77 Shadow Street

77 Shadow Street #1

by Dean Koontz, Peter Berkrot (narrator)

Welcome to the Pendleton. Built as a tycoon's dream home in the 1880s and converted to luxury condominiums not quite a century later, the Gilded Age palace at the summit of Shadow Hill is a sanctuary for its fortunate residents. Scant traces remain of the episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder - and whispers of things far worse - that have scarred its grandeur almost from the beginning.

But now, inexplicable shadows caper across the walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton's past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again. As nightmare visions become real, as a deadly tide begins to engulf them, the people at 77 Shadow Street will find that they hold the key to humanity's future... if they can survive to use it.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Thriller, Paranormal, Suspense, Science Fiction, Mystery

451 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Acknowledged as "America's most popular suspense novelist" (Rolling Stone) and as one of today's most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Ray Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to be human.

Dean, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.

Facebook: Facebook.com/DeanKoontzOfficial
Twitter: @DeanKoontz
Website: DeanKoontz.com

Reviews

[Maciek · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only got 1/4 through this bad book (I hesitate to call it a novel, as there is nothing novel about it) before I reached this offensive chapter and could read no more. It goes like this:

"Sparkle Sykes, stepping quietly out of her closet and moving cautiously across the bedroom, followed the six-legged crawling thing that might have been a mutant baby born after a worldwide nuclear holocaust as imagined in the waking nightmares of an insect-phobic, fungi-phobic, rat-crazy mescaline junkie."

This string of pretty unnecessary comparisons is just a prelude to the real truth, revealed in the next sentence:

"It wasn’t a baby."

Impossible!

"she was half afraid it would turn to stare at her and its face would be so hideous that the sight of it would kill her or drive her mad."

How can she be half afraid when she thinks that she sheer stare of this creature can kill her or drive her insane? It's like feeling only a slight chill when you have a gun pointed at your head, which really doesn't happen - well, unless you're James Bond.

"On a Biedermeier chest of drawers stood an eighteen-inch-tall bronze statue of Diana, Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt. It weighed maybe fifteen pounds. Sparkle snared it by the neck and held it in both hands, an awkward but elegant club in case she needed one."

Right, because she might not need anything to defend herself. Maybe the creature just turned up to borrow some sugar? Who the hell knows.

"The grotesque intruder seemed not to have passed through the wall but into it. The wall wasn’t nearly thick enough to accommodate such a creature. In going through the wall, it seemed to have gone out of the Pendleton altogether, into some other reality or dimension."

Good thinking, Captain Obvious!

"Sparkle toured the room and peered in the adjacent bathroom, expecting to find some slouching beast out of a Bosch painting or risen from a Lovecraft story. All was as it should be."

Well, I don't think that anything is as it should be, since there was a scary creature touring the apartment just seconds ago, but then, what do I know...

"The girl was sitting in bed, propped up by a pile of pillows stacked against the headboard, reading a book. She did not react to her mother’s arrival. More often than not, behind the armor of her autism, she refused to recognize the presence of others by even so much as a glance."

If you pardon the pun, doesn't this paragraph seem to be a bit...autistic? It's completely devoid of any energy, movement, anything. I know that it describes a situation, but all I can see is a string of words at a page. And "armor of autism"? Armor is used for protection and has a positive connotation. Autism is limiting to the individual, trapping and forbidding from interaction. It's not an armor - it's a prison.

"Now the six-legged monstrous baby seemed like a nasty drug flashback, though she had never experienced a flashback before."

So how does she know what a flashback is like? Um...

Then we get a short tour of the character's past: we learn about her dad's death, that her mother has been killed by lightning of all possible things, that she was seduced by a drug addict and went through drug induced hell, and has a daughter with that dude, who of course is autistic and of course she's raising her alone. What? Don't like her yet? Well, maybe this will change your mind.

"Young Sparkle in her rubber-soled shoes, on the wet deck of the widow’s walk, orphaned now and traumatized, standing motionless in a state of shock, understood instantly that this world was a dark place and hard, that life was best for those who refused to be broken by it, that being happy required the strength and courage to refuse to be intimidated by anyone or anything. She wept but she did not sob. She stood there for a long time until the tears stopped flowing and the rain washed the salt from her face."

