欧宝娱乐

Maciek's Reviews > The Husband

The Husband by Dean Koontz
Rate this book
Clear rating

by
2969647
's review

it was ok
bookshelves: owned-books, own-in-paperback, thriller-mystery-suspense, read-in-2009
Read 2 times. Last read March 1, 2007.

This books contains the funniest simile ever: The man character drives his car and is accompanied by The hobgoblins of wind. Yes, HOBGOBLINS OF WIND.

Okay, so I've read The Husband when it came out and forgot it entirely. Deciding to write a review of it, I grabbed a paperback and began to read.

The Husband is one of those airport books that will keep your attention during the flight, but you can leave them on the plane without feeling any guilt. Character development is practically nonexistant. But it's all about the plot, eh? The book starts with a bang: A gardener's wife is kidnapped, and the kidnappers want 2 million dollars. Obviously, a gardener doesn't have such money, but the kidnappers are serious - they shoot an innocent passerby just to prove it.

It all gets better and better from here. As I was reading I kept saying "hey Dean ,it'sa not bad, not bad at all!". Sure, the characters are bland, the villains are bland, but who cares, it's not a book that you'd read for school. The tension keeps increasing, and our gardener finds himself in situations that neither he nor the reader could have expected.

Until the end.

Koontz has been carefully building his house of cards to impress the reader, but at the very end he gets like "whew, who gives a crap anyway!" and blows the whole thing down. It crashes painfully and ruins the whole experience.
Because there's absolutely no need to even try to explain how the gardener got out of the mess he has made. He committed various things, illegal of course, and there are no repercussions. All we get is "3 YEARS LATER" 1 page epilogue where everyone is happy and sappy. Not one word is devoted to any sort of explanation. Which one might think would come, if there were whole pages devoted to Koontz's philosophy and the whole book was written in his "new" prose, short sentences being interrupted by paragraphs of some new-age bullshit. Yes, describing the inspirational grass is absolutely necessary, but satisfying the reader is not. You're wondering how Koontz will tie up all the loose ends? Here's your answer: he doesn't do it at all.

This could have been an enjoyable beach read, but Koontz decided to write another 50 books that year so he had to call it quits. Shame on you, Dean.

39 likes ·  鈭� flag

Sign into 欧宝娱乐 to see if any of your friends have read The Husband.
Sign In 禄

Reading Progress

Finished Reading
Started Reading
March 1, 2007 – Finished Reading
November 22, 2009 – Shelved
June 9, 2010 – Shelved as: owned-books
December 6, 2010 – Shelved as: own-in-paperback
May 4, 2011 – Shelved as: thriller-mystery-suspense
June 24, 2011 – Shelved as: read-in-2009

Comments Showing 1-38 of 38 (38 new)

dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha Maciek, you are determined to read all the Koontz book just to give them all bad ratings, aren't you? You do know he is a prolific author, right?


Maciek I already did read about 99& of them, about 60 titles. Some of the books he published during the last ten years are such unbelieveable crap - feel free to check out my shelf labeled, well, "crap". And it's bad, because I have a comparison with his previous writings - a lot of his books I gave four stars, some even five.


message 3: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha He wrote so many books, there's bound to be some bad ones. You thought Twilight was crap, too? LOL Not into PNR or YA?


Maciek They're not just bad, they're horrible! And when it's one after another then you might think someone got lazy.

Well, Twilight is crap. I'm all for YA and PNR but Stephenie Meyer is just a bored housewife who gets wet thinking about sparkling male vampires who are 17 years old. I mean if she was a man who got a boner for 17 year old sparkling female vampires someone would call the police. LOL!


message 5: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha Maciek, Maciek. The only reason you don't like it is that there's no sex in it, like in a bunch of other PNRs.


Maciek Nah, it's just a juvenile piece of crap. Creepy that it got published and polluted the mind of all 14 year old girls.


message 7: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha And middle-aged women, too. You hurt SM's feelings and she's crying all the way to the bank. LOL


Maciek LOL! The funny thing is that she's married. Wonder how her husband must feel about his wife fantasizing about young sparkling boys. Or young boys who look like werevolves.


Maciek PS:




message 10: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha LMAO! If you were married to a flabby middle-aged man, you'll be fantasizing about a young, nubile, slimly muscled vamp. And what's this trend of young guys going for older women? I get hit on by young guys, now. They say they're tired of girls their own age. That was a surprise for me. Maybe they're sick of having to go to Twilight movies with their girlfriends.


message 11: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha I've accepted that cougars are in. For all the young guys approaching me, I have prepared a verbal proficiency test. If they can write a paragraph that makes sense without texting abbreviations, I'll set a date.


