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Koontz has again produced a long novel, weighing in at nearly 600 pages, mixing genres and creating interesting characters. Here, Micky Bellsong meets a young girl named Leilani. Leilani's stepfather believes that aliens will come for her by her tenth birthday and either heal her illnesses or take her away. However, Micky learns that Leilani's brother has also 'gone to the stars'. When the family disappears, Micky decides that she has to track them down and save Leilani. Koontz's novels have recently grown longer and longer. However, as he becomes more verbose, it takes a lot more time for the story to play out. With 'False Memory', it took too long for the story to get going and I would level the same criticism here. With 'From The Corner Of His Eye', he filled all the space adequately, but it is almost four hundred pages into 'One Door Away From Heaven' before we actually see some action. Koontz has always been capable of creating very interesting characters and this book is no exception. Leilani and Curtis are particularly superb and some of the humour with Aunt Geneva is enough to make the reader laugh out loud. However, with the enemy of the story, I feel that we just do not see enough of him. Koontz goes to great lengths to tell us about his motivations, his ideas and his behaviour, but we see very little from within him. In 'From The Corner Of His Eye', we see a lot of the story through the eyes of the enemy and I would have liked to see that reproduced here. Dogs always play a large role in Koontz novels and canine lovers will not be disappointed here. The dog is very important in this story and we hear a lot about it. However, there are only a couple of chuffs for which the author is famous. In fact, some of the words that Koontz employed got somewhat repetitive from book to book, but that has changed here and his prose is intriguing and will hook the reader easily. Overall, 'One Door Away From Heaven' is an enjoyable, interesting read. It takes some time to get through, but when you do, you will be satisfied. This is not the best of Koontz's works to date, but it is a pleasurable read that Koontz fans will enjoy. Editor's note: This is a review of the UK edition, published by Headline and available from Crime in Store, London.  -
Reviewed by Luke Croll, February 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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