Yeah, doesn't this image try to tug the strings of your heart so very, very hard? Nine year old girl, not only orphaned but also traumatized, standing in the rain (why do such things never happen on a sunny day?), nevertheless not losing strenght! The only thing missing is Tiny Tim on his crutches in the background, shouting "God bless us, everyone!". Good writers manage to rouse emotions in their readers. Dean Koontz simply tells you how you should feel, again and again and again and again...

I didn't even finish this book, but from what I've read about it it gets even worse as it goes on. Currently, it has 131 one star reviews on Amazon and only 53 five star reviews. I'd mostly encourage people to not even pick it up to read, but to pick it up and throw it out of the window. If a writer wrote his first novel in 1968 and in 2012 writes crap like this, perhaps it's time to call it quits.

Okay, maybe I was unfair. I've got to be polite. I've got to be respectful. I will look at the next chapter. I am full of hope!

"After the Russian manicurist departed, Mickey Dime went into the study. The wood floor felt sexy under his bare feet. A lot of things felt sexy to Mickey. Nearly everything."

Ah, this doesn't start well...

"On the carpet, he stood squinching his toes in the deep wool pile. His feet were small and narrow. Well-formed. He was proud of his well-formed feet. His late mother had said that his feet looked like they were carved by the artist Michelangelo.
Mickey liked art. Art was sexy."

Aw, crap! Crap! Why did I do this? Well, at least I can't see much of dreadful authorial intrusion, where the authot tries to ridicule what he doesn't like by making a bad character take the position he doesn't agree with, specifically oversimplifying it to make those who disagree with him look as dumb as possible...

"Great art wasn’t about emotion. It was about sensation. Only the bourgeoisie, the tacky middle class, thought art should affect the better emotions and have meaning. If it touched your heart, it wasn’t art. It was kitsch. Art thrilled. Art spoke to the primitive, to the wild animal within. Art strummed deeper chords than mere emotions. If it made you think, it might be philosophy or science or something, but it wasn’t art. True art was about the meaninglessness of life, about the freedom of transgression, about power."

Aw, screw you, 77 Shadow Street. You're a terrible, terrible book, and it makes me sad that trees had to die to carry this awfulness in print. What a waste!

[Allen Kelley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really tried to like this book, but ended up really not caring for it all. the way it ends makes me believe that Koontz just got tired of writing it and just slapped on an abrupt ending.

[Steven Walle · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 77 Shadow Street, Dean Koontz takes us on quite a trip of the supernatural. We start in a hotel which has been leaped in a time warp to some time in the future. In this time there are no humans. They have all been whipped out save one who is a super human and is held responsible for remembering the whole history of the world.
I won't tell you how it ends so I recommend you all read it.
Enjoy and Be Blessed.
Diamond

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unlike the slow pace and absolutely dreadful prose of this novel, let’s cut right to the quick of it, shall we? I don’t know how it’s possible, but somehow “77 Shadow Street” manages to showcase both the best and worst of Koontz. There are sparks of greatness within these pages reminiscent of “Phantoms” and “Watchers” and then there are the horrendous faux pas of books past such as the ridiculously terrible “Breathless” and “Darkest Evening of the Year”

I’ll get to the bad stuff eventually, but before I completely drive this book to the ground, let’s point out the few (and really, there are only a few) decent things about this novel. Personally, I’ve never really had much problem with Koontz’s plots (aside from the 2 previously mentioned books) as they generally tend to be original and creative and the of “Shadow Street” isn’t half bad. Like most readers have said, it’s new take on the ages old haunted house story mixed with a bit of sci-fi time travel and thrown in with a dystopian spin. It sounds complicated, and it is (and Koontz somehow ruins this - read the negatives for that) but in some parts it does work.

What also works are his “creatures” or “Pogroms”. In much the same way as he did in “Phantoms”, Koontz gives us an original monster, one that is both dangerous and scary. But of course, in more recent typical Koontz fashion, he goes over the top with ways to repetitively describe them, very nearly ruining their credibility as evil beings and turning them into an almost comic-book kind of villain.

And now comes the part everyone will automatically skip to, due to my low star rating of this book: the negative stuff.

