The Silent Corner, by Dean Koontz- A Review Sort Of...

Image courtesy of
Google from Amazon

The first Dean Koontz book I read was By the Light of the Moon, published in 2002. I’m not a big fan of horror, guts, or gore so the fact that this book captured my attention is strange enough in and of itself. 

And the book is even stranger.  Here’s the gist:

It begins with a “mad scientist/doctor” injecting a serum into unsuspecting strangers. He tells them, while they’re tied up, ‘Either you’ll die (from the injection) or you and your world will become astounding.’ 

Well the characters, of course, do not die. (Else no book, right?) They gain some super-human skills from the serum injection that the bad guys are willing to kill them over. (They already off'd the doc.) 

My favorite character in this book is the autistic adult (yet younger) brother of the main character. Unbeknownst to big brother, little brother has also been injected and gains the ability to time travel, which he calls Folding. Their brother-to-brother conversations are charming and take the edge off my “nervous scardy” for a little while.

The Silent Corner, by
Dean Koontz

Fast forward fifteen years. Today I just finished our book club pick, The Silent Corner, recently released by Dean Koontz. FBI agent, Jane Hawk, (Koontz’s newest hero) is searching for some answers. The untimely death of her husband and many other unlikely victims have caused Jane to “go rogue” from the Agency.

This story is scary, not because of zombies, evil spirits, aliens, or supernatural events- there is none of that in this book- but instead because of its possibility of being very, very real.

Point number one: The “dark web” is in this story. – Just this week on the national news a report from Italy about a young female model being abducted and nearly sold into human trafficking ON the dark web. It’s a real thing with real bad dudes. *

 A nanobot on a blood cell. Image courtesy of Google.

Point number two: Nanotechnology plays a prominent part in this book. -Also real. Science, technology, and medicine all wrapped into one. Its implications are nothing short of miraculous. Little machines in our bodies that fight cancer or brain tumors or whatever. Machines the size of molecules. **  

Except in The Silent Corner nanotechnology takes a horrible turn. Bad guys are using the technology to alter the human brain. Make people do what they wouldn’t do.  All sorts of shit hits the fan.

Image courtesy of Google.

As a writer myself, I loved several things Mr. Koontz did in this story. First, every story worth its salt has a protagonist that has a need. Check.
Also, every major character has a back story that motivates what they do. Check. 
Good stories don’t have random characters that  do nothing to move the story forward. Check. (Homeless guy on page 34 becomes a player later in the story.) 
And, finally; Beautiful language does not a story make. Tell the story and the language will emerge. Like this: 

“ Together…they ascended on foot through a meadow carpeted with a variety of grasses and decorated with formations of chaparral lily in early bloom. Rabbits dining on sweet grass hopped away from them or sat up on their hindquarters to watch them pass. Cicadas sang, and orange butterflies with narrow dark margins on their wings took flight.”

Poetic, huh? I can see it, feel it. I know where the characters are. Oh, and I know all hell is about to break loose soon. (Shout out to Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius. Click here to read my post about this book.) 

Inside the book jacket of
The Silent Corner.

The next Jane Hawk story, The Whispering Room, will be released November 21, 2017.

Jane won some hefty battles in The Silent Corner, but she didn’t win the war. I hope to find out if Jane conquers this particular evil group, if she has it out with her estranged father, whom she’s “called out” after many years of no contact, if Dougal will to be her side-kick or backer, and how her son Travis is fairing.

I'd love some reading suggestions. What have you been reading lately?

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine

* http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-model-kidnapped-italy-dark-web-20170807-story.html

** https://www.theguardian.com/science/nanotechnology

Girls Camp

In last week's post I talked about some of my book club’s antics and how I was about to host a girls’ only camp out. When planning the camp out, I told the ladies that my husband said he would be willing to camp a couple of acres away from us, if they thought they would feel more comfortable knowing a man was nearby. The answer was a resounding NO! (But thanks anyway.)

Girls just wanna have fun, right? So no men allowed! (One of the 20-something sons of the group also volunteered to be The Man on Sight. He was vetoed too.)

So we were on our own. And we had fun.

Seven of eight.
Maybe we should have brought a selfie stick!