Maciek You know, I think most women would rather fantasize about a young, nubile, slimly muscled man. I don't know why Twilight needs vampires if Meyer stripped them of all vampiric qualities.
You're not a Twilght mom (I hope), so most young guys feel safe approaching you because you know you won't pull a Meyer on them and start comparing them to Edward,LOL.


Maciek

Oh God.


message 14: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha LMAO!!! That's why I like younger guys. They have cute buns.

I'm definitely not a YA person. If those young guys know how scary I like my vamps, they're going to shrivel up and run away. I read HARD CORE erotica and horror books with lots of blood and flesh. Besides, I'm more into those giant, thick muscled with huge fangs werewolves, like in the Underworld movies. Those are my ideal werewolves.


Maciek You know, maybe you should refrain yourslf from telling this to people on the first meeting. You can always wait till they are in your lair, and then if they don't like it they'll always make a tasty dish.


message 16: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha Good advice, Maciek. If all the young guys have soft buns like the above, they would make a tender dish. Who wants those gnarly old guys? I'm going for young, tender flesh!


message 17: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha You are in your early 20's. Right, Maciek? That's not too far from cute, chubby teenage years, with tender flesh.


message 18: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha I bet your face still carries some baby fat.


Maciek My face is all that I have. As you can see from my picture, I'm a dismembered, hooded head floating on phantom beaches and screaming bad Koontz reviews to random strangers, who are in a way thrilled because such occurences don't happen very often.


message 20: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha That sounds really sad, like something out of Dante's Inferno. You're doomed to be a disembodied head floating on a beach moaning, "Koontz, Koontz..." If it was America, you might have apple pies thrown on that head of yours. America, Koontz and apple pie go together, you know.


Maciek I love apple pies! I wouldn't mind that at all. Om nom nom nom.


message 22: by Aloha (new) - added it

Aloha LMAO!


Tom LA Hi Maciek, did you read his latest, "Innocence"? Wondering if it's any better than some of his recent work


Maciek Hi Tabasco - I haven't read it, and I just checked how it's doing. It's just been published so the reviews are good so far, but I'd wait a bit and check out how it fares in a few months. The last few Koontz novels have been uniformly bad, and I also wonder how this one compares to them.


Tom LA I sadly agree, his latest stuff has been really weak. Just started Innocence, will let you know.


Maciek Looking forward to reading your review, Tabasco! I hope you'll like it. :)


message 27: by Lani (new) - rated it 2 stars

Lani This is EXACTLY how I felt. I was so angry at the lack of gratification because those answers were what kept me going.


Maciek I'm sorry to hear this, Lonnie! It's just not a good book at all.


Lynda Cordova Well, if it's Maciek reviewing Koontz, you know what it's gonna say.


Maciek I didn't know I was that famous. ;)


message 31: by MzArchr (new) - added it

MzArchr My very first Dean Koontz book, and your review summed up perfectly how I felt about this story. Not sure if I'll invest more time reading any of his other novels...


Maciek Monique wrote: "My very first Dean Koontz book, and your review summed up perfectly how I felt about this story. Not sure if I'll invest more time reading any of his other novels..."

Monique, I know this is reeeeeeaaallly late but I just saw your comment; thank you for commenting! His earlier books (from about 1985 to 1995) are much different and while not great they are definitely much better than this one. I have read a lot of them and while it's not anything I would revisit I don't think it was a complete waste of time.


Maciek Cillian wrote: "Lynda wrote: "Well, if it's Maciek reviewing Koontz, you know what it's gonna say."

Maciek, you have a stalker.
[spoilers removed]"


Oh Cillian, I hope not! Life is as complicated as it is! :)


Maciek Ha! You might be onto something. What if I were to use this experience to write a bestselling novel about it and then become incredibly successful? Surely nothing like this has ever been done before!


Maciek Indeed! Do you think the movie rights would sell? Ah...one can dream. :)


Maciek Haha, true. Let's not try that then! Writing reviews is way more entertaining anyway. :)


message 37: by Mir (new)

Mir "The hobgoblins of wind" reminds me of this poem which is mostly very good but contains the ridiculous lines "infinite gnomes of complete dream".


message 38: by Mole (new) - added it

Mole Mann being accompanied by hobgoblins of wind is just a common thing in Alabama. Gremlins of earth, though. That's when your in deep shit.


back to top