Quicksilver by Dean Koontz (2022) Even if it's still early in the year, we think this book may end up as one the most schizophrenic, split-personality experiences of the entirety of 2022......
There's two books here.......and they don't read like the same guy wrote them.
Let's start by saying the first half of "Quicksilver" is a 5 star, bell-ringin', grab-you-by-lapels action adventure.....and it's laced with a knowing, razor wit that kept us smiling, nodding and even laughing out loud at times.
The first half is on fire......and all we kept thinking as we read it was.....if the whole book reads like this, we could end up declaring this the most fun book we've cracked open all year!
Deep, deep sigh........no, not to be.
Our hero, Quinn Quicksilver, has quite the backstory for a young, ordinary, feature writer for an Arizona magazine. Found as an abandoned baby on a highway, he was raised from infant to adult in a Catholic orphanage run by nuns.
Then one day, for some unknown reason, he's accosted by a couple of threatening Men In Black goons working for a vast secret government agency. You know the group......loads of dark suited guys with an inexhaustible supply of SUVs, helicopters, drones, weaponry......and night vision goggles.
On the run from the ominous goon forces, Quinn accidentally rescues two kindred fugitives also on the MIB hit list - Bridget, a kickass manic-pixie dreamgirl and her ornery but lovable gramps, Sparky. Seems that Quinn and Bridget possess some supernatural powers, due to the fact their long lost mothers might've been impregnated by other-worldly forces.....(kind of like the "Village Of The Danmed" kiddies).
Their mixture of human and non-human DNA doesn't sit well with the faceless government forces......so the chase is on. As the MIB goons hunt them down, Quinn and Bridget go hunting for their own origin stories.....
The first half of the book sets all of this up in a fast, funny narrative..... and man oh man were we ever lovin every page of it.....
Until the second half, when it careens so far off the rails, we couldn't believe we were still in the middle of the same book we started out with.
To explain the dawn of Quinn and Bridget, Koontz drags in a tedious, elaborate mythology that sounds left over from multiple YA fantasy novels. He then uses this labored myth-making as an excuse to slow the book's pace down to a deadly crawl, the better to fill up the pages with his endless preaching of his overall world view.
And then Koontz ditches the duels with a MIBs to send his heroes on a quest to take down the spectacular lair of a vile, human trafficking cult leader, who's like some insane mash-up of Jeffrey Epstein, Rev. Jim Jones and a Bond villain.
We hated, hated, hated the second half of this book......senseless, slow, ridiculous every step of the way, and clogged to the max with Koontz's impenetrable bloviating.
But since we did thoroughly enjoy the initial chapters, we'll leave the rating at 2 stars (**) ......and that's for the first half only. Once the book takes its fatal plunge in Koontz's tiresome blah-blah-blahing, it's zero (0) stars from its midpoint to the rushed, abrupt, here-comes-the sequel finish.
Really for hardcore Koontz fans only. Everyone else......don't say we didn't warn you. Proceed with hazmat caution........
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