The first thing we did was unpack a shit-load of food and drink. Each of us brought enough for all of us. That’s one thing about this book club; we will never die of hunger or thirst. Embarrassment? Yes. Laughing? Maybe.

After we had everything organized, we mixed a walk-about-drink. Each of us with our favorite. Gin Bucket, Cape Cod, Captain and diet, beer, and wine.  When everyone had a drink and a bottle of water we headed for the woods.

 

Walk and talk!

The funny and cool thing to me was that, even though there were eight of us (and two were girls I invited- new to the group) everyone walked in two’s and three’s and just chatted away.  Every now and then we would stop to look at something, then the groups would re-organize in a different way and the talking would go on. I loved that my two friends were brought into the fold so easily.

Far left in orange shorts. Bags Tourney.

After a nice long walk we went back to the shed (cabin would be too fancy of a word for the building) and had lunch. Pulled pork, pasta salad and Papa’s Pretzels--YUM!

Next on our agenda (there really was NO agenda) was a round of Tournament Bags. Two games and the winners of each of those games played for the championship. Trash talk and cat calls were the prize.

We sat in the shade and talked about the book we’d read the past month, Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets. One of the ladies in our group actually wore orange shorts because the heroine in the story left her blaze orange behind, and it was a near fatal mistake for her.

Shake, shake, shake!

We made camp ice cream. Yep. Cream-based recipe in a sandwich bag inside a gallon bag filled with ice and salt.  We each had a baggie mixture to shake, shake, shake to Pitbull’s and the Ying Yang Twins’ song, Shake. For 10 minutes and frost bit fingers we shaked- um- shook. The ice cream was as good as it was fun to make. Topped with fresh strawberries, uumm, uumm.

Near our camping land is a cemetery. It’s an old, old cemetery. I’ve visited there before so I knew many of the stones dated back to the early 1800’s.  One of the girls said she’d like to visit it. So off we went. Eight jabbering, laughing women suddenly, without preplanning, whispered the whole time we were in the cemetery. We could see by the old markers that in some cases, several members of one family were wiped out in a very short time. We wondered if it was because of illnesses that we so easily treat now with antibiotics. Some of the markers were so worn or covered with dried moss that they were illegible.

As we headed back to our campsite, one of the girls said to me, “You know what? Don’t laugh at me, but I think those people buried there were smiling because we visited them.”

I won’t laugh at you. I can agree with you.

 “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” – Ecclesiastes 12:7

In my next post I will talk about camping after dark…

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine

Teach Me, Entertain Me

One Thousand White Women
By Jim Fergus

I love reading historical fiction.  You know why? Because I learn so much real history through the events of the story.  Historical fiction is the kind of story that uses real incidents to help tell a make believe story.  Oftentimes, characters in the story are famous or infamous people from history. However, the characters are more than likely doing and saying things created in the author’s imagination.

Right now I’m reading One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus. This is a fiction, or or make-believe, story that was created based on a true event. In this story Little Wolf (a real person), Chief of Northern Cheyenne Nation, goes to Washington DC in the latter-part 1800’s to talk with President Grant about various treaty proposals (also true).  During conversations/negotiations, it is rumored that the chief suggested the US Army supply the Cheyenne Nation with 1,000 white women to be the brides of 1,000 warriors. The chief thought that by mixing the races, the whites and natives would gain wisdom of each other’s culture and that by doing so, cultivate peace between the People and white men. (Again, this has NOT been verified, but rather is a rumor or wives’ tale. However, it was all that was needed to spark a story idea for the author.) Of course if it really was suggested, it was denied by the U.S. government.

The novel is rich in history of daily life on the plains for both natives and pioneers. But, despite the historical events (if you’re not into history), an entertaining story has been created about an eclectic group of women who volunteer to live with the Cheyenne people and the problems they encounter being from two distinctly different cultures and having no common language.

One Thousand White Women was written from the point of view of a woman named Mary Dodd. It was written as if she were keeping a journal and writing letters to her relatives back home. It sounded so convincingly real that I had to google Mary Dodd to find out!

If you like “racy” and irreverent/funny stories, you’ll like this one.

Share with me what you’re reading. Also, tell me why you’re reading it. I love talking about books!

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself!

~Nadine

http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.gen.022

http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/25629