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333 of 366 found the following review helpful:
 A Thriller with Heart Nov 28, 2007
By Stacey Cochran
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZLRZIOJQ5KR9 Amy Redwing operates Golden Heart, a Golden Retriever rescue service, that brings her to the home of abused housewife and mother Janet Brockman. Amy and her close friend Brian McCarthy rescue Janet, her two kids, and their retriever Nicki from Janet's abusive husband. Immediately, Amy recognizes a seemingly supernatural connection with Nicki, the golden retriever.
And soon thereafter, Amy discovers that she is being followed.
The power of this novel lies in the genuine compassion that Dean Koontz exhibits through Amy and her love for and near obsession to rescue both people and dogs from abuse and neglect.
If there's a weakness to this novel it's that Amy can come across as unintentionally self-righteous and holier than thou.
Regardless, it's clear that Dean Koontz is a mature writer, and his desire to bring together the suspense-writing strengths of his early career with matters close to his heart are on full display in The Darkest Evening of the Year.
This novel contains a couple of plot twists that are really, really cool, and the textured layers of the characters, their multiple names and the depths of their backgrounds indicate that Koontz is onto something profound in this novel.... namely the existence of a soul and how that soul transmits through multiple lives.
This is a profound novel from a writer who has mastered the elements of suspense, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Stacey Cochran
Author of CLAWS available for 80 Cents
43 of 45 found the following review helpful:
Two Separate Stories in This Koontz Effort Dec 02, 2007
By TMStyles
This novel is certainly dividing Koontz fans as evidenced by these reviews. I sense some of that might be attributed to the fact that "The Darkest Evening of the Year" seems bifurcated to me into a suspense thriller on the surface where a true morality play between good and evil occurs and a secondary storyline that focuses on educating the reader about the plight of abandoned and endangered dogs and the agencies and people who are dedicated to rescuing them. I suspect Koontz used this story to pay homage to his family's beloved Trixie (his own golden who recently died from cancer)and to assuage the pain of herloss...certainly his touching dedication written to his wife Gerda would lead to that conclusion if nothing else.
Amy Redwing rescues dogs and attempts to develop a relationship with Brian McCarthy while hiding a troubled past. Brian has unresolved baggage of his own and sometimes helps Amy in her rescues and is present when she bravely stands up to an abusive bully and, in the process, extricates the man's wife, children, and golden retriever, Nickie from the home.
Nickie and Amy become inseparable after a seemingly supernatural connection and Nickie becomes a major protagonist for the rest of the story with links to both Amy's and Brian's pasts. Just what or who is Nickie and does she have special powers (as have some dogs in previous Koontz novels)? How is she linked to Amy's past and Brian's future?
The suspense in the novel is keenly felt due mainly to Koontz's extreme characterizations. The good guys are almost one dimenionally good and, of course, are kind to and love dogs. The bad guys are unredeemedly evil and, inexplicably want dogs (especially Nickie) "killed good and hard". There is no middle ground here...and the love of dogs seems to be a clear demarcation between good and evil.
As usual, Koontz mixes some wonderful descriptions and phrases..."Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and for the mistakes we make because of those illusions"...with some over-the-top descriptions that make the reader smile in sophomoric glee.
There are unanswered plot lines in this novel that probably won't matter to the casual reader. Why did Brian get so obsessive about the eye sketches? Why did Vanessa inexplicably want Nickie killed good and hard? Why was Billy Pilgrim suddenly focused on golden retriever symbolism? And again, as usual, there is a need to suspend the reader's disbelief sufficiently to accept the "magic" of the novel.
But I do recommend the book...it is not as off track as some of Koontz's recent novels...and any dog lover will get choked up with some of his passages of homage to dogs. Koontz has immense talent and a love for dogs that comes together in this story.
16 of 18 found the following review helpful:
I dont think anyone here actually read the book, I did (spoilers) Jan 29, 2008
By Big_Martini
"Big_Martini"
Everyone is talking about the "dog angle", "too much about the dogs". Let me point something out that some may not have seen, the cover of the book has a dog on it. It kind of speaks to me that dogs may have alot to do with this book. That being said....
