This story focuses on Molly and Neil, living two rather normal lives in a small, rather uninteresting town until it starts to rain, a colossal, torrential, unnatural rain that brings with it an evil, malevolent being against which there is no defense. And it causes insanity and brings death. But somehow Molly, Neal, and a very small number of others seem to be immune to this evil alien, though not the humans it infects. There is something deliciously mysterious about Molly and, by the way dogs (Koontz works it in, don’t worry), that this evil spirit seems to respect. Molly also soon discovers that it seems to be leaving alone the children, even if viciously killing their own parents, so she makes it her mission to round them up for protection. But she soon questions whether she is actually “saving” them from this monster or conveniently “harvesting” them for it. There are a few other adults graced with this seeming exemption from death engaged in this same mission. I won’t reveal that answer in this review.

Dean Koontz is at his best in this supernatural thriller. Through his masterful use of language and manipulative use of the written word he paints a vivid imagery of his scenes and places the reader amongst the action and in fear of life and limb.

One of his best works, this was heading for five stars until the ending which seemed to me to just kind of fizzle. It felt almost like Dean Koontz didn’t know how to end a dramatic and high intensity story line with a dramatic and explosive ending so he didn’t even try. It seemed like a cop out. Unless there was some type of subtle reference that I didn’t catch, which is quite possible, I just felt the ending was highly improbable considering the events throughout the book. Having said that, the book was otherwise intense, exciting, and a real page turner. ( )

A re-read for me that made me instantly question how I ever could have forgotten this book. Or perhaps the subject didn’t connect me back then, as a younger reader. Koontz is often ‘accused’ of injecting his religious beliefs into his work. The same could be said here, though to good effect. This is an alien encounter like no other, blending horror and supernatural elements expertly, yet being in some ways thought-provoking. Those who enjoyed Phantoms might like this, and there’s no need to let personal faith or lack of spoil this. Highly imaginative, and the story has a satisfying conclusion. ( )

(2004) Pretty good almost SF of a mysterious force that comes to earth as if an alien attack that starts to change the environment and eventually kills all but children and selected adults. Turns out it may have been the devil making the world a better place to live.

Many years ago I read and enjoyed several of this author's books although I can't recall much about them now. So it was with a pleasant anticipation that I picked up this book and at first I found it interesting and creepy.

Molly wakes in the middle of the night due to very heavy rain that has not managed to wake her husband, and she goes downstairs. She sees that the rain is luminous and it has driven a lot of coyotes onto her porch. The animals look terrified of something out in the rain which she can sense as a forbidding presence, and she has a mystical experience with them, feeling a sense of union. Then they run off and she goes upstairs where her husband is having a nightmare about something huge descending from the skies. After he wakes up, they both see a reflection in the bedroom mirror showing the room as if the house has been abandoned for years and has odd vegetation growing in it - and a suggestion of something moving around. And after that, TV and telephone communication is gradually cut off, but not before they have seen evidence that the rainfall is world wide and that monsters are taking over.

So far, so creepy. And yet I found a problem almost from the start because there was loads of infodumping, even in the opening pages. Molly has a history - something awful happened to her when she was eight years old and a few years later her beloved mother died of cancer. Her mother was a writer, whose work is already out of print, and she, an author herself, is concerned that the same will happen to hers. And her husband is the best thing that has ever happened in her life - they have a totally empathic relationship. Unfortunately, none of that is dripfed into the scenes between the characters, or conveyed with their dialogue etc. There is throughout the book a tendency to headhop between characters and to have paragraphs of information giving their back story, but it is especially noticeable at the beginning and gets in the way of the menace the writer is trying to create.

