I've been reading Dean Koontz novels for decades. I am 55. I don't believe for ONE second that this book was written by Koontz alone. Perhaps the editor for this novel was a huge fan of a thesaurus. Perhaps Koontz decided to follow in King's footsteps, forcing the reader to skip 2 or 3 pages at a time whilst he rambles on about nothing important to the plot or character. Nonetheless, the beginning of this novel couldn't have been written by Koontz alone. Very disappointing.