77 Shadow Street is one of those books that in the end just didn't live up to my expectations. I listened to the audio version of prequel novella The Moonlit Mind before I tackled this book and found The Moonlit Mind to be great. So, I was really looking forward to this book. However, firstly it is way too long. Towards the end, I noticed that my mind started to drift now and then especially during some of the characters parts. Particularly when the One was speaking. Secondly, too many characters, too many uninteresting characters. And, more were added during the process of the story and I just felt that they were not that memorable so I kept forgetting who was who. Thirdly, having the TVs and monitors saying EXTERMINATE during the story just felt like they were fighting Daleks (which actually would have been pretty cool).

On the plus side, the story was interesting, I found that I wanted to know the truth about the building and I found that the conclusion, the truth about the One was refreshingly new and unexpected. I just wish that I had formed a closer bond with the characters, as it is was I more worried about the cats than any of the people. Also, I kept on expecting the characters from The Moonlit Mind to show up, but that never happens. That disappointed me. Still, there were some cool scenes and I would like to read more books in the series.

A bit too long, but in the end and OK book! ( )

Review: 77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz.

This book fits into the category of science fiction and contains a complete serving of Koontz themes of the past. It also contains time travel, weird happenings, more monsters than we can count, and bad guys, crazy well developed scientist and I can’t forget Good vs. Evil. Koontz drifts from one character to another describing the special characteristic each one brings to the story. Koontz chose a great environment for his characters. It’s an old perfect renovated hotel mansion that will haunt the readers if they don’t keep tract of the characters. When things began to pick up in the story, things started falling together, things fell apart, monsters appeared from nowhere, friends were even turning into monsters, and time travel switched back and forth through centuries at a fast pace.

The hotel was placed on a time-space fault, bringing into play the celestial cosmic forces of space of Good vs. Evil. The heroic happenings were carried out in rapid order in a deteriorating environment of extraterrestrial chaos. There is plenty of action for the reader. ( )

Wish I had read the reviews first. Second disappointing Koontz novel I've read recently. A mansion, converted to condos, is haunted by an evil phenom every 38 years. Too many characters to follow. Skip it. ( )

I really enjoyed this one.

Part creepy ghost story, part Lovecraft style nightmare, part sci-fi monster romp, with a strong message against technology that loses sight of humanity. The monsters, and there were plenty of them in all shapes and sizes, were nasty, deadly, and creatively imagined. The plot and structure were tight and propelled toward the finale. The characters were well drawn and acted in a very realistic fashion. Koontz even managed to fit in a couple of Golden Retrievers (all Dean Koontz books must have a good dog in there somewhere) before it was all said and done.

What is not to like with this novel? Nothing. Well written, compelling, and fun. Nothing wrong with that. ( )

This only just got 4 stars due to Dean Koontz's seemingly uncanny ability to mess up a fantastic story right at the very end. He did this with Phantoms by wimping out and invoking the great god, Science, and now he's gone and done the same thing again here.

It was a truly great ride right up to the last 100 pages(approx.) when he decided to introduce what he clearly thought was a really cool and unexpected twist by letting us know that the house was in fact built on a tear in space-time which caused future creatures which from what I could make out are future humans that have been adjusted by some sort of nano-machines that use the human as a host upon orders of some sort of intelligence called the One. This is all very well and good, and is hinted at throughout the novel with various messages being heard by the various characters, but I really do wish Mr Koontz would have the guts to not make it about how great and all powerful science is. Just for once I'd like it to be about how powerful nature, or demons, or some sort of weird and wonderful creature is. Not something enhanced with nano-tech or something being beaten and dispatched because, of course, science is so much more powerful than mere nature.

This novel isn't nearly as bad as I'm making out, but it is very annoying when I'm 90% through the novel wondering what this demonic creature is and where it comes from and why it's here and getting really excited to know whether it turns out to be an ancient god, or a demonic power previously unknown, or some other force of nature that got screwed up somewhere in the dim and distant past, only to find out that it comes down to Koontz's great god Science, ...yet again!

Read this for the first 90%, then stop and make up your own ending. You'll be happier, and it'll be a better novel for it. ( )