Dean Koontz Novel "Deeply Odd" is Deeply Disappointing

The novel “Deeply Odd” by New York Times best selling author Dean Koontz teeters on being deeply awful.

Derived in May, “Deeply Odd” is average at best. Returning character Odd Thomas has paranormal abilities and can see glimpses of the future. His terrifying vision of three siblings burning to death fuels his quest to seek them out and save them.

The children are eight, six and 10-years-old retrospectively. A 70s clad cowboy truck driver complete with rhinestones on his attire is one of the many Satanist trying to kill Thomas. Both Thomas and the cowboy have the ability to blind people with their mind or the ability to be unseen by their prey. To be honest, I cannot remember.

While venturing out to find and save the children, Thomas rides along with 80 plus-year-old Mrs. Edie Fischer. Thomas becomes her limo driver and the two become a humorless team to thwart a satanic cult.

Both Thomas and Fischer have flashes of interest and sometimes make the reader laugh, but ultimately they are a boring pair. While Fischer and Thomas are pursuing the satanic cowboy, they learn that 17 children are to be sacrificed by a group of devil worshipers known as the Prostar plus congregation.

I’ll give Koontz credit for not having a single profane word and managing a PG rating for such a heavy themed story, but “Deeply Odd” is deeply dull. The names alone didn’t help the stories credibility. Two of the Satanist where named Ken # 1 and Ken # 2, in reference to Barbie’s beau. One of Thomas’s ghost dogs was named Boo. Maybe Koontz was attempting to write a children’s novel involving sadistic murders and devil worship?

Most of the comedy in “Deeply Odd” was not funny, and its climatic journey into a path of predictability could only beget the book a two star rating. 

"Inferno" is a Smoking Hot Read

“Inferno” is a fantastic fable of suspense rippling into the depths of destruction, the promise of paradise or the threat of hell.

Contrived in May, the novel “Inferno” burns to the soul’s core of intrigue and fascination. Best selling author Dan Brown who also wrote “The Da Vinci Code” educates the reader along with having a compelling story. The book features the characters Harvard professor Robert Langdon and Dr. Felicity Sienna Brooks. Brooks emits her first name and is known to all as Sienna. Even the reader doesn’t find out her real fist name until very late in the story. 

Langdon, a U.S. citizen wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy oblivious as to what happened to him or how he arrived in Italy. Before Langdon can recover from his grazing to the head via a gun shot, a leather clad woman on a motor cycle kills one of doctors and attempts to kill Langdon. 

Brooks helps Langdon flee the hospital to safety and they team up to solve an intense mystery. Brooks and Langdon know there is a plan to destroy at least half of the human race. The villains who shall remain nameless have a twisted way to save the world. 

According to many, including the World Health Organization the human population is expanding too fast and too much. If this continues, food and water well not be abundant enough for all. Perhaps that’s why nature thrust the Black Death Plaque upon the world in the 1300s. 

The World Health Organization; WHO wants to control the population explosion with a world wide spread of contraception. The Vatican spends enormous amounts of money indoctrinating third-world countries into a belief that contraception is evil. I enjoyed how Langdon said; who better than a bunch of male octogenarians who are celibate to tell the world how to have sex.

 Some of the philosophy behind the theory to pulverize half of the world’s population is based on “The Divine Comedy” written by Dante Alighieri in the late 1200s or early 1300s. The theme of “The Divine Comedy” is that man must pass through hell to get to paradise. 

In order for Langdon and Brooks to save the world (half) of it, the two must assemble the puzzle of clues they find while seeking and fleeing from individuals and army personal who are trying to kill them. 

The novel is a bit lengthy, but its plot never losses its cerebral grip. The historical facts seized my attention as well. The age of Le maschere, the sad and happy masks synonymous with dramatic theater is more than 2,500 years old, yet is still the most popular icon in drama. 

The lithe figured and beautiful woman Brooks posses a 208 IQ and read all 1,600 pages of the medical text “Grays Anatomy” before she was ten-years-old. The books lengthiness and the fact that Langdon, not Brooks solved most of the clues brought a 5 star rating to a 4 and a half star one.       

