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The Taking By Dean Koontz Visit the offical Dean Koontz website   It all starts with the rain. It is sudden, it falls hard, and it is luminescent. Molly Sloan lies restless in her bed and cannot sleep. Lying beside her, Molly's husband, Neil, has no such worries and is sleeping soundly. At 2 am Molly gets up and goes downstairs planning to do some work on her new novel, but when she looks out of the window and notices the strange quality of the rain she stands a while and tries to figure out a reason for the downpour's luminosity. Molly is still pondering on this when she sees low, sinuous shapes moving under the window. The rain may be strange, but even stranger weather conditions await an unsuspecting world: blue snow, purple fog and, huge waterspouts that suck up seawater at a rate 200 000 gallons a minute. It's not just the weather that has gone to pot, though, as Molly and Neil soon discover. They encounter unusual animal and plant life. Not to mention the odd walking, talking dead person. The world has gone to hell overnight and it is up to Molly and Neil to try and figure out not only how to survive, but what has caused this calamity and what, if anything, can be done about it. I would not classify the The Taking as being a horror novel. I would say that it is more of a cross-genre piece - part horror and part sci-fi. Does it work? I would say so. I am not really a reader of science fiction and don't think I could be if I tried, but I didn't have any trouble finishing The Taking. When I put it down it was because I had reached the end of the book and not the end of my endurance. Having said that, although I enjoyed the book, it isn't one that I would want to read over and over again. It entertained me, but didn't enthral me. I also felt that the story developed an underlying preachy feel to it, towards the end of the book, which didn't really work for me. The main characters in the book are Molly and Neil, with Molly taking the leading role, and I found both characters very likable. I didn't really find any characters for me to love to hate. Which, is quite unusual, but the story managed just fine without any. I suppose Molly's father might be the guy that a lot of reader's would feel that way about, but I was quite indifferent to him. I recognized him as being one of the bad guys; he just didn't stir up much negative emotion in me. I read a paper back copy of The Taking and it ran to a little over 400 pages in length. I liked it, but I wasn't taken enough with it to say that I loved it. HOME