Jack Tripper’s Reviews > Ghost Story > Status Update

Man, this really didn't click with me when I read it. But maybe I wasn't in the right mood; I loved Koko, after all. Looking forward to hearing what you think this time around.

It’s one of the few horror novels that legit freaked me out. You’re right though that mood definitely plays a role. Ligotti, Schulz, and Ramsey Campbell all took a while to click for me. Other authors, like Koontz, likely never will. It’s funny but I couldn’t get into Koko at all when I attempted it. I’ll be giving it another go though, eventually.

This is such a terrific book. I haven't read it since high school just before the movie came out. I need to find a copy again.

Jack wrote: "It’s one of the few horror novels that legit freaked me out. You’re right though that mood definitely plays a role. Ligotti, Schulz, and Ramsey Campbell all took a while to click for me. Other auth..."

Maybe a slight difference in taste, as well. Koko is basically a thriller with a horror-adjacent atmosphere and a whiff of the supernatural. That's kind of a sweet spot for me.

I read a lot of Koontz when I was younger, but- unlike King- I've never had much interest in revisiting. Even as a teenager, I think I could see that Koontz had his moments, but wasn't that great.

Kurt wrote: "This is such a terrific book. I haven't read it since high school just before the movie came out. I need to find a copy again."

Well you shouldn’t have too much trouble, as it’s probably the one non-King/Koontz old horror novel I come across most often while out book-hunting. Finding an 80s edition, however …

I first read it in high school as well — mid 90s — then again in 2012 or so. It’ll be one of the very few books I’ve reread more than once.

Mike wrote: "Jack wrote: "It’s one of the few horror novels that legit freaked me out. You’re right though that mood definitely plays a role. Ligotti, Schulz, and Ramsey Campbell all took a while to click for m..."

Yeah Koontz definitely isn’t for me. The only one I’m still slightly interested in checking out is his 1983 novel Phantoms, and that’s mainly because I read a Zebra book that supposedly plagiarized it, Pauline Dunn’s The Crawling Dark, and I’d be interested in comparing the two. Otherwise, nah I’m good.

Jack wrote: "Mike wrote: "Jack wrote: "It’s one of the few horror novels that legit freaked me out. You’re right though that mood definitely plays a role. Ligotti, Schulz, and Ramsey Campbell all took a while t..."

I actually almost mentioned in my last comment that the Koontz novel I remember liking best (and I read a lot of them) is Phantoms. The first half of it, anyway, describes people coming across an abandoned Roanoke-like town or village, I think, at any rate some little community where everyone has just mysteriously vanished. And it scared the shit out of me when I was 13 or so. I remember the second half of the book, which explained what happened to the vanished people, as disappointing. That was the way it often went with Koontz. Good setup, disappointing/laughable ending.