manager, and coworkers who like to slack off and make Arson do most of the work. He’s definitely not the most popular guy in his high school… far from it! Arson is a social outcast, and most people think he is weird. Arson, like many teenage boys, has an intense crush on the most popular girl in school. She’s blond, and beautiful, and completely out of his league. In these ways, Arson is normal.

However, there are things about Arson that are unusual. He lives with his grandmother, instead of with his parents. His closest friend is a girl who chooses to constantly wear a Halloween mask. She has some very valid reasons about why she selected this strange choice of accessory, but still, it’s not the sort of thing that helps a teenager make friends. Arson has an unusual name. It’s really a nickname, but he has gone by it for so long that it has become his name.

The oddest thing about Arson is that he sets fires. Only, he doesn’t need a match, or an accelerant. Arson can start fires just by thinking about it, and he is still learning how to control this ability that he hates, that he loves, that defines him.

Estevan Vega is the author of the book The Sacred Sin. Both books blur the lines between good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral. Vega’s books contain characters with lots of layers, each with their own demons to face and fight with. I’ve greatly enjoyed reading his work.

Estevan Vega was kind enough to do a second interview with me for Book Sandwich.

Jen Thorpe: Arson has a very special ability. One might even say he has a “super power”. I can’t quite decide if I think Arson is a superhero, or a super villain, based on his thoughts and his actions. Which do you consider Arson to be?

Estevan Vega: I guess I couldn’t really decide what he was either. He was a sort of ambiguous character. Is, and I liked that. It’s hard to say that any person is always good or always evil, because I believe as humans we have different sides to us. Sometimes we’re the hero and sometimes we’re the villain. During the story, Arson feels like a monster, feels like he’s the villain of the story, and at the climax I suppose people may come to the conclusion one way or another about what they think he is…but I’m rooting for hero…with divided sentiments.

JT: Do you prefer Marvel, or DC Comics? Who is your favorite superhero and favorite super villain? I’ve noticed that many little boys self-identify with a particular superhero (usually when they are between ages three and six). One of my brothers would tell people he was Spiderman. Which superhero did you identify with, (if any)?

EV: Since I was really young, I always loved Marvel characters. I think the reason was that I felt they were just cooler. I definitely like some DC stuff, but some of my favorite heroes (X-men, Spiderman) came from the Marvel universe. The character I really connected with was Wolverine. I remember this one time at band camp…I mean, wait, I was actually in the backseat playing with some action figures, and one of them was Wolverine. I said something, like, “I’m gonna kill you, punk,” something very Wolverine to say, and my mom said I couldn’t watch X-Men anymore. I was heartbroken. I loved that show. To this day, he’s one of my favorite characters. Maybe it’s the cool hair cut…or the claws…not sure.

JT: I always wonder what an author was listening to while he was writing his book. Did you listen to a certain kind of music while writing Arson? Was there a particular CD or artist that you gravitated towards while writing this book? Did you listen to podcasts? Or, were you writing in silence?

EV: I don’t typically like to write with music, not with lyrics anyway. I’ve never tried writing to Beethoven or the Star Wars soundtrack, though that might eventually prove to be an epic journey. I don’t know, I prefer to write in silence. Although I definitely got some inspiration from the song “Glass to the Arson” by Anberlin. I decided to name Arson because partly because of that track, so that was kinda cool.

JT: Emery is a fascinating character! There were so many layers to her personality, and she was such a strong person, (despite the personal tragedy she faced). Did you have any plans to include Emery in, if not a sequel to Arson, than in another story, someday?

EV: Yeah, she is. I’ve been getting a lot of feedback on her character. It’s funny, because she was never initially part of the book. When I originally started writing the book, I had no idea a character like her was gonna be in it, but I totally love her, and she is a huge part of the story. I am working on book two right now, trying to finish that up. Hopefully it’ll be out next year, though I am terrified of setting goals for myself. But yeah, you’re not done with Emery yet. She rocks.

