After all of Brett's glowing reviews of Dean Koontz books, I had to give this series a try. I thought maybe it would be OK since it was written later than the horrible books Brett has been reading.

And in fact, the first half is pretty good. Quite good. It's exciting, it's engrossing, it has a reasonably intriguing (if not original) conceit, of a sort of grown-up Haley Joel "I see dead people" Osment. With some possible demons/parallel universe critters thrown in.

After a (again, pretty good) plot twist, though, it all goes to hell. LITERALLY. Well, not literally, actually. But the last third of the book so ridiculously stupid, which is extra annoying after such a strong start. After all the weird creepy ookiness at the beginning of the book you find out that... they're Satanists. The bad guys are just a completely flat, uninteresting, unrealistic band of Satanists who want to kill people just 'cause. And there is NO way to figure out who they are from anything that's in the story. There is no "Aha!" moment - just an "Oh... there is no way I could have figured that out" moment.

Too bad.

Unfortunately, there are still some mysteries left at the end of the book so I suppose I shall have to read the next one.