ACTUAL RATING: 4.5 stars
“Many of your friends will be fair-weather friends, Benjamin, but I will be there in bad weather, in worse weather, in any weather. Fantasies can become realities. There’s no reason that "craggles" couldn’t be as real as trains and cranes and girls named Jane."
It's Dean Koontz...so, to some degree, I expected a sinister horror story, but this reads more like a Grimms fairy tale. If you were to take a hard look and do some researching of some of the familiar fairy tales, you will learn that they were never intended to entertain our children...originally, they had deep sinister meanings that folks at that period of time, designed protest while keeping from getting their heads chopped off...but I still loved this Koonz offering.
I had to snigger while reading, not because the star of the story Benjamin's situation was particularly humorous, but from thinking of the change in the writings of my two favorite, go-to horror authors, Stephen King & Dean Koontz. It wasn't so long-ago that Stephen King was known for and was the "King"...no pun intended...of horror...and Dean Koontz, who was also, for me, on the same level as Stephen King, and is well-known for horror also, have both, over the years, written what amounts to...a fairy tale. I’m not complaining because I love, and will read, both Stephen King and Dean Koontz no matter what they write or what the genre is. If either of these authors want to write fairy tales, it's okay with me since I can see from this one that there is still that "leave the lights on and cover your head" spine-chilling feelings.
Our main human character is 23-year-old, Benny Catspaw, who has been fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend. Between the firing and the lost girlfriend. Benny gets "Spike" a "craggle"...otherwise known as a supernatural “bad weather friend”. Spike tells Benny, ”Many of your friends will be fair-weather friends, Benjamin, but I will be there in the bad weather, in the worse weather, in any kind of weather.” Benny also gets a new girlfriend, and Benny, , Spike and the new girlfriend begin trying to find the reason, the "real reason", that Benny was fired.
The book goes back and forth between the present and Benny's childhood history with his crazy, and perhaps murderous mother, his cruel, and definitely 100% murderous grandmother, and Benny's short stay at a boarding school where the students are slowly being turned into hybrid human insects. I couldn't make that up if I tried...but Dean Koontz did a fantastic job. It's while Benny is at the boarding school, that he again meets two boys that he had bonded with before he was taken away to yet another loveless home where he will stay until he's 18. Throughout these ordeals, Benny manages to stay optimistic and “nice”. Well maybe "nicer" would be more accurate.
Surprisingly...there actually isn't much to the story, nothing new that is. Also, surprisingly, I was still reading. As could be expected...the "bad guys" were still exceedingly bad, but we don’t spend much time with them. "Spike" was an unforgettable character that could have been "so much more". I felt that the "idea" of what he was and what he was capable of, could have been developed so much more than it was. Every time I almost closed the book Dean Koontz would throw in something that made me laugh. One of my favorites was "Spike spoke in what might have been Latin or an even more ancient language. To Benny, in his agitated and stressed condition, the tumble of words sounded something like, “Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam bom”. If you aren't laughing because you don’t understand or "get" that one, you’re just too darn young, or Dean Koonz and I, who are almost the same age, are just too darn old:)
I really did enjoy this story for what it was...and, well, because it was Dean Koontz. It had heartwarming and funny moments that made me laugh, but it’s not a book that I will remember on the same level as some of his past treasures, The "Odd Thomas" series or one of my favorites..."The Silent Corner"... but it's still a 4.5-star worthy, very enjoyable read.