Thursday, October 2, 2014

Stephen King vs. Dean Koontz

*Originally published on 9/28/09


One author that is frequently compared to Stephen King is Dean Koontz.  Koontz has had quite a successful career as well, publishing plenty of novels, many of which make it on to the New York Times best seller list.  Still, when compared to Stephen King, Koontz usually comes up second.

I would agree, however, it should be noted that I haven't read a whole lot of Koontz's work.  I've only read two of his books to date so I don't really feel like I can make a fair comparison.  I could say that I'd choose King over Koontz, but I haven't read enough of the man's work to make a fair assessment of his writing ability.  It's like the Xbox 360/PS3 debate.  I'll say Xbox, but our PS3 is basically a blu-ray player.  The only PS3 game we have is Metal Gear Solid 4 so I can't really judge the PS3 accurately.

The first book wasn't all that good.  For the life of me, I couldn't remember the title.  It had something to do with Dr. Moreau style genetic engineering.  I even went to Wikipedia hoping one of the titles would pop out and refresh my memory.  Still, I got nothing.  I had to go through and click random titles until I finally found it.  The book was called Midnight.  I'm listing this book first, but I actually read this one second.  I figured it would be better to start with the bad and end with the good.

The second Koontz book I read was Phantoms, and this book is awesome.  I highly recommend this one.  The movie wasn't very good (though Affleck was the bomb), but that happens a lot.  The Relic and The Lost World were both great books that were turned into bad movies so hopefully you don't use that as a litmus test because movie producers can botch it rather easily.

You guys already know what King books I have and have read so there's no need to go into that again.  Suffice it to say, it's a lot more than two.

If you handed me a copy of It and a copy of Phantoms and told me to pick one, I would probably go with It, but you'd get a great read out of either one.  Koontz is batting 500 so far in my book and that's not too shabby.   He's definitely a writer worth checking out.

Right now I'm up to my neck in books to read so it will be awhile before I get a chance to read other Koontz books.  Later (much later) on down the line I may do that just to get a better idea on how good a writer Koontz is.  If nothing else, it will give me another writer to read.  Even Stephen (laugh!) King suggests reading a lot from a variety of different authors so it's not like King fans would be committing some act of betrayal.

While there are a few mitigating circumstances, ultimately (though not surprisingly) I will have to support the king.


Bah! Not that king.

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