A Review.
‘There
are no rules in the dark, no place to feel safe, no escape from the shadows.
But to save the day, you must...Seize the Night.’
This is
my second Koontz book. The first one was 'Fear nothing', the review of which I
have already posted here. It ensured that I
would never miss another Koontz book if I could help it.
The blurb further convinced
me that I could not miss this one. An enticing brilliance in the
blend of fear for missing children, unknown secrets to unearth in the darkness
of the night and unimaginable horror at the crux of the suspense…what more
could a thriller lover like me ask for?
We return to Moonlight Bay,
the hometown of Christopher Snow, where he urges himself to embrace the
darkness, that his life is by ‘Seizing the night’.
Chris Snow is a different
protagonist, as clichéd as that may seem. One feels sorry for his deadly
predicament of having to live a lifetime without sunlight or light. The
challenges faced by a person with a rare genetic disorder like XP or Xeroderman
Pigmentosum, are articulated to perfection throughout the novel. It is hard to
imagine or even empathize with such a person and makes one thankful for the
little joys of life than we often take for granted, such as sunlight.
And yet, Snow aces it
better than most people with normal faculties. Snow knows that the
disappearance of his friend’s son and the other children is connected to the
seemingly abandoned military base of Wyvern, where clandestine experiments were
conducted by the military in the past. The police cannot be trusted as they are
hand-in-glove with the people responsible. Worse, Orsen, his darling trusted
canine friend disappears too in the premises of the dead town’s sordid centre.
The added challenge of Chris’s fear and heartbreak touches more than one raw
nerve.
Snow’s race against time,
even as he fights chasing goons, escapes from violent groups of monkeys, and
tries to outrun the breaking dawn, to avoid the monstrous carnage that may
result otherwise, makes this book ‘unputdownable’.The tension that is built up
over each turned page can be sliced with a knife.
443
pages of delicious suspense that keeps your grey cells ticking overtime, horror
that makes the goose-bumps simmer on your skin, deep life lessons that stay
with you, mind blowing descriptions that bring the scene alive in your head,
wry humor that offers smiles, despite the hair-rising tension, artfully woven into
even the most perilous scenes & of course, my most important criteria: top
notch vocabulary make ‘Seize the Night’ impossible to put down.
By far
the undisputed king of similes and metaphors, Koontz is the master
at getting right under your skin and making ice cubes crawl right under each
pore.
Pick
this one if you are up for a terrific thrill ride.
***
We are
the most alive & the closest to the meaning of our existence when we are
most vulnerable, when experience has humbled us & cured the arrogance,
which, like a form of deafness, prevents us from hearing the #lessons that the
world teaches.
.
The
worst thing I saw wasn't in the night, but inside my head.
.
I am my
own worst enemy. This, more than any other trait, proves my fundamental
humanity.
.
Nothing
gives us #courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn
fool.
.
#Friendship,
#love & surf. Get them while they're still still hot, before they're gone,
while you're still human enough to know how precious they are.
.
Cold
comfort is better than none.
.
I cannot
care too much about what I cannot change. Like all of us in this storm between life
& death, I can wreak no great changes on the world, only small changes for
the better, I hope, in the lives of those I love, which means that, to live, I
must care, not about what I am, but about what I can become, not about the past
but about the future.
.
#Patience.
That is one of the great virtues God tries to teach us by refusing to show
Himself in this world.
***
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