Dean Koontz - "Relentless"

Let me first say I have read everything I could find from Dean Koontz and I have enjoyed most of them.

"Relentless", Koontz's most recent novel, is contrived crap. I have not even finished it yet, I can barely pick it up now. The main reason is the contrived plot of a book critic that hunts the writer MC and his family and makes their life misserable. The reason that seems contrived, is because it it something that a writer would worry about and not the general public.

Another aspect I have found irritating in recent novels by Koontz is his cutesy dialogue and obsession with dogs. I don't mind cutesy or witty dialogue on occassion or even animals as characters, but Koontz is falling back to these things more so than not. The dog issue is annoying because he generally anthropormorphisizes the animal, makes it have human characteristics to certain extent. The dialogue is almost always this back forth witty sort that makes me think Koontz is following some sort of formula for dialogue, just going a tad too far in this approach and using it too much.

This is the first book by Koontz that I am considering just giving to the library and not finishing. He has mastered some areas of story telling, but I think his pace of releasing books is beginning to catch up with him and result is this last "Relentless" effort at formula.

What are your thoughts on either this book or Koontz's writing?

I thought the Odd Thomas series was fine but it was sort of the beginning of the "Cutesy Dialogue" trend. I just don't remember his earlier books being so cutesy. I don't mind that stuff on occassion, but now it is a trend.

As far as the description thing, in a recent book he went for several pages describing just ONE thing and it wasn't central to the book, it was a vision a character had. It was the book (I am bad with titles sometimes) about the doctor running around injecting people with an experimental drug and one of the characters was Autistic. Cutesy dialogue in that book too.