As I’ve just stated, where this book really begins to bog down and start it’s negative spiral is at the expense of Koontz’s overwhelming desire to over-describe damn near everything in the Pendleton mansion. And just when you think he can’t find something else to write about, he somehow manages to surprise you with even more descriptions, or a repeat of past ones. Perfect example being that stupid fungus. Again and again and again, the reader is presented with a picture of the fungus that seems to grow all over the place in the Pendleton after the switch. It is truly overkill at times. It’s almost to a point where it seems as if Koontz forgets he is writing for adults and reverts to childish writing habits. Think Dora the Explorer trying to tell a story. “Do you see the fungus?”

Speaking of children, Koontz still fails to craft a believable kid. Like the children in “What the Night Knows” both Winny and Iris are so far off the path of normal kids that it is impossible to believe them. Winny is only 12 yet acts with more courage and bravery than the supposed war veteran he is with and even has a better vocabulary. Iris isn’t much better. Although she never talks (she’s an autistic (yet another subject Koontz has seemed to exhaust throughout past works)), she’s much too cliche’d and transparent of a character to even have any worth in this book.

Those 2 kids are but a small part of the huge cast of characters Koontz attempts (and fails) to craft into this novel. Nearly every one in this book is one cliche after another. You have the hit-man, the ex-marine turned accountant, the 2 older women who believe in ghosts and ghouls, a blind man, a Vietnamese refugee escaping from his past, a borderline paranoid, and an indian concierge. Not a single one of them bring anything to the literary table. I didn’t like a single one of them and never once felt for sorry for any one who happened to be attacked and killed by the “Progoms.”

I scratch my head as to why I continue to purchase Dean Koontz books. I gave up on Patterson. I gave up on Cussler. I even gave up on Michael Crichton there at the end of his life, but again and again, I find myself still purchasing the newest Koontz books. When I finish, it I know I will be disappointed. I know I will feel like I wasted money. I know I should have bought the next “Game of Thrones” book. I very well feel like this may be my last attempt at trying to give Koontz another shot. I have been giving the guy shots since “The Husband” and pretty much every time I feel duped. From the looks of all the other negative reviews “77 Shadow Street” has gotten, so do a lot of other loyal fans.

Koontz must not read any of the comments people post on his books because they have consistently been more and more negative with each new story and they show no signs of getting any better. You want an honest opinion? Skip this book. Skip anything after “The Taking” or “The Face” and you won’t be in for a huge let down every single time.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. The blurb sounded interesting and creepy. But.....Dean Koontz is hit or miss for me. This one is a miss.

I DNF'd this about 150 pages. Why?

The story moves too slowly. No real suspense or action.
Weird, mostly unseen, mysterious creature sneaking up on people -- Koontz Trope.
Very little character development.

This one is not for me. DNF and taking it back to the library. Sometimes I really enjoy Koontz.....other times.....meh. It did keep me entertained while I spent 3 hours getting my hair colored and cut......but not entertaining enough for me to finish the book.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

77SS started out good, mysterious and intriguing. I thought it was a haunted house story but it's not. Which is cool too.

However, in the mid-way point, I was tired of the same long winded descriptions of grotesque and nasty things, the same thing over and over. I lost my momentum and found myself putting the book down more easily and not in much of a rush to get back to it.

It wasn't a bad book, just not one of Koontz's best.

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a quick comment before I even start reading. I'm pretty darn sure I will enjoy this book because it's NOT "old" Dean Koontz. So many readers whine about his writing having changed, but I like the new stuff. It's not predictable, it has odd sort of paranormal/magic/special gifts that make the stories different from most of the authors out there. I don't want my favorite writers to stagnate and write the same damn thing. I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago, why should my authors be the same? Like it or dislike it, but don't whine for the past. Move on, just like Koontz has, and like I do every time I see another whiner's comment

1/7/11 This book is freaking me out. I can only read it in bits and pieces because it is disturbing! It is well done, suspenseful, detailed but moves at a good pace. Dah......

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seventy-Seven Shadow Street was the most peaceful address in the city.

Or not.

Phantoms / Midnight era Koontz: that is what this is. At long last. This is the kind of thing that made DK huge back in the day, and it is also the kind of thing he didn’t write nearly enough of (in my humble opinion).