   

     

  

Write Mind, Football and Sea Me...

                                        

                           Football

                     Summer ends football begins. Seven days in

                     a week. Seven points with a touchdown and

                     extra point. Two world wars. Two points for

                     a safety. Tragedy in war. Sudden death. 

                    Politicians everywhere plotting battles and 

                    wars. The offense huddled far back from the 

                    ears of the defense. 

                    Ground troops or air strikes? Run or pass?

                    Who strikes first? Flip a coin.

                                                                         Izzy Schurr

                                    

                                                     Sea Me

                     The kiss of the colliding waves. Rippled sand

                     decorates the cusp of a low tide. Aluminous

                     moonlight radiating lacquered night beading

                     off the brilliant stars. The warmth of a pitted

                     fire thrust itself against my body. 

                    Tall red and yellow flames swallowing mother

                    night, which has caressed me with her dark

                    embrace.                                Izzy Schurr

Write Mind

No desk or lap top. Eagar imagination spins. No 

pin, insanity seeps in. Lunatic fury fuels frustration.

Remember that phrase! Hold that thought!

Indeed, dying is easy, comedy is hard.  Izzy Schurr / Neil Peart / ?

Debut Novel Reviver is a Disaster

“Reviver Death Won’t Silence Them,” is a rotten read.

First time novelist Seth Patrick thrusts a fantastic idea into the realms of ruin, complete with dull characters, a listless storyline and a clumsy climax.  

“Reviver Death Won’t Silence Them” starts out with a solid punch; supernatural beings in the natural world helping the police solve murder cases. The U.S. has a Forensic Revival Service and one of its best revivers. Revivers can bring the dead back to life, but only for a few minutes. People who work for the FRS, such as Jonah Miller, the best in the business, talk to murder victims to find their killers.

The one and only thing I liked about this book was its mention of the corruption in the medical industry. Although the story is fiction, murder victims with low-income family members get the lowest paid revivers who only have a ten percent track record of reviving their victims to uncover legal facts for the police. 

One of the many flaws in this book was the lack of symphony generated for any of the victims. Since the character development was mostly non-existent, only 9-year-old Nikki Woods was the only murder victim I felt sympathy for. All the other characters were like glancing at an obituary column of a complete stranger who died of natural causes. 

The possibility that the Devil and his demons would end the human race and take over the planet, still could not save the crappy climax of “Reviver.” The main villain in the June release of this book, Michael Andreas was as interesting as a pebble I dumped out of one of my shoes that same month. 

The Novel "Community" is a Colossal Catastrophe

The horror novel "Community," is a labyrinth of lameness and bizarre sexuality not worth reading.  

Author Graham Masterton rapidly captures the attention span, psych’s the reader into a false sense of intensity then hurls the story into a cauldron of crap. "Community" is a dreadful tale of Michael Spencer, a fictional character who is run down by a very psychotic driver while on his way home to San Francisco with his girl-friend Natasha Kerwin, who answers to Tasha. 

Spencer awakes in the town of Trinity at the Trinity Shasta Clinic. While at TSC, Spencer is given the name Gregory Merrick. Merrick, since the horrific car accident has a permanent limp due to spinal damage and suffers from post traumatic amnesia. During his first few weeks in Trinity, he knows nothing of his previous life such as formally being with the women he loved, Tasha. 

Dr. Hamid and the other doctor, Catherine O' Connor convince Merrick to stay in the town of Trinity and live with Isobel Weston, a highly sexual woman who makes this an R rated book. While in the act of coitus with Weston, Merrick's sin sauce is crystallized while Mr. one eye thrusts about in her lust tunnel. "Community" is a putrid and perverted version of a "Twilight Zone" episode.

The genre of this novel is a thriller / suspense book which is neither thrilling, nor suspenseful. As Merrick's memory fades in and out, he begins to question whether he's dreaming, alive or dead and if the mystery women in town is indeed his former lover Tasha. 

The quote unquote villains in this book were too nice and the hero's were boring at best.  This novel lacked any sort of intensity and its climax was non existent. This no star September release should have never been written.  

Mass Murder is Legal for the U.S.