JT: Where can my readers find you on the internet?

EV: Check out my website: www.estevanvega.com. All things ARSON are on there, plus some info about my current book tour and where I’ll be heading next. Also, there’s some stuff on there about my other books. My email’s on there. I love getting feedback, so write me and let me know what you thought of ARSON!

You can also check me out on twitter and facebook. I frequent those sites way more often than I should, so there are plenty of ways to find me. Don’t tell the government!

Now please go out and pick up ARSON…and tell everyone you know to get a copy! Let’s get Hollywood’s attention!

Jen Thorpe: Thank you, so much, for doing this interview with me for Book Sandwich!

Estevan Vega: No problem. Thanks for having me.

Freedom’s Call is a fairly mediocre novel wrapped around a somewhat intriguing concept. The year is 2013. The book’s protagonist, Johnny Locker, is the leader of the Social Security movement. I don’t recall if this movement’s purpose is specifically described anywhere in Freedom’s Call, but Locker is its leader. And a quietly reluctant leader, at that. A former media personality (radio talk-show host, I think), he had become the figurehead of the movement, presumably due to his outspoken opinions on… whatever it is the Social Security movement is protesting. The novel begins at a rally in Washington, D.C. Locker is there, leading a march on the American capital. From out of nowhere, he is scooped up by a group of friends who tell him he has to get out of there right away. Locker’s buddies are all military types, and even though all of them (including Locker) are in their sixties, they’ve got the stamina to escape the crowd through a chain of events that’d put a James Bond film to shame. There’s gas masks, a secret passage in a subway, some impromptu swimming, an old boat and for some reason, a 1958 Pontiac Chieftain. (Not sure why the vintage Pontiac was included here. The author describes it in such loving detail, I kept waiting for it to return at a future point in the book. Alas…) Our heroes manage to make it to an airfield. They commandeer a plane and fly away from the city, all the while, Locker is stunned, having no idea exactly why he’s been taken on this adventure. Not long after their plane is a safe distance from Washington, D.C. the crew learn that a nuclear bomb was set off within the city. Whew! They made it out just in time.
(more…)

This is another book in the Jesse Stone series by Robert B. Parker.  Jesse Stone is a police chief in the small suburb town of Paradise, Massachusetts.  Stone lost his job as an L.A. homicide cop after his wife divorced him and he took on a drinking problem. Now in Paradise he’s still friends with his ex-wife, he is talking to a psychiatrist about his love life and his drinking, and he doesn’t show up to work drunk.

The plot of this book was kind of silly while still being entertaining to listen to.  A husband and wife serial killer have started picking off seemingly random people in Paradise.  They go around town taking pictures of people they may want to kill, decide, “hey let’s kill a woman this time” or “how about this guy” while looking at the digital pictures on the computer and then shoot the victim once each in the chest with a .22.  When they kill a Paradise attorney woman Jesse used to date and only moments before had made love to, Jesse starts taking the killings more personally.

The book’s subplot  involves a gang rape at the local high school where some football stars took a girl in a back alley, raped her and took pictures of the rape which they threaten to share with the school if the girl squeals on them.  Jesse manages to get the girl to confess to him and spends a lot of his resources trying to protect her and arrest her rapists even though the media is questioning why he isn’t putting all of his force behind the serial killings.  Because he wants to protect the young girl, Jesse tells the media and the town selectmen that he has a cop at the high school trying to bust a drug ring.

Jesse Stone is a good guy that you want to root for.  He is prone to temper and beating up bad guys, but he really just wants to protect and serve his small community.  Parker’s Jesse Stone books are entertaining cop/mystery novels, but nothing deeper than that.  Again, and I mentioned this in the last Parker novel I reviewed, there are an awful lot of “saids” in the book as in he said she said that it gets annoying especially when listening to an audio version.  Once I got beyond that, though, the book was a fun listen.

