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Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

I admit he does something well because he sells so many books but ive tried to read a few and god damn i cant do it. Theyre so poorly written, so implausible, such bad characters.

I cant believe the article puts him in a class with john grisham.

And i dont think its just my subjective opinion either. Look at the movies that have been adapted from their works in comparison. Grisham’s books were interpreted into a ton of thrillers that were successful & have stood the test of time. Same with other thriller writers. Koontz movies have universally flopped into obscurity. And while not all good books can be made into movies, its a reasonable test for a thriller.

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Wow. I couldn't disagree more vehemently if I tried.

I would put him well above Grisham personally. For my money, Koontz is one of the most under-appreciated writers living today. And I don't think whether a writers works have been translated into successful movies or not is even slightly meaningful as a metric.

For what it's worth though, I totally acknowledge that that is my subjective opinion.

I love Terry Pratchett, but many of the TV adaptations have been a big miss. Though Good Omens was really well done, I thought.

Going Postal was quite good.

As was Hogfather. I’d even call The Colour of Magic “okay”, it had a lot of issues for sure though.

“The Watch” is so far removed from the source material to the point where both Neil Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett have denounced it as sharing no DNA with pTerry’s work (“Batman if he's now a news reporter in a yellow trenchcoat with a pet bat”), that I would be hesitant to even count it as an adaptation.

Could you recommend one or two of his that you are particularely fond of?

I particularly -liked- False Memory, even thought it might not be one of his best if that makes sense. That is to say, it's good but I think it just particularly resonated with me due to the subject matter and some of my innate inclinations.

Beyond that, some that I would recommend include The Bad Place, The House of Thunder, The Door to December, and Intensity.

I haven't touched a DK book since at least the early aughts, but he is more than a Grisham (SUMMER BEACH NOVEL PEOPLE TALK ABOUT!). DK is kind of like the Spielberg version of a Pynchon novel. This is not a bad thing.

I cannot let go of "Lightning" from '88. That book has stuck with me in ways only a therapist could properly interpret, but activates all my historical fiction cilia and leaves me w/warm feels.

Lightning is one of my favorites as well. I never read another Koontz after it, back in '97 or so. Perhaps I should.

s/even thought/even though/

Growing up Koontz was kind of my filler in between Stephen King novels. Felt inferior, but enjoyable enough. Great for airplanes, where you could likely finish it on the flight back home.

I haven't reread them, but Hideaway and The Door to December really stuck in my mind, especially the latter.

Weird, I feel the other way around. I was just telling my family the other day that if there's a Dean Koontz novel in an AirBNB or a house I'm a guest in, I'm absolutely picking it up and probably finishing it in a weekend.

(Although, now that I'm looking through his bibliography, I don't see a single title I remember, though some plots are coming back to me.)

Agreed, not good author. But someone got there before me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35833341 and worth seeing (15 seccs).

Apparently Koontz did his own voice there and I've got a lot of time for those who can laugh at themslves.

I know this is not what the article is about, but I read a lot of junk and Dean Koontz has been on my Do Not Read Not Matter How Enticing The Blurb list for decades after being burnt twice by terrible (and terribly long) novels.

I kinda like him, Koontz has written some gems. This is being unnecessary mean.

I think what he does well is “be consistent to a voice,” which you have to admit is a talent in itself. On top of that, simply having the drive to write _so freaking much_. I can barely be arsed to write a meaningful technical document or RFC and this guy’s churned out 500 _books_. That’s god damned impressive by any measure.

> I cant believe the article puts him in a class with john grisham.

I think the article is comparing their similar mass market appeal. Grisham, Koontz and King all consistently sell enough books to make them a mainstay on airport book racks.

Grisham, Koontz, and King have all been coasting on the reputations they earned in their early days for decades now.

Their early works are still their best, and each new novel they release seems to mark a new low point.

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