Distributors of mayhem and destruction for the almighty American dollar are what drive the U.S. government.

The insane quest for money has halted the universal use of solar power, bio diesel and everything that is practical, so a few billionaires can bask in finical paradise while having middle and lower income youths kill innocent entities for more oil.

Individuals being brain washed into killing and dyeing for their government believe in the balderdash politicians constantly feed the world. The U.S. military currently kills with an unmanned aerial vehicle, also known as a drone.

Juan Cole’s Dec. 2012 article “Let’s also Remember the 176 children killed by U.S. Drones.” (http://www.juancole.com/2012/12/lets-also-remember-the-176-children-killed-by-us-drones.html) claims around 3000 people were killed by U.S. drones and 600 of those people where innocent civilians including a 176 mass murdered children. Washington narratives say the drones are precision machines that only kill terrorists. There’s also no corruption in politics, blah, blah… I’d bet dollars to donuts, that the U.S. government is responsible for the death of tens of millions of innocent soles since the 90s. Remember the early 90s war, Operation Desert Storm which featured the use of Smart Bombs. How anyone over the age of four can possible believe that a launched bomb kills only 100 percent of its intended targets is ludicrously blind thinking. 

The human race continues to evolve in a technological sense while the powers that rule the world burry spiritualty by squelching the mass use of solar and other natural resources to fuel our vehicles and continue using outdated oil and gasoline.   

The U.S. military routinely kills innocent civilians and children in the Middle East so we can embrace ignorance, post meaningless things on face book, play our Xbox’s, Play Stations, drink our overpriced coffee and go shopping for more stuff that will soon be outdated.

So wake up people and stop ignoring what’s going on in the evil world of politics and cease going to war for sadistic billionaires. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check my fantasy football roster.     

Tangible Paradise

The fawned eyed girl with sun brown legs dances on the edge of his dream and her voice rings in his ears like the music of the spheres.   
                                                                Neil Peart

Come on lil' devil, be my little angel.
                                                       The Cult

Love and romance? Not  chance with my current finance.
                                                                                    Izzy Schurr


                                                                Tangible Paradise

To descend upon Paradise Falls, she and I had to crawl through a natural tunnel less than three feet high, laced with poison oak on the top and both of its sides. Thick thorny berry bushes accompanied with an abundance of jagged rocks begging to pierce the skin engulfed in darkness dominated the center of this tiny cave even on the sunniest days.

Her, a woman delicious, complete with an alluring smile residing on unblemished skin was gracious enough to accompany me to Paradise Falls. The light at the end of the culvert was so blinding, no one could see the steep cliff warning hikers to stop. Using my wisdom from a previous hike, I stopped, and the two of us crawled feet first toward the blinding sun light. Emerging into the warm autumn day we slowly and carefully made a sharp right onto the narrow trail overlooking the far heights of inner space. She and I were now on the walkway to bliss.

Certain spots on this mud tainted and often-slippery steep path announce certain death. One false move, act of carelessness, or stupidity would mean plunging hundreds of feet down into the depths of despair. For both her and me this was more exciting rather than terrifying.

We often halted our walk to stop, take pictures and sip water. The radiant sun cast brilliant shadows across the foliaged mountain, bountiful with trees.

The last hundred or so yards leading to Paradise Falls was simply marvelous. The trail was much less steep, and the sound of the raging waterfall illustrated the gratifying power of the tame nature in paradise falls. The flowing water on the river bank was crystal clear. Dark green mint leaves penetrate the nostrils. A soft zephyr whistled through the tree branches while squirrels and other creatures scurried about the forest. Chirping birds, water free falling against rocks, boulders, and into the lagoon were the only sounds we could hear. We marveled at the sight of the lush green grass and towering trees surrounding the cove. The mountain range soon swallowed the setting sun. The reddish sky faded into a welkin cloaked with infinite stars. 

She and I cuddled on warm sand and gazed at moonbeams glistening off the verdure in the colossal woods. Engulfed in the center of this most wonderful place, a glimpse a nature was transformed into a stare. Her head resting on my chest, the star dominated sky above and the flowing stream into the lagoon triggered some serious romancing.