dragonfire88's Full Review: Dean R. Koontz - Phantoms: Library Edition
After I first read a Dean Koontz book, I then read many of his books in a short time. Phantoms was one of those books. I’ve read it several times and still love the book.
On a Sunday afternoon in September Jennifer Paige was returning to her home in Snowfield California with her fourteen year old sister Lisa. Their mother had recently died and Lisa would be living with Jenny now. Snowfield was a small town in the mountains. Jenny was the doctor. During the winter, the town was full of tourists who came to ski. In September, the town was quiet. When Jenny arrived at her home she thought it seemed too quiet.
Inside the house, Jenny discovered her housekeeper Hilda dead in the kitchen. Hilda’s body was in a strange condition and Jenny couldn’t determine what had killed her. The phone wasn’t working so Jenny headed to her neighbor’s to use the phone. They were missing and their phone didn’t work either. Jenny and Lisa headed to the Sheriff station where they found that the deputy was dead. His body was in the same strange condition Hilda had been in. He’d shot his gun, but there was no blood anywhere. The phone didn’t work. Cell phones and the internet weren’t working either. Jenny thought there was a chance of some kind of disease infecting people.
Jenny and Lisa continued looking for survivors and some way to call for help. They found something gruesome in the bakery. They found a couple that locked themselves in a room of their home. The couple was dead and in the same strange condition as Hilda and the deputy. The phone wasn’t working at first, but Jenny was eventually able to get through to the operator. She called the Sheriff in Santa Mira.
Bryce Hammond was the Sheriff in Santa Mira. He and a deputy, Talbert Whitman, were questioning Fletcher Kale about the death of his wife and young son. Bryce was having a hard time with the investigation because his own son, who was about the same age as Fletcher’s son, had been in a coma for a year after a car accident. Fletcher had a story about what happened, but Bryce didn’t believe it. He thought Fletcher was guilty. After the questioning Bryce heard that Jenny had called. He and some men headed to Snowfield. Some of the deputies weren’t happy about going.
After Bryce and the deputies arrived, Jenny took them around town to show them what she found. They also started checking other homes and found more bodies. Other people had tried to protect themselves from something with guns, but there was never any blood. There was a lot of water on the floor in some rooms. At the Candleglow Inn, they discovered a locked bathroom with no one inside and a strange message on the mirror. When they were in the grocery store, the lights went off briefly. When they came back on, a deputy was gone. Shortly after that, another deputy, Stu Wargle, was killed in less than a minute by a strange flying thing.
Bryce wasn’t sure what was going on. He decided to call in help. He arranged for more deputies and contacted the CBW Division of the Army. Bryce thought there was a chance that a chemical or biological weapon had been used. They set up a base in the Candleglow Inn. Lisa was trapped by Stu in a bathroom and then he vanished. When Bryce checked, he found that Stu’s body was gone from the locked room it had been in.
The CBW arrived and started to investigate. Some of them were killed in strange ways. Back in Santa Mira, Fletcher escaped and headed for the woods near Snowfield. Some characters discussed different mass disappearances throughout history.
Phantoms was first published in 1983 and has been reprinted many times since then. In 2001, a new version with a new afterward by Dean Koontz was released. When I first saw that there was an afterward in the book, I stood in the bookstore and read it. It was very entertaining. Koontz explained how he came to write Phantoms. I decided I wanted my own copy of the newer version. Koontz did do some minor updating to the book. The updating mainly consisted of mentioned cell phones and the internet a few times. The book wasn’t loaded down with those references. The few that were added didn’t change the book. The story was still the same. I’ve read some other books that Koontz updated a bit for a new printing. Phantoms was the first book that I’ve read both versions of the book.
Phantoms was a horror book. It is one of Koontz’s scariest books. What happened in the book was very scary. Everyone in the town of Snowfield vanished in just a matter of minutes. A few bodies were found, but most were missing. There was something very strange killing people in Snowfield. Some characters saw how others died. Guns wouldn’t protect them. The thing moved so fast that there really wasn’t time for the characters to do anything. I thought that the book was very scary and suspenseful. I never knew what would happen next.
At a few times in Phantoms characters mentioned other mass disappearances throughout history. A connection was made between those events and what was going on in Snowfield. At the end of the book, there was an author’s note in which Koontz said that the mass disappearances that had been mentioned really did happen. He just came up with his own explanation for what happened to all those people. Knowing that there have been real mass disappearances in history did make the book seem more realistic to me. I did wonder about what had happened and where all those people went.
Phantoms, like several other Koontz books, took place over a short time frame. The book only covered a few days, but it was still a longer book. A lot happened over the course of the book. The book was very detailed and descriptive, which is normal for a Koontz book. Some people may be bored by the descriptions. I wasn’t. Nothing in the book bored me. The book grabbed my attention right from the beginning. I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. There were a few subplots, and the book did jump between them at times. That didn’t bother me. It was easy to keep track of what was going on in each of them.
Jenny and Bryce met for the first time near the beginning of Phantoms. They had a connection and were attracted to each other. They agreed to go out for dinner once they got through what was going on. That was all they did to act on their attraction. There were no sex scenes in the book. Stu made several sexually suggestive remarks more than once. He said some disgusting things that could offend some readers.
A movie version of Phantoms was made in 1998. I hadn’t read any Koontz books when the movie was released. I remembering seeing the previews and thinking that I didn’t want to see the movie. Then I got hooked on Koontz books and discovered that he wrote the book the movie was based on. I decided that I did want to see the movie after all. I’ve seen the movie a few times now. It wasn’t as good as the book, but it wasn’t a bad adaptation. There weren’t any drastic changes to the plot. I think that was because Koontz wrote the screenplay. There were some changes and some things were left out. There have been other movies made based on Koontz books and I’ve seen most of them. Some weren’t too bad and others were really bad. What was done to Watchers was horrible. Phantoms was one of the better movie versions of a Koontz book.
There were several characters in Phantoms. Bryce and Jenny were the main characters and the most developed. There wasn’t a lot of the book devoted to character development. Most of the book was focused on what was going on in Snowfield. Bryce and Jenny were fairly well developed. None of the other characters were developed as much. Most of them were flat characters.
CHARACTERS
Jenny - She was a doctor that lived in the small town of Snowfield. Her younger sister was going to be living with her. She knew most of the people in town. Once she returned home and saw that everyone was gone, she was very worried about what had happened. She wanted to protect her sister. Jenny was a strong woman who didn’t fall apart during a crisis.
Lisa - Jenny’s younger sister. Lisa was fourteen. The two sisters weren’t that close because of the difference in their ages, but they got along. Lisa confronted some of her fears and managed to stay strong.
Bryce Hammond - He was a Sheriff in Santa Mira. He traveled to Snowfield after Jenny called for help. He was good at his job, though some people tended to under estimate him. He was smart and didn’t have a problem with calling in other help. He was still dealing with the death of his wife in a car accident that left his son in a coma.
I loved Phantoms. It is one of Dean Koontz’s best books. I have read many of his books and enjoyed them all, but Phantoms is one of my favorites. Fans of Koontz or horror books will probably enjoy it.
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