The odor of wish fulfillment is a little too strong around this book, affording plenty of opportunities for Koontz to stop the story and climb up on his soapbox about everything from God to assisted suicide to dogs to smart girls to rich people to "bosomy" broken babes. In Koontz's world, there is no such thing as nuance, so anyone who accepts assisted suicide is a baby-killing proponent of eugenics... and ranted over so ham-handedly that readers might start to think even the strawman has a point. A cast of puppets too obviously play out an elaborate set piece, and you'll probably find yourself increasingly skimming as the book goes on.

The many threads of story are overwhelming and jarring, too many characters to really care about, but his worst crime against words comes right at the peak of the climax: the villain suddenly takes a time-out for a half-dozen pages to reflect on the others, his upbringing, his philosophizing and murders... and then dies.

Despite the overall low quality and lack of any human touch, I was quite entertained by Leilani's reparte. Her aplomb was the high point of the book to me, and I actually laughed over some of the deft banter. It's too bad that in comparison, every other character is a plodding, maudlin collection of cliche, and even her character gets sucked into the vortex of mediocrity a bit past the halfway point. If all of the conversation had been so sharp, I would have forgiven its silliness.

You'll be amazed to learn that dogs are the only beings in existence that can feel and see God all around them, being the chosen species, and by bonding with them you too can come to know the Lord! Just to round out the banality, there's an entire epilogue where our alien visitor saves the world by teaching his friends how to telepathically bond with their dogs, to be followed by all of humanity... just because Koontz hadn't yet managed to pummel his canine worship in sufficiently.

Oh well. It passed the time, right?