The original version of Phantoms was written in 1983. I’ve read plenty of Koontz’ books, but the real fan when I was growing up was my sister, who read a ton of them. I’ve been challenged to write horror elements into a book and I’ve been doing research, including reading horror-esque books, in preparation.
Lots of people say Phantoms is the scariest book that Koontz ever wrote. He says he writes suspense, not horror, but this came highly recommended.
Sorry, I didn’t really like it. Here’s why.
I haven’t done this a lot, not sure how much I will in the future, but recently, I decided to get through the huge backlog of books that I’ve had sitting around. Mostly, that’s been done by cutting the majority of social media out of my life because it’s just crap, so I went back to reading for a couple of hours a day instead of staring at a screen. Best decision I’ve made recently. So I’ve made it through a bunch of books in the last couple of weeks, but this time, I wanted to talk about Starter Villain, a 2023 novel by John Scalzi. Was it any good? Let’s find out.
