Fear Nothing - Dean Koontz

I grabbed Fear Nothing with relish as soon as I saw it on the library shelves. Dean Koontz became my favourite horror storywriter a few years ago and I looked forward to reading one of the few books of his that I hadn't already read.

Fear Nothing centres around 28 year old writer Christopher Snow who was born with a rare genetic disorder called Xeroderma Pigmentosum. His condition means that his skin and eyes are extremely sensitive ...
...obstacle for Chris is the fear that Bobby or Sasha will be harmed if he continues to search for the truth, or that they may have changed too.

I enjoyed reading Fear Nothing right from the very first paragraph until the quite satisfactory ending. Dean Koontz is a superb writer who knows how to draw you in straight away and makes me want to devour every word. He has done this time after time for me with excellent novels like Shattered, ... more

I grabbed Fear Nothing with relish as soon as I saw it on the library shelves. Dean Koontz became my favourite horror storywriter a few years ago and I looked forward to reading one of the few books of his that I hadn't already read.

Fear Nothing centres around 28 year old writer Christopher Snow who was born with a rare genetic disorder called Xeroderma Pigmentosum. His condition means that his skin and eyes are extremely sensitive to light and especially sunlight that can cause irreparable cancerous damage to him. Because of this Chris lives his life at night in Moonlight Bay and like a vampire goes to bed at sunrise. Even artificial light is damaging to him and he has to wear special extra strong sunglasses.

The novel starts on the evening of his father’s death. Chris goes to the hospital where the lights are thoughtfully dimmed on his entry and is with his father when he dies. His sorrow is more poignant when you learn that his mother had died in a car accident 2 years earlier and that apart from his friends he has nobody to help him to bridge the gap between the normal day time world and his twilight one.

Before he leaves the hospital he is shocked to discover that his fathers body has been switched with that of a murdered hitchhiker and Chris spends the rest of the night endangering himself by searching for answers to the mystery that unfolds around Moonlight Bay.

He finds people who have changed in themselves making it hard for him to know who to trust. A clever cat comes to his aid while he is trying to escape from being hunted down. We meet his dog Orson who is an Orson Welles fan and reveals an intelligence that dogs don’t normally have. Then there are rhesus monkeys with golden eyes that are nastier and cleverer than normal monkeys. He suspects that the strangeness and change around him has something to do with an ex government research centre Fort Wyvern, where his mother worked as a genetic scientist before she died. His findings make him wonder if her death was really an accident and touch upon the problems that can be caused by genetic research.

Apart from Chris and his adorable mutt Orson the other two main characters are his girlfriend Sasha and best friend Bobby. Sasha is a night DJ at the local radio station and Bobby lives in a house on the beach and runs a lucrative business providing information about where the best waves for surfing are going to be and when. They don’t come into the story much at first but another obstacle for Chris is the fear that Bobby or Sasha will be harmed if he continues to search for the truth, or that they may have changed too.

I enjoyed reading Fear Nothing right from the very first paragraph until the quite satisfactory ending. Dean Koontz is a superb writer who knows how to draw you in straight away and makes me want to devour every word. He has done this time after time for me with excellent novels like Shattered, Lightning, Midnight, The Door To December, Hideaway, The Funhouse and Demon Seed. As with his other best selling novels Dean creates tension in every chapter of Fear Nothing and uses his imagination to create gripping unreal storylines that become real in your imagination for a short time. Added to that there were touches of humour involving the dog Orson that made me smile at the same time as feeling the suspense.

Unlike his other novels Koontz has added an extra dimension by writing it in a first person style that works well for this novel. We get into the mind of Christopher Snow and can feel his thoughts and fears as each new revelation or obstacle comes along. He is very laid back when you consider the difficulties that XP causes him in normal life, never mind the 2 horrific nights that the story centres around. He has learned to accept his disorder and make the most of what he can do in life despite the restrictions that his condition imposes.

I felt that Dean Koontz did well introducing this character. Apart from the empathy that you feel with Chris his disorder creates extra obstacles in his search for the truth and trying to escape from the villains around him. He can’t go just anywhere in Moonlight Bay because of the hampering light but those who pursue him can. His matter of factness and lack of frustration at his limitations can seem quite strange but then I realised that I find the same qualities in most people with disabilities and the character became more lifelike to me.

I was kept guessing at the ending which was as I said quite satisfactory. Not everything was resolved which would be frustrating if I didn’t know that Fear Nothing was the first novel in a trilogy and the second one Seize The Night was published a year after Fear Nothing in 1999.

Fear Nothing is listed on Amazon for £5.59. Or it is available together with the second part of the trilogy Seize The Night for £11.18

I can’t find any details of the third novel in the trilogy, but perhaps that hasn’t been written yet.
 

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