Just 26 miles off the coast of San Francisco  are a set of islands very few people on the mainland know about.  These islands are more jutting teeth like rocks (which partly plays into the title)  than regular islands and are host to many different species of birds, sea lions and in the waters surrounding them great white sharks.  The islands are called the Farralon Islands and it is deemed a wildlife refuge by the California State Parks and Wildlife.  The public is not allowed on the Farralons without a permit and their only human residents are the scientists and biologists who study the birds and the sharks.

Susan Casey, a journalist who has written for Time and other publications, watches a BBC documentary about the great white sharks at the Farralon Islands and is immediately interested.  She gets in contact with the California Parks and Wildlife and is able to wrangle a guest permit to do a report on the islands.  When she arrives at the Farralons for the first time she meets Peter and Scott, two of the shark scientists stationed at the Farralons.  They were originally there to study birds but were able to talk the state into letting them study the great white sharks as well.  The Farralons are not easy to get on to.  You have to row up to the rocks in a small rowboat or whaler and get lifted on to the island using a crane and rubber raft-type harness.  Once on the island there is a house where the scientists stay and at the highest point a light house which is now automated.

Great white shark season in the Farralons is in the fall from September through November.  There are two types of great white sharks Casey describes in the book, the Sisters and the Rat Packers.  The Sisters are large females and can be the most aggressive in attacks.  The Rat Packers are the males.  In the several trips Casey went out to the Farralons she never did see a Sister, but she witnessed several attacks by Rat Packers.  Peter and Scott could put out a surfboard onto the water and see it immediately get attacked and bitten from below.  One would watch from the lighthouse and when a shark attack on a sea lion was discovered, he would radio to the other in the boat so he could observe and video tape.  The scientists kept a journal of all of the attacks in the house.  A shark attack could easily be spotted from on high because the sea gulls would flock together and the sea would turn red in the general area of the attack.

This was an utterly fascinating book.  Casey talks about the history of the Farralon Islands and the early settlers of San Francisco found out that eggs could be found on the Farralons. They would risk their lives scaling the rocks of the islands to steal eggs from the birds and then sell them in San Francisco since they didn’t bring chickens with them.  Casey also gives a brief history of the Monterey and San Diego aquariums trying to be the first to display a great white shark in their exhibits, but the sharks did not do well in confinement and ultimately had to be let go.  Having read other reviews of this book I did accidentally get a spoiler which I will not reveal here.  A lot of these reviews say that they liked the first part of the book and found it very interesting, but did not like Susan Casey as a person in the second half of the book. They believe she acted selfishly at the expense of others to get onto the islands.  I can see where they are coming from, but I found the whole book to be extremely interesting, well-written (and read as I listened to the audio book) and it made me do some Google image searches of the Farralons because I had never heard of these islands before.  I would highly recommend this book.

Rarely there is a case where the movie adaptation is better than the book.  This is how I felt about Up in the Air.  The movie was entertaining, funny and thought-provoking and George Clooney brought a lot to the role of Ryan Bingham.  Unfortunately, the book fell flat on all of those points for me.  I think I was most disappointed with how unfunny the book was compared with the movie. The book carries a more business-like tone.

Ryan Bingham is a frequent flyer who works for a company called ISM doing CTC, but he would rather work for a company called Myth Tech.  These acronyms are confusing and I kept having to go back to the page where they are first mentioned  to figure out what they mean.  CTC is Career Transition Counseling, in other words he helps companies lay off people.  ISM stands for Integrated Strategic Management.  Unlike the movie, Bingham’s job of firing people is rarely mentioned.  Towards the end of the book he meets a lady who he helped fire a long time ago in Dallas who remembers him well, while he has completely forgotten her.  Most of the book revolves around his frequent flying and a little bit about his sister getting married.  Even the movie treated that aspect of his personal life in a more fleshed out way.  This book goes on and on about meeting different business associates, flying and his loyalty to Great West airlines vs Desert Air, and hanging out in hotels.  Bingham is also working on a business novel called The Garage about an inventor who toils alone, but out in the real word people are taking his innovations and making a fortune.