So it isn’t subtle. So what?

Fear is the engine that drives the human animal.

With its grotesque imagery, this is the kind of uber-weird acid-trip horror that did so well in the 80s. Make no mistake: this is one bizarre book! Koontz even manages to rationalise the madness to some degree. His habit of interspersing his horror plots with pseudo-science is often hit-or-miss. For example: I wasn’t overly fond of The Bad Place. In 77 Shadow Street, however, it seems to work a whole lot better. In fact, it works really well, because this is such a visual novel. Not a lot of beating around the bush - observe: freakishness!

Basically, it’s a story about a haunted house. The nature of the haunting, however, is extremely unconventional. The mechanics of 77 Shadow Street are so far out of the box it should change horror writing forever. However, looking at the rather low average rating on Goodreads, it seems the world isn’t ready for this kind if thing (yet)…

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

The house is called the Pendleton now and it was built as the dream home of a tycoon in the 1800’s. The original family was plagued with tragedy and ever since there has been a cycle of tragic events … coincidentally every 37 years. In the 1970’s it was remodeled as luxury apartments inhabited by the rich and famous, the rich and not so famous and the downright notorious. The curse of tragedy, however, seems to have stayed on despite the renovations and now ghostly images, disembodied voices and glowing mold haunt the residents of 77 Shadow Street.

In my on going quest for a good ghost story I thought of all people Mr. Koontz would deliver. I hate to say this, but not so much! I’ll admit to being a long time Koontz fan, and although lately there have been some hits and some misses I always look forward to reading his books. This one was definitely on the “miss” side of the column. There are so many characters in this book … obviously the inhabitants of a luxury condo building … and the story progresses as each tells a part of the action. Sometimes this works, but in this case it is like watching a movie with too many fast cuts. Instead of adding to the drama and action it actually takes away from it. By the end of the book I didn’t care about the characters and was a little tired of the lengthy reflection on the bleakness of the world and the “darkness” of humankind. Would not recommend this one, even to a Koontz fan.

[Obsidian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't even know what to say. I was tempted to DNF but I really wanted something to get crossed off of my second bingo card so struggled through to the end with this one.

I don't know guys, I think that Koontz has flashes of brilliance in his books, but his later stuff is just him preaching via his characters about whatever he currently has a bug about. This one is just about how advances in technology can lead to the world being wiped out via our scientific advances.

I will say the initial part of the book (the horrific events that occurred at a Gilded Age home over the years) was great. When Koontz got into the characters and dialogue it just fell apart. What's wrong with just writing a straight haunted house mystery? I don't know why Koontz went from that to what this turned into.

"77 Shadow Street" follows a former home eventually turned into condos that every 37 or maybe it was 38 years an event occurs there that leaves all of the inhabitants dead. Now it's about to go through its cycle again. Now called the Pendleton, it is a home for it seems fairly well off people.

I don't know what to say about the characters. We have a former Marine (of course we do) who is now an investment banker of some sort. Two elderly rich sisters living together, a former U.S. Senator, a country music writer and her son, and a woman and her autistic daughter. There is also a retired lawyer, a scientist, and shoot I know I am blanking on at least 4 more people here, but I can't even recall people's names at this point.

I can't even point to a favorite character since we spend so little time with everyone. You maybe get a paragraph or two before Koontz blithely skips to the next character. We also get an info dump via the retired attorney about the history of the Pendleton. I really hate info dumps and this one made no sense to me since who moves into a place where it seems murders keeps happening?

If Koontz could have limited himself to a first person POV and just had that character introduce us to the other characters it could have worked. When I started reading the one kid's point of view I was just over everything. It doesn't help that we get some bad science via characters too when the happenings at the Pendleton start getting explained.

Readers quickly find out though that Shadow Street is not what it seems. It appears to also connect to a man calling himself "Witness" and a narrator calling themselves "The One." It takes a while for all of this to sync up so you can figure out what is going on. However, the reveal to me was disappointing.

The flow started off okay and than just got increasingly worse. The writing was atrocious (dialogue wise) too. I just kept going to myself, who the heck talks like this while I was reading. Everyone sounded like a bad fortune cookie. At one point I thought I was reading an Odd Thomas book since everyone in this book managed to sound like that character at one point or the other.

