Finished Reading Koontz's Watchers

I just took a little break from my long journey through two different drawn-out fantasy series (Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth) and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire) and read one of Dean Koontz's novels.  I first came to know of the existence of Mr. Koontz gradually as I, while browsing through the Stephen King books in the fiction sections of various bookstores and libraries, would reach Koontz's books, signifying to me that I had gone too far on the shelf and needed to backtrack to King.  After a while, I decided to check out this prolific writer who seems destined to be compared, for better or for worse, to his more renown colleague by dint of alphabetic proximity.  At this writing I've only scratched the surface of his vast bibliography, having only read Shattered, Intensity, Midnight...and now Watchers.

In writing Watchers, Koontz sewed together three independent themes (eventually) into a cohesive story.  There was a man and woman coming together as a couple, each having to deal with broken pasts and heartache.  There was a top-secret government project with military applications involving the genetic manipulation of animals to raise their intelligence.  And then there was the good old typical psychopathic killer roaming around reaping mayhem everywhere he went. During the first part of the book, the man and woman were presented as separate plot lines, as was the killer.  It was interesting to surmise how the author would eventually bring them all together...but by Dean, he did!

Dean Koontz writes in clear, easy flowing language which  some may regard as shallow but which I appreciate and want to emulate as a writer.  There is such a thing as being too fancy...just get to the point of the story and make it vivid enough to me and allow my imagination to create the imagery.  Watchers accomplished this, and within the constraints of what I believe Koontz wanted to do with it, I think he was successful.  A "plus" was that the book was relatively short, a refreshing break from the fantasy sagas I'm reading...