My favorite Koontz books are Lightening and Watchers. I enjoy the "story". Be it a love story or a scary story involving messing around with human and dog genetics.
The Darkest Evening of the Year made sense to me. Amy was married before to a sadistic son of a gun. This man murdered everyone, including their daughter. Amy grew up in an orphanage and one of the main important people in her life at the orphanage was Nickie, a golden retriever. Nickie is also Amy's daughter that was murdered. Years later, the sadistic son of a gun husband meets up with the crazy mother of another child, the child has downs syndrome. The sadistic son of a gun is looking forward to tracking Amy down and finishing the job, and he's recruited this crazy woman. Amy's current boyfriend just happens to be the crazy woman's daughter.
That's where the golden retriever comes in. The golden retriever is divine intervention to work at saving Amy's life and the other litte girls life.
This is fiction people. It's a wonderful story. I enjoyed it. People in these reviews are pretty much just re-writing what's on the book cover so I tend to question whether or not they really read the book.
Yes, there is alot about the dogs. But it's not nauseating. The cover sort of warns you, so you cant complain.
I gave it three stars because Lightening, Watchers, Dragon Tears and Taken all set the bar for me. The book was enjoyable. By the way, I live with a cranky 17 year old cat. I wasn't put off in the least about Koontz's dog characters in this book.
20 of 24 found the following review helpful:
 You've Got to be Kidding! Jun 22, 2008
By Solomon Slade
It is unpleasant to admit that a great one has feet of clay, especially a great one whom one has come to expect has no flaws artistically. But such is the case when I just completed reading Dean Koontz's The Darkest Evening of the Year. It is an example of the courtesan revealing herself to be nothing more than a whore with good make-up.
The great Koontz traits are here--innocents in peril, deranged evil psychopaths on the march toward Armageddon, righteous causes beautifully expressed, lavish prose that requires one to read slowly and repeatedly--but this book is a mess. It's a great man writing simply to write, either for money or expediency, but without conviction or compelling need. A pay check will do.
Koontz, when working with his favorite dogs, golden retrievers, can still call forth a tear to the most jaded eye. But really! This is just a mish-mush. He creates a sinister psychopath, Vanessa, who is nothing more than a wan imitation of his great female nutsoid, Datura. This girl has no reason to exist, she has no background, family, or believability that would have produced such a monster except for Koontz's desire to shock us.
Then there are the trademark Koontz tropes--the nice guy who kills at the end of a chapter, so coldly, so irrationally. The weird but believable sub characters who populate an underworld we hope does not exist. The use of the word "susurration." (I wait for that and the use of the word "butter" to make sure I am truly in "le monde Koontz.") But this book is all formula, no substance.
Let's see. There is the demimonde of a child who is inarticulate but wise, oh so wise. Dogs have prescience and supernatural goodness and direction. Intuition trumps all rationality and reason. Coincidence is accepted as a "not to be questioned" fact of life. This book, in short, drips with the formulaic Koontz fantasies that can make even his best works descend into laughable, eye-rolling nonsense that sabotages his considerable skill and creativity.
I have a golden retriever who is the love of my life, but he is not capable of sensing evil, as are Koontz's dogs. I am glad that there are people so dedicated to their preservation and protection that a whole subspecies of people have evolved to create evolved habitats for them. But that these dogs have become so evolved as to be able to predict and direct human events, including sprouting wings and reversing time and tragedy, is just too preposterous for words. Dean Koontz is drinking and petting his golden retriever and growing lachrymose and insane.
This book adheres to the Swiss Cheese School of Dilapidated Writing. Holes, holes, everywhere there are holes in this inane plot. He pulls on his successes in other works, recycles them, and fails to substantiate any coherence. The arch villain, Harrow, is not really who he says he is. Harrow seems to have evolved in the writing and given a plot twist that is jejune. I didn't buy it for a minute.
