Elsewhere – Dean Koontz
Since his wife, Michelle, left seven years ago, Jeffy Coltrane has worked to maintain a normal life for himself and his eleven-year-old daughter, Amity, in Southern California. It’s a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.
Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object-something he calls “the key to everything” – and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can’t help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?
Jeffy and Amity aren’t the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.
My Review of Elsewhere
Mr Koontz and I don’t always get along. In fact I have probably put down more of his work than I have picked up. A few of his books were entertaining enough. I tried Odd Thomas but it just wasn’t for me. So happily surprised when I found this one at my door and I read the back. Absolutely up my alley!
Jeffy and his 11-year-old daughter Amity are still grieving after Jeffy’s wife Michelle walked out on them 7 years ago. Amity never got to know her mother and they both hope that she will enter their lives again one day. They make friends with an old homeless man named Ed who appears at their doorstep one evening and announces that people are after him and he gives Jeffy a small package, tells him never to open it, and hide it so that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. He claims it is the “Key to everything”. So what do you do when you are automatically told not to do something… He opens up the package to find a small device. Luckily he listens to Ed and hides it because his house is soon inundated with creepy government guys searching for Ed and the device. After they leave Jeffy and Amity accidentally activate it and next thing you know they are plunged into parallel worlds and an adventure they didn’t see coming. And more importantly, will they be able to see Michelle again after all?
One thing I just have to comment on about this book and a lot of Koontz writing… He is really bad at portraying children. I don’t know where he gets his ideas of inner dialogue from, but he just needs to stop writing as children. It wasn’t as bad as “what the night knows” but it was still extremely cringeworthy.
The perspective shifts so abruptly at times it is jarring, and I got really confused as to which character I was reading about.
However it had a great premise, reminiscent of Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, but not done as well. It had SO MUCH POTENTIAL! SO many worlds that they could have explored. I felt like a LOT of it was wasted.
However, I still really enjoyed the meat of it. Once the story got going it was enthralling and I was up til 2am reading it! I just loved the premise and loved reading about the other worlds and terrors that awaited them! I just wish there was MORE. I never thought I would say that I wished a Koontz book was longer, but I felt like he could have just done more with it.
He knows how to write bad guys pretty well, Falkirk was a crazy SOB! And the action scenes were pretty good.
I wasn’t keen on the ending, it was like he wanted everything wrapped up in a package and again felt a bit like wasted potential.
Would I recommend it?
Look, I had a lot to complain about, but ultimately I was up til 2am reading it! I really enjoyed it! I do think it could have gone much higher than 3.5 if he had just done a little more with the alternate worlds. But I didn’t have any trouble reading it!
(3.5 / 5)
Many thanks to Harper Collins Australia for sending me a copy of Elsewhere to read. I was under no obligation to review and all thoughts are my own.
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