There were resonances in this book with others I've read: the strange 'vegetation' which begins to appear is an obvious harkening back to 'The War of the Worlds' and its red weed, and that book/film is name checked more than once. The beginning also reminded me of Stephen King's 'The Mist'. Some images are genuinely creepy, such as the animated doll and the sense of something vast moving above and resonating rather than being heard, in people's bones and blood. Yet there do seem to be rather a lot of hobbyhorses being ridden, including liberal treatment of prisoners, bad parenting, whether climate change is real (the book was published in 2004) and others.

Most adult characters in the book, apart from Molly and her husband, are nasty, and if they are not, have a very short life expectancy (apart from people we don't actually 'meet' although they are performing the same child-rescue role that Molly and Neil take on). Molly's child/teacher-killing father turns up. Some supposed friends or neighbours are literally possessed by the alien force and turn out to be enemies. Multiple types of creature - insectoid, reptillian, simian, fungoid - are spawning everywhere and threatening humanity. Dead bodies are bizarrely reanimated. The whole tone of the book is extremely downbeat and with the huge power of the invading force and its permutation into the whole ecosystem, did seem to be an 'extinction of all life on earth' story for much of the book.

Against that are the preternaturally understanding dogs who help the couple rescue children, and the twist that something which seemed hostile apparently wasn't the lights that kept coming over Molly in the fog and making her feel awful because of the way they saw into her character. And Molly's ability to hold onto hope as a result of her childhood experiences.

The problem, or one of the main ones I found, was that Molly as a character is incredibly bland. Her husband is also Mr Perfect. So to hang the whole book on them is problematic. And the changed premise revealed at the end made the whole thing come crashing down like a house of cards, although I had found it increasingly less like an alien invasion and more like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. If the whole incident was meant to be the Rapture where the bad and good are taken up either to hell or heaven, where was Jesus Christ? The rain apparently heralded the time that Satan was given to ravage the Earth just before the Second Coming - that is the clue given by Paulie, Neil's brother when they speak to him on the phone before communication is cut off. So it seems that was why it was being made over into a form of Hell, and why everything goes instantly back to normal when Satan suddenly has to leave. .

I didn't find it realistic that the children were all good either. Having all the surviving adults at the end being useful and skilled such as doctors, carpenters, engineers and so on was rather convenient as was the sudden departure of Satan and his minions, but if that was because Molly refused to sacrifice one child to save the others, I don't see her as a Christ substitute. For me the book jumped ship from one genre to something so completely "out there" it ceased to have all credibility. For that reason I can only award a 1-star rating. ( )

Riveting. Originally read in June 2009 ( )

First DK book I've read. A few boring bits but starts strong. Extraterrestrial invasion/apocalypse vibes. ( )

First DK book I've read. A few boring bits but starts strong. Extraterrestrial invasion/apocalypse vibes. ( )

This was kind of a lame book in my opinion. Lots of quotes from TS Eliot and the husband seems kind of wimpy. I do like strong female characters but this isn't it ( )

Unputdownable!

I love Dean Koontz books and I’ve read several of them. Even 3/4 of the way through this one, I didn’t know how it could wrap up and I’d be happy. I should’ve trusted the Koontz process — except I got nothing else done today! Oh well, worth it!! ( )

I've enjoyed a lot of Koontz books. This is not one of them. It was a chore to get through, and the story did little for me. The writing was terrible. It was repetitious and seemed like it was written by a high school student trying to impress a teacher with their vocabulary. I ran into a number of words I didn't recognize, and neither did the Kindle dictionary. ( )

Sometimes the forest appeared to her as a green cathedral. The massive pine trunks were columns in a vast nave, and the spreading boughs formed groin vaults and fan vaults high overhead.
Now, with the reverential hush of the woods replaced by the din of the downpour, the gloom coiling among the trees seemed to be of a different character from that on any previous night. The god of this cathedral was the lord of darkness.

It starts with strangely luminous rain, reports of massive waterspouts sinking ships, and an attack on the International Space Station. But is this an alien invasion or something supernatural?

