FROM AMAZON: Grady Adams lives a simple, solitary life deep in the Colorado mountains. Here the 35-year-old carpenter works out of a converted barn, crafting exquisite one-of-a-kind furniture. There's little about this strong yet gentle man to suggest the experiences that have alienated him from the contemporary world. But that is about to change.

One day, while hiking, Grady spots a pair of stunningly beautiful furred animals unlike anything he's ever seen. They flee the instant they detect his presence, but the mystery of that brief encounter remains. In the days ahead, Grady will approach the creatures again, gaining their trust but coming no closer to solving their mystery. For this he enlists the help of an old friend, veterinarian Camellia "Cammy" Rivers, who, in turn, is stunned - and enchanted - by Grady's new "pets." But while Grady and Cammy carefully observe these enigmatic animals for clues to their origin, they, too, are being watched.

Soon Grady's home and hundreds of square miles of surrounding wilderness will be placed under quarantine by Homeland Security. And Grady, Cammy, and the two creatures they've come to feel they must protect at all costs find themselves virtual prisoners - and the unwilling focus of an army of biologists, naturalists, and research scientists. But it's a stunning event no one could have foreseen that convinces Grady and Cammy to do the unthinkable: to escape with the two creatures on a riveting race for freedom. ( )

Definitely not one of my favorite books by Koontz. The basic storyline was interesting but there were a few ones that I felt were unneeded and even at the end was wondering why they were included.
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Koontz started getting really sloppy a while ago, and this one is VERY sloppy. ( )

Oh dear. Where do I begin. First of all, trying to pull off multiple converging character storylines in a book this size rarely works, and in this book it did not work. Nearly every character of focus ended up being the ridiculous complication in someone else's storyline, sometimes with only a momentary interaction that made me wonder why half of these people were even in the book. Cammy is the only character who had any depth at all, and even she wasn't well developed. One or two of the other characters were promising but left me wanting more information.

Two very different characters had names starting with the same letters, causing me to be confused during a few scene changes. New characters are introduced far too late in the book. It seemed like the action didn't start till way after the halfway point. The "big reveal" was... lame. The idea had promise but the execution was lacking. The "big standoff" was so anticlimactic it was silly.

Feds come in with guns blazing only to stop when they realize the story has broken on TV? Really? With no word from anyone? Just... give up? And no consequences or follow up on what Cammy, Grady and Lamar did?

I've been a Dean Koontz fan for a long time, but this just wasn't a very good book. It felt like he was just trying too hard.
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Leest vlot maar einde viel fel tegen ( )