Watching an aspiring surgeon devolve, fearing a brain tumor or other trauma, has a real-world gut punch that is relatable. At first, the developing disorders are terrifying.

The problem is really the length and the pace. There is potential and lots of characterization (albeit the good guys are too saintly and the bad guys too late night sci-fi channel). That’s not to say that Strangers doesn’t have its redeeming features, even some ingenuity and style. But, that being said, even I have a limit, and Strangers reached that limit, beat it mercilessly, and drug it for a few hundred pages, and then, when I was at my most exhausted with the story, the characters, and life, it added a few more hundred pages of characters acting stupidly, paramilitary dudes with attitude, and a conspiracy as old as tin foil hats. An overly written, unnecessarily long book is one of my most favorite things. Now I’m a fan of big books (and I cannot lie!) I’ve read all the Game of Thrones novels and my favorite author is Charles Dickens. At first, I enjoyed it, was impressed and immersed, but as the 700+ pages began to slowly unspool, I lost focus, then interest, and finally enjoyment. I grabbed Strangers at random (it was on the most reachable part of my shelf) and without even reading the back cover, I jumped in.

I had high hopes after my first experience. It was time to crack one open, to read more of this famous author. I bought or was given a bunch of his other books, and they have steadily been gathering dust on my shelves for fifteen years, give or take. I read one Dean Koontz book as a teen ( The Taking) and fell in love. Their terrors will slowly bring them together over a course of weeks as they try to solve the mystery: what really happened that night in Nevada, what did they see, and why are they all going mad? The connection? They were all itinerant travelers at a remote Nevada motel on the same night.

There is a man (and later a child) obsessed with moons, an author with a fit of terror-induced sleepwalking, a surgeon with fugues, a lonely motel owner increasingly terrified of the dark, a priest who has lost his faith and dreams of red moons, and many others.

Total strangers across the US are being seized by fervid nightmares and phobias.

Dean koontz the taking review