Most of the way through I was thinking I would give it 3 stars, but I liked the ending more than I thought I would, so I am giving it 3.5 stars. ( )

I just couldn't get into this. The characters are so morally smug that it is really hard for me to sympathize with them. ( )

4.5/5
Go to Confessions of a Book Freak for my thoughts ( )

This was my very first Dean Koontz book and I have to say I'm very impressed. I can easily see why Dean is such a popular author.

This was the first book in a very very very long time that I have enjoyed this much. Best book I've read for a least 2 years. It's very suspenseful. You know there is something out there but your not really for sure what that just might be. You really don't find out what is truly hunting them until the last few Chapters. Dean makes you want to know what's bumping in the night but scared to look outside at the same time. It was a hard book to put down. Very good book, highly recommended. Earned every star. ( )

Molly Sloan, a successful writer with a dark event in her childhood, and her husband wake to a strange rain in the home in a small Californian mountain town, the precursor of what appears to be a strange alien invasion. The invaders themselves remain unseen, seeming instead to attack with fungal spores contained in the rain and psychological warfare – for example, the survivors gathered in a tavern are assailed with images of their grisly deaths in the mirror behind the bar.

The Sloans, led by a strangely intelligent German Shepard, begin to scour the town looking for children to rescue, and it becomes steadily apparent that the children are being spared whatever weird fate is befalling the adults.

I'll be honest upfront; I didn't like this book, but I'll to be fair in my review and give Koontz his due. The events are certainly horrific, and often made my skin crawl so, I guess I ought to say that it succeeds as a horror novel. But, but, but...

I disliked the writing. Koontz jumps straight into the action, which is often a good idea, but he attempts to keep a level of terror and weirdness that is simply not sustainable for 400 pages, even if it is well written. He has an annoying tendency to leap for the thesaurus to express description (“it was slimy, glutinous, muculent”) which just sounds like he can't decide which word to use.

The characters and narration constantly reference science fiction movies, only to dismiss the images 'fed' to us as misleading; “forget that, it's how they want us to think.” Likewise any problem with the lack of internal logic is banished by quoting “some science fiction author”: “any sufficently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic”. I'm sure it could be argued that the speaker themselves didn't know who said this, but not referencing Arthur C. Clarke suggests a disrespect for the genre Koontz appears to be writing in – although it soon becomes apparent that this is not an SF novel in any way. Molly constantly realises what is going in in what are not so much deductions as revelations, and the plot is frequently advanced by instances of deus ex machina (I use both terms advisedly).

The characters are two dimensional at best, even the lead players, and offer no room for development; Molly is strong, intelligent, focused, organised – her husband Neil is strong, calm, thoughtful, manly. By the end I realised that this was largely because neither the characters or any other aspect of the book has room for moral ambiguity – not just right and wrong but Good and Evil. And this leads to one of the biggest problems I had with this book, but also the reason I'm cautious about outright condemning it, because my dislike is based partly on a conflict of beliefs.

From very early on I realised that the author was coming from a morally absolute standpoint, and that this was his standpoint as much as the protagonists' (largely because the character and authorial voices are interchangable) and this turns the novel into a tract. The end was not a disappointment, largely because it was in no way a surprise and because I didn't care about the actors. Molly realises, in he last of a series of revelations, the reason why the invasion ended as suddenly as it began, why some people were taken and some where not (why also those seen lifted bodily away reacted with joy while others that seemed to sink through the floor reacted with terror) and why the children were exempt from this 'sifting'. Have you guessed yet? It is all because it is the rapture, disguised in a way that would be believed in a godless age. Forget the question of why belief would be necessary as it was actually happening, or that the theory that this was an alien invasion was simply one they came up with in the bar.

Dean Koontz obviously has imagination of a gruesome sort but, if The Taking is anything to go by, lacks any literary instincts or, more importantly, compassion. I'm tempted to read something else of his to see if his style works better on a smaller, less apocalyptic stage (as I occasionally thought it might while reading this book), but feel that that, as on eating a strange fruit and finding it unpleasant, don't really want to be left with the same bad taste in my mouth.
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It had a great build up..always making me wonder what is going on, what is to come. and then the ending...let down. ( )

Review: The Taking by Dean Koontz.