The setting of the Pendleton at first was creepy. But when things got explained I found myself in disbelief about how this all got explained. It was overly explained and I called BS on what actions one of the characters did. I think it would have caused some paradox consequences, but I really didn't care at that point cause at least I had finished this book.

FYI, I skipped reading the novella included since it was a prequel of "77 Shadow Street" called "The Moonlit Mind" and honestly should have maybe been put up front before you get into the longer book. Either way, I was glad to be done and refused to read that. This book ended around the 75 percent mark because of my skipping that read.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am the One, the all and the only. I live in the Pendleton as surely as I live everywhere. I am the Pendelton's history and it's destiny. The building is my place of conception, my monument, my killing ground."

"Not just a great house, not merely a mansion, the Pendleton was more accurately a Beaux Arts palace, built in 1889, at the height of the Gilded Age, sixty thousand square feet under roof, not counting the vast basement or the separate carriage house. A combination of Georgian and French Renaissance styles, the building was clad in limestone, with elaborately carved window surrounds. Neither the Carnegies nor the Vanderbilts, nor even the Rockefellers, had ever owned a grander house."

77 Shadow Street an address like any other but with a mystery behind its doors unlike any other.
A insidious evil is reawakening, there has been events of the macabre kind in the past nearly every 30years to be precise.
Dean Koontz has really created an atmosphere of chilling eeriness. He is a master when it comes to writing with memorable characters, in this dwelling of darkness he brings to you two wonderful kids Winny and Iris an autistic girl of remarkable courage. If you think of H.P Lovecraft and Clive Barker getting together to write a novel involving a charnel house of mystery then this would be the end product. The writing flows well, it immerses you with expectations of a new evil force present and delivers with an originality of grandeur. You won't want to stop reading once you get into the whole 'who's there' scenario.
One of the characters in the novel gave a fitting descriptions to the series events that he witnessed, he said it was as if he just been part of a movie that James Cameron directed while on amphetamines and Red Bull.
I could see this being a really good adaptation to the big screen.
King had his Shining, Matheson created Hell House, Peter Straub created Ghost story and now Dean Koontz has made a mark with 77 Shadow Street.
You have had many house stories but Dean Koontz brings to the table a unique charnel house tale of his own.

"Iris was that perhaps rarer of autistic savants: one who had an intuitive grasp of the relationship between phonemes, the basic sounds by which a language was constructed, and the printed word. One day when she was five, Iris picked up a childrens book for the first time- and quickly began reading, having had no instruction, because when she looked at a word on the page, she heard the sound of it in her mind and knew its meaning. When she had never encountered a word before, she searched for its definition in a dictionary and thereafter never forgot it."

"Winny was surprised to see so many books, because he thought some autistic kids never read well , maybe not at all. Evidently, Iris read a lot. He knew why. Books were another life. If you were shy and didn't know what to say and felt you didn't belong anywhere, books were a way to lead another life, a way to be someone else entirely, to be anyone at all. Winny didn't know what he would do without his books, except probably go berserk and start killing people and making ashtrays out of their skulls even though he didn't smoke and never would."

Review also on more2read my webpage.
Watch also Dean Koontz interview here.

[Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy Shit! This is a damn good book! It's been a long time since a story has intrigued me as much as 77 Shadow Street. I have recently become addicted to the TV show called American Horror Story and this story is a nice book to read while waiting for new episodes. 77 Shadow Street is about a haunted luxury apartment, formerly a Gilded Age palace, built in the 1800's. Well technically, the place ain't haunted it's something more to do with alternate realities of past present and future, so it also reminds me of my favorite TV show, FRINGE and this is a good book to read while you're waiting for new episodes of that one too :-)

To me this seems very original, both as a haunting and as a book written by Dean Koontz. This is not your typical Koontz story and the descriptions are amazing! :-) Too bad most of yous have to wait until 12/27/11 :-) I feel so honored to have this opportunity.

