Dan Koontz

I too kept thinking it was a Dean Koontz book, and that is ok, because I would have just passed over it and missed out otherwise. If you want to know how the writing is, look to your right and see how the author himself describes it - good story telling, but not highly developed writing. And that isn't a slam at all - this is the kind of book I like to read in between other things, like an after dinner mint. I found the overall concept of the book very interesting, and like other readers, I really looked forward to getting back to it and stayed up way past my bedtime tonight finishing it. Not something that happens very often with my book club books...will keep my eye out for future works.… (mais)

I read this as an ebook, purchased from Amazon for 99 cents. It's not worth much more than that.

The story is about a company that begins selling shares in the future earnings of young children (orphans) who have been identified as gifted. A couple of the children realize what is going on, and, as they grow up, they try to find a way to bring the company down.

This book may have had some potential had the author done some real research. Dan Koontz (not to be confused with the real writer, Dean Koontz) is a neurologist, so we can assume he's intelligent, but very little of that brain power is put to use in creating a plausible story.

It seems to escape the author that the idea of IPO-ing children (fyi - an IPO is an "initial public offering," whereby a company first issues shares in itself to the investing public) simply wouldn't be possible, for a number of reasons: shares of a company imply ownership of the company - you cannot buy/own human beings (has something to do with a thing called slavery, I think); even the natural parents of a child are legally restricted in what they can do with their child's earnings - but Koontz's company ("Avillage" - what a hokey name, as in "it takes . . . ") has control of 80% of the child's earnings, apparently for the child's entire life; any IPO has to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the SEC would not allow a human to be purchased through an IPO - at least not a child, and not by someone other than the person him/herself.

What is simply ignorant is that in the first chapter, the chairman of Avillage is on TV debating a scholar about the ethics of IPO-ing children, and the scholar can do nothing but sputter and fume, with nothing to say. I don't know how many intelligent people Mr. Koontz knows, but if this is the best he can do to challenge the notion of selling human beings, I must make sure not to seek him out for treatment. The book might have been half-way interesting had he presented serious arguments and made some effort to refute them.

Although the book does become slightly interesting at the end, every chapter is totally contrived (Koontz knows that kidnapping someone and transporting them over state lines is a federal crime - one of the characters resorts to this ploy to gain revenge on the company - but he doesn't know that slavery is both illegal and immoral???). There is zero character development, zero coherence to the plot line, and zero plausibility - even from a fictional perspective.

I get the impression that Koontz - after a long day of treating people's brains - needed to relax with a harmless hobby; thus, a lazily conceived, poorly written, novel. Too bad he had to decide to inflict it on the reading public.… (mais)