Vanessa is his true downfall--incredibly creepy and unlikeable but totally unbelievable on every level. Datura, in Odd Thomas, on the other hand, was totally great and believable. Vanessa is just a piece of Koontz schlock. Oh look how horrible I am--I will abuse and kill an autistic child. Right.
I hate it when Koontz subverts his talents for a paycheck, knowing that his books will sell, no matter how implausible. He can, and does, create a turn of phrase better than anyone else, but there are lines in this book that are truly laughable. Pseudo profundity is expected to cancel plot deficiency and character plausibility. Well, Dean, it doesn't. This book is neither moving nor exciting. It is simply a sentimental wallow in Golden Retriever Uber Alles nonsense.
I have loved Dean Koontz's talented forays into the world of the insane and the frightening, but this book reveals his predilection to trivialize his talent for personal gain. If he has no better ideas for a book, then he should quit writing. Every great artist needs a gray eminence who will tell him that his work should not see the light of day, but apparently Koontz doesn't have this person at his publisher's. He needs to have this person to say, "Dean, this is crap--delete it, burn it if you have printed it, but don't put this out there."
Let's make a list of the absurdities of this story: Amy Redwing gets a call from a nun dead for ten years. Brian, a low-level talent of architecture, suddenly develops a skill for drawing of a golden retriever, drawings which are of unmatched excellence but which inspire Amy to do the equivalent of "That's nice." A murdered child channels herself to get revenge through a golden retriever that has her same name. An abused child also channels the dead girl with the same dream. Amy is an orphan, plus two, who is befriended by a golden retriever in a convent that adopts the dog and eulogizes it in what is virtually a pagan ritual. Now, this kind of nonsense goes on and on, but it all adds up to some kind of kinky catharsis for Koontz, but not for the reader. The reader is left wondering about the sanity of the author and the publishing house.
Dean Koontz has always walked the tightrope between realism and the supernatural, but here he allows himself to fall over into the realm of fantasy and unbelievability. He allows himself to wallow in the maudlin, forsaking his duty to his readers to present a plausible explanation for the brush with the fantastic.
This book is poison, without any redeeming virtues. Avoid it at all costs, but do not ignore the rest of the Koontz body of work. Someone failed him here.
Final Note: The title has nothing to do with the story whatsoever!
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Excrutiatingly painful read Dec 16, 2008
By Denise DeSerio
"SpikeGrrl"
Reading the synopsis of this book, I felt it had such promise: mystery, suspense, a hint of the supernatural, and hero dogs. What a letdown! The only reason I finished this book is to try to recoup the $8 I paid for it.
Here are the problems I had with it: Even though I work for an animal rescue group, this book at times seemed too preachy in parts; the writing style seemed to go from fictional prose to Public Service Announcement at the drop of a hat. (Example: "[He] will see [her] after she has been reduced to the condition of a caged breeder dog in those puppy mills against which she crusades.") Don't get me wrong: although I think it's admirable that Koontz is speaking out against puppy mills and trying to inform the general public about them in the medium in which he's familiar, his attempts seem much too ham-handed.
Despite his obvious love for dogs, Koontz is inconsistent in his view of them: they are often referred to as the characters' "kids", but then they are often referred to as "it" (instead of "he" or "she"). The heroine of the book rescues Goldens, having rescued her first golden when she was a child in an orphanage, but then when she's an adult, she BUYS her first two Goldens from a BREEDER?
So many of the characters have aliases as to get confusing. And the alias names are often ridiculous: "Bobby Onions"? Really? "Onions"? And "Tyrone Slothrop"? Egads!
There's no real action or suspense until after page 400 or so--and the book only has 461 pages!--and even then it's predictable and rushed, as if the author was getting tired and was like, "Oh, by the way, then this happened. The End." The resolution was one of the most flagrant examples of deus ex machina I have EVER read. Buyer (and reader) beware!
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