{"id":16368,"date":"2022-02-08T18:46:21","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T23:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16368"},"modified":"2022-02-08T18:46:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T23:46:21","slug":"quicksilver-by-dean-koontz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16368","title":{"rendered":"‘Quicksilver,’ by Dean Koontz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To create good fiction, you have to like people enough to want to write about the human condition\u2014but close yourself alone in a room for a large part of your life to get the job done right. It\u2019s as if a wrestler forsook the ring in favor of getting his own head in an armlock and slamming himself into walls for a few hours every day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Dean Koontz\u2019s umpteenth novel<\/strong> is Quicksilver<\/a><\/em>. I wouldn\u2019t put it on the highest tier of his works, but it\u2019s quality, patented Koontz all the way through, and all the expected pleasures are present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quinn Quicksilver is a young man living in Phoenix. He is an orphan, found abandoned as a baby in a basket on a highway median and raised by loving nuns in an orphanage. Now he works as a writer for a small magazine, and is entirely unremarkable \u2013 except for a \u201cstrange magnetism\u201d that sometimes draws him to locations where he finds valuable things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when, one day, he finds a couple of tough guys from a covert government agency sitting on either side of him in a diner, about to abduct him, he manages to escape out the back and successfully get away by car. Following his strange magnetism, he drives to an abandoned farm, where he\u2019s just in time to rescue a kidnapped old man and his granddaughter \u2013 the most beautiful girl he\u2019s ever seen. They\u2019re grateful but not surprised by his arrival. They\u2019ve been expecting him, they say. On top of that, they inform him that he\u2019s going to marry the granddaughter. If they survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But first, they have a mission to complete. There\u2019s a secret compound in the desert where a reclusive billionaire is running a sex cult. Joined by one further team member and a dog, they set their course to find the billionaire and rescue his victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beautiful prose. Goofy humor. Action with a supernatural element. And the occasional moment of transcendence. That\u2019s what we buy Koontz books for, and it\u2019s all there in Quicksilver<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also a lesson on theodicy and free will, at no extra charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To create good fiction, you have to like people enough to want to write about the human condition\u2014but close yourself alone in a room for a large part of your life to get the job done right. It\u2019s as if a wrestler forsook the ring in favor of getting his own head in an armlock … Continue reading ‘Quicksilver,’ by Dean Koontz<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[706,2285,4056],"class_list":["post-16368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-dean-koontz","tag-quicksilver","tag-quinn-quicksilver"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16369,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16368\/revisions\/16369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}