No bestselling suspense novelist creates magnetic characters as consistently as Koontz does. In last year's Fear Nothing, this veteran author presented his most memorable figures yet: hero/narrator Christopher Snow, whose genetic affliction forces him to shun light; Chris's sidekick, the ultracool surfing dude Bobby; and ultrasmart dog Orson, a product of scientific experiments gone awry at Fort Wyvern in Chris's coastal California town. In this independent-minded sequel, the second novel of a trilogy, the wonderfully delineated loyalties among these characters and others will win readers' hearts as Koontz plunges his cast into terror. Koontz moves the trilogy's overarching plot in a wholly unexpected direction, pursuing not the experiments that begat Orson but a parallel time-travel/disruption experiment. The gambit feels a bit arbitrary, but it voids the attenuation that plagues many middle volumes. The story begins right after that of Fear Nothing, when Chris learns that children have been abducted to the Fort. Soon Orson is gone as well, but he's replaced smartly by Mungojerrie, the clever cat introduced in volume one. Set mostly at the abandoned Fort, as Chris and company search for the missing kids and dog, the novel proves supernally spooky (and, at times, surprisingly‘deliberately‘humorous). The suspense soars, culminating in a volcanic if somewhat confusing eruption of action climaxes. A principal villain makes a late appearance, but he's not as menacing as Fear Nothing's fiendish monkey troops, who also show up. Though not as seamlessly constructed as Fear Nothing, this novel stands as vintage Koontz, a rousing crowd-pleaser that recapitulates some of his recurrent themes‘the pain of the outsider; the power of love; the threat of scientism‘while sturdily continuing a trilogy that's shaping up as his masterwork. Simultaneous BDD audio. (Feb.; on sale 12/29). FYI: Bantam will release the mass market edition of Fear Nothing on December 1. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This tour de force, though less intense than Intensity (1996), has Koontz, the nimble master of the macabre, inventing a hugely empty California army base once used for secret experiments and now, in its vast, moonlit state, called Dead Town. Poetry freak Christopher Snow, also the hero of Fear Nothing, suffers from a rare genetic disorder, xeroderma pigmentosum: his skin can't bear light of any sort. Thus he dresses only in black, wears dark shades, inhabits a house lit by bulbs in red lantern glass, sleeps by day, goes out only after sunset, and so on. Chris lives next to Wyvern Army Base, in Moonlight Bay, whose leading citizens know that terrible experiments at Wyvern produced genetically enhanced, intelligent monkeys, birds, snakes, coyotes, and humans, all richly menacing and still infesting the base. Many of the experimental humans were afflicted by a rogue retrovirus causing them to fall into beastly rages signaled by nocturnal eyeshine. That said, Koontz takes on a triple, or perhaps quadruple, oh, hell, quintuple plot, featuring serial murderers; an incredible Egg Room located three floors underground where, apparently, the experimental subjects were enhanced; and an invasion of the present by swift alien worms coming from sidetime and likely to take over the planet. Will murder-minded experimental folk now waltz around every continent? They're an unpleasant bunch. When an old girlfriend's boy is kidnaped and whisked off to the base, Chris follows with his enhanced dog Orson (as in Welles), a genius on a par with intelligent humans. Chris's moonlit adventures in Dead Town, aided by his wisecracking crew of far-out buddies, form a story that bends into the bizarro mirror-world of Neverland. Heavy suspense, no sex, and darker than Nancy Drew. With headlong glee, Koontz again unveils encyclopedic intelligence about how things work in the physical world--and how to bolt sentences into the moonlight. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Someone is kidnapping kids in Moonlight Bay, California. Chris Snow, out bike-riding at night, finds out about the first abduction from the child's mother, once his teen sweetheart. With his genetically altered wonder dog Orson, he heads for Wyvern, the military-cum-research base that was hurriedly closed two years back. Everything bad that happens in Moonlight Bay seems connected to Wyvern, and Chris knows the place pretty well, having explored it on many a night. This night, he is soon in mortal danger at the hands of savage, genetically altered monkeys. Then Orson disappears, and birds start flying in the most amazing formations. Chris cell-phones his millionaire surfer buddy Bobby to reinforce him pronto, and the night gets busier. But they have to seize the night because Chris has a rare disease that makes any exposure to sunlight very dangerous. And seize it--actually, it and the next night, too, with some time out in between for Chris to sleep--they, helped by further friends, do. It's evil-science time in perennial best-selling writer Koontz's latest, and if only he had let the self-explanatory and "philosophical" gas out of Chris' cliche-ridden narration, even non-Koontzians might enjoy it, or enjoy it without so often rolling their eyes and groaning, "Get ON with it!" --Ray Olson

Christopher Snow is back. Fans of Koontz's last offering, Fear Nothing (LJ 2/1/98), will remember Chris as the young victim of XP (xeroderma pigmentosum), a rare and deadly genetic condition that forces him to avoid light. Here, the horrifying tale of Chris's hometown, Moonlight Bay, continues to unfold. Chris and his tight band of friends take up the search for four missing children in this town, where experiments with a genetically engineered retrovirus have begun to turn several local residents into creatures that are less than human. Koontz successfully blends his special brand of suspense from generous measures of mystery, horror, sf, and the techno-thriller genre. But his greatest triumph in this series is the creation of Christopher Snow, a thought-provoking narrator with a facility for surfer-lingo and dark humor who, despite his extreme situation, is an undeniably believable character. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, 10/15/98.]‘Nancy McNicol, Hagaman Memorial Lib., East Haven, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.