I think my major problem with this book is that I’m not a business person and so as a result of that I was kind of bored by the whole thing.  I wasn’t bored enough to stop reading as I am on some books, but I was much more entertained by the movie than this book and  that is rare for me.  Generally the books are better than the movies.

This is one of those books that can be looked at from several different viewpoints. On one hand, this is the story of a single mother, pushed to the edge by circumstances beyond her control, who is desperately trying to protect her son from the situation. Another view is that this is the story about how much more difficult life can be for a parent of a child who has high-functioning autism. Overall though, this book is also a thriller that centers around an especially outrageous and tragic crime.

Danielle Parkman is a single mother, something that is never an easy thing to be. Her teenage son, Max, has been diagnosed with a form of high functioning autism, and this complicates everything. At the start of the book, Danielle is taking Max to see his psychologist, because she has become increasingly worried about some of Max’s behaviors.

He has become secretive, and moody, and a little bit violent, at times. There are signs that he might be suicidal. Max’s psychologist comes to the conclusion that Max really would benefit from being institutionalized at a place called Maitland, which is a top of the line psychiatric asylum. It seems that this is something that Danielle and the psychologist have discussed in the past, but the very idea still breaks Danielle’s heart.

Shortly after Max is admitted to Maitland, things begin to go wrong. The psychologists there feel that Max has many more problems than Danielle expected them to find. Max is having more frequent violent episodes. Danielle is getting pressured to return to work, after taking time off to deal with things. She is a lawyer, and has been working towards becoming a partner. However, her extensive time off has made her colleagues question if she was really should be made partner after all. If she loses her job, she won’t be able to pay for Maitland.

This is when tragedy strikes. Max is found unconscious, and covered with blood, in the room of another patient, who has obviously been murdered. Danielle believes he is innocent, and struggles to save Max from going to jail for a crime he did not commit. This isn’t easy, because all the evidence points right at Max. The rest of the book is one intense ride, as clues are discovered, cases are argued, and time ticks away. When you find out what really happened, you will be blown away. I certainly didn’t guess the ending, but once it was revealed, I was amazed at how well that all fit together.

What first got me interested in reading this book was that it had a character with high functioning autism. I have a sibling who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and was curious to see how well the author would describe a character who was like that. The author, van Heugten, has a child with autism, and I believe that her experience in real life led her to capture the essence of what it is like to know someone with high functioning autism. Max lacks some social skills, is very focused on computers, and also is extremely talented at using computers and the internet to gather information that he is interested in. That same description would fit my sibling quite well.

Another really cool thing about this author is that she was a former international lawyer. This is another area where the author’s real life experiences were used to enhance the book. The courtroom scenes felt extremely intense and believable, and both Danielle, and another lawyer who helps her, seem to know an immense amount about law, how court cases work, and what it takes to get evidence admitted into a case.

I really enjoyed this book, but there were some parts where I felt the need to suspend my disbelief in order to keep the story from falling apart. Danielle takes several risks in her efforts to get Max out of Maitland that could get her into legal trouble. Would a desperate mother take those risks? Perhaps. Would a mother who was also a lawyer, and “knew better”, take those risks? Well… maybe so. However, Danielle takes even bigger and bigger risks as the story continues. While this makes for an exciting storyline, part of me was questioning if someone as knowledgeable as Danielle was about the legal implications of her actions would still choose to do those things. I also wondered where Max’s father was, exactly, and why wasn’t he at least providing child support? How can a single mother find the time to raise a child with special needs and become a lawyer who is about to make partner? These things confused me. However, when I got to the part where the killer is revealed, I set all my questioning thoughts aside, because I was so impressed with how well that fit. It’s one of those moments where you learn the answer and think, “Of course!”, and then wonder why you didn’t see that coming.

