Innocence is fairly standard Koontz, but perhaps better than he’s written these last several years. It’s more like old-style Koontz, which I prefer. Typically, the genre is kind of mixed, more or less post-apocalyptic with paranormal and some horror thrown in or thereabouts.
If you like Koontz, you will probably really like this book.
There were two things that irritated me. One is Koontz’ use of “rare words”. Something he’s somewhat known for. (along with Diana Gabaldon) Like her, someone needs to take his thesaurus away from him and slap him upside the head with it.
I have a pretty large vocabulary, probably bigger than 98%+ of the population. So if there is a word that I have never seen or heard of before, much less know the meaning of, that is probably a word that does not need to be used. It wouldn’t be too bad if it was a rare occurrence, but there were a least a couple of dozen instances, if not more. (sure, it enlarges my vocabulary, but at a too-high price)
I don’t know why Koontz feels the need to do that. It’s really uncalled for and it hurts the reading experience. Because you’re reading along, immersed in the story, enjoying it, and *BANG*, you hit one of these words and it takes you out of the story. It is kind of nice that Kindle has a dictionary where you can look up the meaning of the words, although some weren’t even in that. Someone needs to strongly encourage him to knock it off! Please!
The other thing that increasingly irritated me as the story progressed is that one of the characters is supposedly “so ugly” that it caused people to attack him and try to kill him, so he kept his face hidden and stayed away from people. Which doesn’t really make sense, because how could someone be that ugly? But it’s explained toward the end, and then it all made sense. It probably could have used some foreshadowing or something, rather than the continuing way it was done. Maybe there was and I missed it. Or maybe it was better as a reveal at “the end”.
It also had an ending that I didn’t expect. So that was kind of a nice surprise. (it was perhaps a little “religiousy”, but I could stomach it – it seems that Koontz has either “found God” these last several years or something like that is going on)
I wish Koontz would write more like this. Maybe he’s finally gotten out of his “slump”. (which worsened when and after his dog died)