The book was not as inspiring as some of his creations but I still like and stay interested in the story. I thought some of the supernatural phenomena were stretched out to long over several pages throughout the book. I liked the theme he used on creating somewhat of the “Noah’s Ark” scenario. He brings out a horrific event of the end-of-the-world through the eyes of a young couple. He also, uses work dogs into the mix as somewhat heroic characters.

As you read it seems like some sort of alien invasion and night of the living dead combined with the evil nature of some sociopath characters that Koontz created in this doomsday night of terror. In this book Koontz’s offers something deeper then the typical science fiction legend when he entwines the Biblical theme that creates a deeper meaning in the plot.

I believe Koontz delivers his good and bad panorama very well. He conveys a more insightful grasp on the nature of evil in most of his books, including this one.

( )

By far, my favorite Koontz book. You may not like any of his others, & in truth, they can be formulaic & derivative. But this one is worth reading. ( )

Molly and Neil Sloan are awakened in their Southern California home in the middle of the night by a torrential downpour but this is not any ordinary storm. The rain is luminescent with a strange odor and Molly and Neil feel a 'presence' above the gray clouds. Turning to their tv for news of the event they are horrified to see that this rain is apparently world-wide and people are being horribly killed but all transmissions soon end as does all electric power. The Sloans decide they should head for town to find other people hoping there will be safety in numbers. What they find in the local tavern is a small group of people which includes a few children and several dogs. The dogs are immediately drawn to Molly and one dog in particular, Virgil, seems to want Molly to follow him. As Molly and Neil tail after Virgil they understand that he is leading them to rescue children from whatever alien form is taking over their world. As death and unearthly horrors surround the Sloans they continue to follow Virgil but exactly why are they saving the children? Or are they herding them for a devilish harvest?

As a long-time fan of Koontz it was difficult for me to give this book only 2 stars but it was just plain awful in my opinion. The reader knows so little about the Sloans that who really cares what happens to them? Nothing made any sense to me and the ending was odd and abrupt. Add to all of this the author's extensive use of words most people would need a dictionary to define (tutelaries, excrescences, rataplan, serried) which kept the prose from flowing as I continuously scratched my head and said "Huh?". If you've never read Koontz please don't start with this one.
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This was a bunch of rubbish. He threw in a mishmash of Armageddon ideas, sprinkled it with religious overtones and words that I suppose were meant to make him sound smarter and called it a story. I'm pretty sure he's just running out of anything original to write about. ( )

This was a bunch of rubbish. He threw in a mishmash of Armageddon ideas, sprinkled it with religious overtones and words that I suppose were meant to make him sound smarter and called it a story. I'm pretty sure he's just running out of anything original to write about. ( )

After I'd finished this book, I was left with a kind of 'that ending was absurd' feeling. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it, oddly enough!

I enjoyed reading the book though. Dean Koontz definitely has a large vocabulary and tends to use five descriptions when one would do, which at times does make the story slightly less accessible I found.

A good read though, with a very thought-provoking ending - after a couple of days anyway...! ( )

The last time I was so creeped out reading a book, it was Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary'. This one by Dean Koontz made my skin crawl with its lurid descriptions. Yet I was gripped, enthralled by the macabre buffet of words, insatiated through morbid curiosity. As for the story, it ends in such a way that I would term as 'a twist to the pre-tribulation rapture'.

Note: It's probably 'tame' by others' standard, but I don't have a strong stomach for anything creepy and scary. ( )

Long on suspense, short on plt. I have never really liked any of Koontz's works. ( )

I really liked the idea of this book, The writing was very descriptive and the characters were easy to fall in love with. ( )