It starts with rain. Actually, it starts with a torrential downpour that comes out of nowhere, late one night. Molly, a writer, happens to be awake when the rain starts. She notices that the rain glows, and smells funny, and comes with an ominous and disturbing feeling about it.

Molly decides to do what one would expect the heroine of a horror novel to do: she goes outside to investigate. A large group of silent and nervous looking coyotes have gathered on her porch. They seem to be afraid of the bizarre rain, or, possibly, some evil force that Molly can sense in the nearby woods. Amazingly, the coyotes have no problem with Molly when she impulsively decides to step out on the porch, and stand among them. This short scene feels very mystical, and is my favorite part of the book.

Molly’s husband, Neil, a former priest, also feels an ominous presence coming from the rain. He starts murmuring strange statements while he is still asleep, somehow.

From here, things get really freaky. Molly and Neil experience some seemingly impossible things. Molly’s collection of music boxes spontaneously go off all at once. They both start to see a shadowy form that appears to be right behind them when they look in the mirror, but does not seem to be in the room with them.

They turn on the television and learn that this strange rain is happening pretty much all over the world. There are many floods. A strange typhoon has appeared in the ocean. In some places, it is snowing, and children are playing in the odd glowing snow. No one knows what is causing it. One of the live newscasts ends with a camera man dropping the camera, and half of the reporters severed head landing on the ground. Whatever is going on, it’s not good.

Conveniently, both Molly and Neil not only have a gun, a rifle, and plenty of ammo for each, but are both skilled with using these weapons. They take these with them when they decide to drive to the center of town, believing that gathering with other people will be safer then staying by themselves.

A radio broadcast plays audio from the Space Station, which seems to currently staffed by half the countries in the UN, based on the quick glimpse we get. Molly and Neil listen as unexplained alien invaders phase through the doors of the station, and slaughter the astronauts.

Who are these alien invaders, and what do they want? This is unexplained for most of the book, which adds to the tension in the story. I give Koontz credit for creating an extremely creepy setting. It seems that these aliens have come to Earth to take it, in every sense of the word. The description of the alien looking landscape, and the creatures that come out of it, is vivid enough to make my skin crawl.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with this book. So many things are just too convenient. Molly and Neil just happen to have guns and ammo lying around the house, and both are trained to use them. Molly has a nearly photographic memory for phrases and words, and this ability makes her able to instantly recognize when other characters start quoting poetry. She even knows what poet wrote it, and what poem the quote is from. Despite the horrible things happening around her, she manages to memorize a phrase that appears to be gibberish that was said by the alien that invaded the space station….. and decode it later on!

Molly’s past includes a traumatic event that happened when she was a child, which (not to give too much away), involved her protecting some other children that her father was trying to kill. Later, she and Neil become protectors of stray children.

Neil just so happens to have once been a priest, in a book filled with biblical references, few of which come from him. If you are not a person who is familiar with the Old Testament part of the bible, or someone who doesn’t happen to belong to a faith that believes in it, much of this book is going to have little meaning for you. I was not impressed by this. I like my horror stories to be scary, creepy, and even a bit disgusting at times. I don’t want to get to the end of the book only to learn that the events that happened were because the God of the Old Testament wanted them to happen. Such a disappointment! Why did all this destruction and horrible things happen? Why did so many people die? Because it was God’s plan. This is not an ending, it is a cop out.

The invading aliens are vicious and violent. To me, the inclusion of aliens in this book appeared to be specifically so the author could create new and incredibly disturbing ways to torture people. Now, I understand that there are a lot of people who enjoy books and/or movies that involve graphic scenes of torture. I am not among them. To me, this was overkill, and largely unnecessary. It especially bothers me that tons of people got tortured in this story not because of a war, or because of insanity, or even because someone was possessed by a demon or other evil force. It was because God said so. Oh really? So, for no reason then. Great.

This was not my favorite Koontz book, by far.