While there is no dog as a main character and no clear man and woman hooking up for a happy ending, there are some characteristic Koontz elements to this story, things that he has done in other books. These include, but are not limited to:

-Conspiracy Theories
-Frankenstein Like Monsters
-Mix of Humor & Terror
-A Woman named Nora
-A conveniently located lava shaft for disposing bodies (Velocity)
-A young character who has autism
-A friendly, helpful lawyer
-The use of lightning to highlight a person's tragic life
-An Artifical Intelligence out of control (Demon Seed)
-A killer with an extra-large bathroom (Frankenstein)
-Golden Retrievers


You will get to know The Pendleton's layout very well - the book features building blueprints to help you do this. The building has four levels. The basement level has a pool, Gym, storage units, HVAC room, security room and the Superintendent's Living Quarters. The other 3 levels feature the Luxury Apartments of various sizes. There are many different residents/characters in this book. Luckily Koontz allowed a few of the places to be vacant during this story - As the story takes place in December, some residents are on vacation.

:-) THANK YOU TO MY GOODREADS FRIEND WHO SENT ME AN ADVANCED COPY OF THIS BOOK!!!!!

Update: I enjoyed the first half of the book much better than the second half. While I still really liked the book and would like to read it again, I did have to downgrade my amazing 5 star rating to a 4 star rating.

2017 Thoughts:
This is an intriguing & thought-provoking story, but I feel there are too many characters. My most recent favorite Dean Koontz novel was Ashley Bell, published in 2015. For the first time in a long time, Koontz fans went through a calendar year (2016) with no new releases from Dean Koontz.

[Fred · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a NYT number 1 best seller on January 12, 2012.

In Pendleton, Andrew North Pendleton builds 1880s apartments, his family captured & killed. Pendleton hides for years. Later purchased by the Ostock's, their butler kills them in 1935 "to save the world". A resident known as the "Witness" lead to kill other Pendleton residents. The remaining Pendleton occupants transported to the 2040s controlled by a spirit named "One". Mickey Dime kills off these Pendleton's residents but other threats exist?

[Samantha Vanbrocklin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book, but it really made it hard. I love the style in which the book was written. The movement between characters really added suspense and thrill, and a few times I wanted to jump out of my skin. However, it was drawn out at times and, although the ending was interesting, it didn't start taking shape until 3/4ths the way in. Overall, an interesting read but not up to Koontz's par.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally, I can whip through a Dean Koontz book at two or three days, tops. But this one plods along. Things don't really pick up until about 200 pages in, but even then it's a slog. Only the last 50 or so pages feel like an actual Dean Koontz book.

One problem is that there is no one to really root for. I felt ambivalent about all the characters (of which there are many, another problem). The only ones really worth of rooting for are Iris and Winny, but that's because they're kids. I also felt there were too many different elements; the plot felt like multiple plots, rather than a main plot and sub-plots. The elements finally came together in the end, but really I couldn't decide if I was reading about time travel, the seeing of ghosts, science beyond my understanding, or what.

Koontz's novels tend to get my heart pumping and leave me longing for the next chapter, but "77 Shadow Street" just doesn't fit the bill. I kept reading because I hate the idea of leaving a book unfinished. It was a relief to reach the end.

I'll keep reading Koontz's work, of course. This book is (thankfully) a rare miss in a library of hits. I am especially excited that another Odd Thomas novel is due out this summer.

Visit my blog at Bums & Bellybuttons.

[Belinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

It just didn’t grab me.

[Adam Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suppose that by this point I could qualify as one of Dean Koontz's unique villains since I continue to perform the same action and expect something different. By

"action" I mean reading yet another new Dean Koontz novel and by "different" I mean expecting it to actually be good. Remember the good old days? Remember when Koontz

consistantly put out masterpiece after masterpiece. Everything from roughly 1975 to 2007 was excellent. If you have read much before that time period you will know what

I mean, but he has the excuse of being young and inexperienced. After 2007 however... I actually liked Your Heart Belongs to Me but it wasn't fantastic or anything.

Then there was Relentless which I gave a free ride because you had to give Koontz credit for trying something new even if it was something new like Metallica's St.

