Intensity | Dean Koontz

Intensity | Dean Koontz | My favorite book by Koontz... and it lives up to the title!

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Intensity

	Intensity Dean Koontz Bantam, 2000 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 479 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Intensity

This is my absolute favorite Koontz book! Actually prob one of my favorite Murder/Mystery books of all time.
I love how descriptive it is. As a matter of fact I read the book first, then it came out as a movie on TV and even that was really good, and then I read the book again for comparison, and it's just great all around.
Carrie- NH

My favorite book by Koontz... and it lives up to the title!

Wow! What a great book. This has to be my favorite of Dean Koontz' books!

It really is intense and I can't get over how the whole book happens over a matter of 36 hours at the most! Definately a must read. Especially for Dean Koontz fans... you won't be disappointed.

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Intensity

Great book. I had a copy years ago that was lost. Glad I found it again. It arrived faster than I thought also.

SO INTENSE!

This book was made to live.... and live it did! The scenic descriptions were lively and quick, better than just about any Koontz prior. The animals in this story were not only believable, they were down right REAL! The movie, while great in its own right, did not do the book justice... This book is an adventure in the mind, soul and spirit of Chyna.

Remember the words "Untouched and alive..." because they may very well become your mantra while reading this book!

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Opens and closes with a bang, and for the most part the middle is pure intensity...

`Intensity' is the first novel I've read by Dean Koontz, and in being such it had the great responsibility of either conforming me into a full fledged fan or convincing me that he's not worth my time. My initial response to the first heart pounding chapter was `oh my god, what a thrill' and then I almost immediately became bored as I contemplated where he could really go from here. The action started so quickly, so bluntly that I was confused as to what Dean could possibly have up his sleeve in order to sustain us for the entirety of the novel, and then chapter 6 changed all of that.

The novel shifts focus between two opposing ends of a horrific event. Young Chyna Shepherd is visiting the family of a friend when her whole life is changed and even challenged by homicidal adventurer Edgler Vess, a man who in one swoop tortures and murders not only Chyna's best friend Laura but Laura's parents, leaving nothing but a blood soaked memory. Mind you, this all takes place in the first two chapters. Talk about an impressively `intense' opening. The reader can be nothing but hooked...so where does Dean take us next?

Switching from Chyna's desperate attempts to make Vess pay to Vess and his killing spree the reader may start to drift in his or her interest, especially when Chyna seems relatively safe and out of harms way, but that drifting is short lived for once Edgler Vess makes it to his humble abode and his current victim Ariel is introduced the reader has newfound reason to embrace each brilliantly scribed page. As these two play a game of wits with one another we are brought into their frame of mind, Chyna's tortured victim yet soulful heroine in the making and then there's Edgler's contaminated evil that feels almost too natural. Reading Edgler's motivations and reasoning's starts to feel a lot like Bret Easton Ellis' character Patrick Bateman in `American Psycho', a man who appears nothing short of normal and has reasoned himself into believing he's the only normal one around for miles. Granted, `Intensity' is nowhere close to the sheer literary brilliance that was `American Psycho' but it has that minor similarity.

Now, in all honesty, there are times I wish this were a tad bit shorter. There are a lot of scenes that merely explain the thoughts and feelings and motivations of a particular person and it can be overkill since it can appear repetitive or redundant. This can become apparent in some of the corny descriptions Dean uses to describe the state of mind his characters are in. "She was baking a nourishing loaf of panic, plump and yeasty, and if she allowed herself to eat a single slice, then she'd gorge on it" is something that should never have to be said...and if Dean didn't insist on reiterating Chyna's fear over and over he would have never exhausted all other descriptive options and thus it never would have been uttered. A novella may have been more effective, but then again there are certain chapters and sequences that really elevate the remainder of the novel. It's a bit of a mixed bag at times, a lot of good with some moments of not-so-wonderful.

Some of the not-so-wonderful would have to be the overabundance of flashbacks to Chyna's childhood, longwinded stories that bog down the `intensity' of the situation. Some of the good though falls in the line of dialog, especially between Vess and Chyna, Vess more so. He's a very interesting villain to say the least, and Koontz paints him splendidly.

The final three chapters of the book fly by, and the reader is entranced by doubt and terror and intensity as they pine over what happens next. The final chapter, the final few pages, it left me speechless. So, I'm happy to say that `Intensity' made me want to pick up another Dean Koontz novel, and someday soon I will. He's a good writer, not brilliant, but talented enough to make twenty-four hours fill an entire novel, and while at times it gets too wordy and or too lengthy it's never so much that you want to or, worse yet, need to close the book and forsake the journey. It's truly intense and truly worth the read.

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