77 Shadow Street: Review and Analysis

I know the title says "Review and Analysis" but we're going to start with the analysis and if you have some kind of condition where things have to be done in some specific order or else you go berserk, then I suggest you step away from the computer. I don't want to be sued for driving you into berserkness, causing you to destroy your computer, or iPad, or iPhone for that matter. Are there any other devices I need to mention?

Pressing on.

The Analysis.

77 Shadow Street is not the horror tale as one is lead to believe from the description of the story on the back cover. There are no ghosts, or demons in the general sense as society understands them today. The true terror lies in between the lines, within the moral of the story. Technology can be a wonderful thing, but is society advancing too quickly? The Roman Empire fell because it could not keep up with their own technological advancement. In this story (SPOILER ALERT!!!! TURN BACK NOW!!!!) a scientist comes up with a way to better human kind, but the science goes too far and is applied to other ideas with the best intentions, but instead creates a sort of Gaia, where the Earth is a living creature and in which no human lives because they were all destroyed by their own technology. Perhaps our future is not fated so dramatically, but how long will it be until we destroy each other with our iPods? (There's an app for that). <<<<< I'm joking here. I'm not a conspiracy theorist or paranoid. But I think you get the idea.

The Review

This book is only 607 pages in the large print yet I felt as though it dragged on. The story didn't start to pick up until about a third in, which up until that point I was having to force myself to read it. I felt the characters lacked depth and imagination. You had the scientist, who was nice enough but refused to admit he was at fault, you had the ex-marine who kept everyone alive, there was the conspiracy theorist, and the expert who through his thoughts revealed to the reader the history and nature of the house, and of course the children who had to be protected above all else. Then there were characters who really didn't need to be in the story at all and should have died much sooner than they did. Frankly, there were just too many characters for the story, and there was too much going back and forth between them.

During the last quarter, I was getting to the point where I was tired of reading the story and was ready to yell at the book, "JUST GET TO THE ENDING ALREADY AND TELL US WHAT HAPPENS!" I was skimming, and skipping passages. The story should have been wrapped up around page 500.

However, the monsters were unique, but not as terrifying as Mr. Koontz wanted them to be. Despite all this though, the ending was very satisfactory, and at the last moment the reader was lead to believe that there was going to be a last second plot twist, the last surprise; but with a sigh of relief, all was well with our heroes in the end. I enjoyed the twist though, it was refreshing, and made me gasp for about 5 seconds and before I phewed and wiped the sweat from my brow.

So, I give it 2.5-3 stars out of 5.