Anger was supposed to be new. Then Breathless came out and I felt a twinge of fear deep in my belly that had nothing to do with the story itself. By this time, the

Frankenstein novels were also beginning to decline and feel stretched to ensure that Koontz could put one out a year. Then, What the Night Knows was released and that

twinge of fear became outright horror as I tossed another bad rating Koontz's way. I mean, Koontz! He is my second-favorite author and I hated, well, hating, his new

stuff.
Now, to finally get to the point here, I no longer feel guilty for giving this stuff poor ratings. 77 Shadow Street is a nice atempt to return to the classic Koontz of

the eighties that I love so damn much but just because you can ride a skateboard when you are twenty doesn't mean you will do it just as well when you are nearing

seventy. I know that isn't fair to say but I really got the feeling that Koontz had lost the ability to make good horror. This was just ridiculous from about a third in

and onward. It was made all the more disappointing because the set up was nicely done and I was rejoycing because I knew that good ole Koontz was back on track. No such

luck though, at least not for me. The plot is a bit too ridiculous to get into, the book does that annoying thing where there are too many damn characters and each

chapter bounces from one to the next (which was one of my major problems with Breathless), the writing felt forced as if Koontz was struggling to impress people with

the complexity of his phrases rather then his storytelling, and a lot of the time I just had no clue what in the blue fuck was going on because I continuously lost

interest due to the other problems I just mentioned. "Well, does it get better in the end?" No. The beginning was awesome but is soon forgotten as the weight of

annoying characteristics of the novel begin to way upon you.
In short, I am disappointed once again but I do respect Koontz for still writing and writing so much after all this time but I wish that he could go out with a bang

rather than with these highly anticipated books that are so unlike him.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really thought I would like this book. The plot sounded so creepy and interesting. The reason I bought this book was because I liked the cover. I so wanted to like this book but I just didn't.... at all.

77 Shadow Street is about The Pendleton a Gilded Age built luxury apartment complex with a dark past. Madness, suicide, mass murder and strange happens befall the building. Now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay strange images, inhuman figures lurk in the basement. With each hour the terror grows.

The book has several things I strongly dislike

1. Too many characters
Most of which had very little development
2. The book was too long
He could have cut 200 pages off and still told the same story.

77 Shadow Street is suppose to be part of a series but its been 9 years and I don't see anything about book 2. Which is great since I wasn't planning on read book 2.

When I was younger I loved Dean Koontz but I hadn't read his books in a while. I still plan on reading more, this book just happened to be a dud.

No rec.

[Jamee Zielke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a thriller.

It took me a good two weeks to read.

I was nine pages from the end at about 11:30pm. It's a thriller - I should not even be able to sleep until the end, right? I mean NINE pages!

I feel asleep and had to finish it in the morning. And only did so I can move on to the next book I want to read.

Koontz does a wonderful job with description. He's very thorough and detailed. Which would be great if he didn't repeat all the descriptions with each character. It really destroys the momentum of the story.

I don't recommend it. I know Koontz has other reads that are a lot more engaging than this one was.

[Andrew pinto · Rating 1 out of 5]

im already much over half way, and this book makes you wonder...will it get better? it started pretty okay, but its just getting boring now.

okay putting this one down, not even going to finish it, it is very boring that i fall asleep when i think about reading it...i really tried to like this one but i just cant do it

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoy an occasional Dean Koontz book, but this was not one of his best.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sped read like a demon...so I could be done with it! Koontz has been great at character development in the past. In this book, I didn't really like anyone so didn't really care what happened to them.

[Magdalena · Rating 3 out of 5]

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!

[Little Timmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Koontz is like Stephen King to me and writes either hot or cold for my tastes. I greatly enjoyed Koontz's Frankenstein series and his old SiFi novel "Nightmare Journey", they are favorites on my shelf. However most of his fiction stories I do not enjoy, the plot and action seems to wander and aimlessly move through the story. I was excited to read this book because it was a SiFi novel and thought it would be like the books of his I enjoy. Alas I was disappointed and found a return to the seemingly fog shrouded plot and action of his other books. Recommended if you are Koontz fan, otherwise I do not recommend this book.

[Michael Knudsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm one of those who waits expectantly each December for Dean's latest. He's a solid writer with a great imagination and I like and agree with many of the ideas circumscribed in his "agenda". Like many reviewers here, I've become less enamoured of his more recent efforts and long for the Dean Koontz of old.

I doubt that he'll be making a comeback to those glory days.

Mr. Koontz is a different writer now, but I'm not quite ready to dismiss him as one of those publishing powerhouses who's gone off the deep end writing what he wants because he can without much regard for his fans. He's still a consummate entertainer, an important cultural allegorist, and a narrative ringmaster who can hang with the best of them. Yes, the themes and imagery are beginning to fatigue a bit, and black and white are often presented in stark, unrealistic contrast in novels like 77 Shadow Street.

My thoughts after 100 pages -- Too many protagonists, yet some so similar that it causes confusion. I could barely keep Bailey, Kirby, and Silas straight at this point. Are we dealing with a haunted apartment building here, or something more?

After 200 pages -- Weirder and weirder, but that's Dean Koontz. Love his ability to imagine the most depraved human and non-human monsters. This is interesting enough to keep reading.

300 pages -- Really, bio-tech, nano-tech apocolypse, combined with an ill-advised time travel condundrum? I'm surprised at this, but it's still interesting. Some of the good guys are dying, and that's a bit of a switch. This is becoming somewhat of a whodunnit, and I'm starting to care about some of the characters.

Home stretch -- No spoilers, but I liked the last part of the book best. Somehow, it all ends up making sense. I never was really frightened of any of the scenes themselves (even with the lights off), but the wholesale premise is terrifying. If this is supposed to make us paranoid about scientific advancements, mission accomplished. I was excited to see no dogs as characters for once, just a couple of cats that meet a tragic fate. As I approached the last page, I said to myself, "wow, not even a mention of golden retrievers". Alas, that most cherished of breeds is mentioned twice in the final 400 words.

This was just enough to keep me reading, Dean, but I'm not as excited about your new releases anymore!

[Icy_Space_Cobwebs · Rating 5 out of 5]

77 Shadow Street is a startlingly complex novel effortlessly combining Supernatural, Scientific, and Science Fiction genres. I say startlingly, because this novel is a giant step forward, even for the very accomplished and prolific Dean Koontz. The only previous novel of Mr. Koontz’s that I can think of even coming anywhere close to the achievement of 77 Shadow Street is The Taking-also a novel by Mr. Koontz which I have never been able to put out of my mind.

77 Shadow Street focuses on The Pendleton, a lovely Beaux Arts residence of the late Victorian period, over the duration of some three quarters of a century, a single-family residence (through several changes of ownership), then from 1973-2011, a condominium—a gentle, dignified, lovely building on a finely landscaped hill-but this is only the surface, and behind the scenes (and underground) lies slithering, shimmering, horrifying secrets. This is not a book easily walked away from, and it is not a book that can be forgotten. It will hound you, tease you, and make you pause to think-and that’s the way a novel should be-and what I can always expect, and never disappointed, from Dean Koontz.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never know what to expect from Koontz. I was expecting this book to be possibly a kind of haunted house type thriller but in actuality it was more of a sci-fi what-if novel with themes of overpopulation and post-humanism. I was somewhat surprised at this because the recent Dan Brown novel Inferno also used these same themes but in a totally different way. Shadow Street took the reader into a very bleak future where mankind had been wiped out as a result of a need for population control and use of nano-technology to develop super-humans who were more-or-less immortal. A very scary portrayal of this future including the use of "pogramites" to eliminate the overpopulation. I would mildly recommend this book and rate it above some of Koontz' more recent novels but still not in a league with his earlier work such as Watchers.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love most books by Dean Koontz. This one was not a favorite of mine. At times, I had to force myself to keep reading. It was harder to follow the plot, and I kept getting the characters confused. The best part of this book was the novella, The Moonlit Mind, at the end of it. I devoured that in one sitting, and I was hoping for more!! Would love for his new book to be about Crispin, Harley, and Amity!!!

[Jennie Damron · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 The writing was good and fast paced. I couldn't put the book down. I liked the beginning of the book, but I did not enjoy how he pieced the story together. I thought it was going to be more supernatural, instead it was more sci-if which was a let down for me. I loved Winny and Iris. They were my favorite characters and their development throughout the book was on point. I'm glad I read this book even though it wasn't what I hoped it would be.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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