{"id":18495,"date":"2023-07-21T20:00:20","date_gmt":"2023-07-22T00:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18495"},"modified":"2023-07-21T20:00:20","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T00:00:20","slug":"after-death-by-dean-koontz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18495","title":{"rendered":"‘After Death,’ by Dean Koontz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Duty is based on something more profound than hope, on faith that what is too wrong to endure will be made right, rectified by a system of justice that underlies all of nature, far beneath the subatomic level, a system that may right a wrong in a day or through the passage of time or outside of time. The schedule isn\u2019t ours to protest or endorse. His duty is to act with all the skill and wisdom he possesses, not with hope but with conviction.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Rejoice! <\/strong>We have a new Dean Koontz book. He just keeps rolling them out \u2013 always good, sometimes exceptional. After Death<\/a><\/em> is somewhat reminiscent of Koontz\u2019 recent series of novellas about a character called Nameless. But it handles similar concepts in a different way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Mace was dead, and is alive again. It wasn\u2019t a miracle in the religious sense, but it still may change the world. Michael was head of security at Beautification Research, a company that was ostensibly a cosmetics business but actually did top-secret genetic and nanotech research. When an accidental leak kills everyone in the building, Michael dies with all the rest. But then he wakes up. And now he\u2019s changed. He has new powers that give him mental access to all the information on the internet. No firewall can stop him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first item on his agenda is to help a single mother named Nina Dozier and her son John. Michael\u2019s best friend and co-worker Shelby was very fond of them, and probably would have courted her if he\u2019d lived. They\u2019re in danger from John\u2019s natural father, a gang lord who\u2019s decided it\u2019s time to claim his son and make him his successor. Nina will have to be taught a lesson too, for dissing him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s a larger danger than that. It comes from the Internal Security Agency, the corrupt law enforcement body that supports the corrupt bureaucracy now running the country. Their chief agent is a psychopath named Duran Calaphas, an efficient killer but increasingly delusional. He takes Michael\u2019s appearance as a personal sign for him, giving him a worthy foe he must destroy in order to achieve his grandiose personal destiny. Without loyalty to anyone or anything but himself, Calaphas will stop at nothing, destroy anything, to kill Michael Mace. And his companions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Koontz hits every note precisely, manipulates the reader with the deft hand of a master. It\u2019s beautiful to behold. Especially delightful (for me) was one amazing plot twist unlike anything I\u2019d ever read before (it involves storytelling). A delightful moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My only quibble (spoiler alert) was that I thought the ending might have been too good to be true. But that\u2019s no great failing in a book. No failing at all, actually. We\u2019re allowed a happy ending from time to time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Duty is based on something more profound than hope, on faith that what is too wrong to endure will be made right, rectified by a system of justice that underlies all of nature, far beneath the subatomic level, a system that may right a wrong in a day or through the passage of time or … Continue reading ‘After Death,’ 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":[4809,706],"class_list":["post-18495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-after-death","tag-dean-koontz"],"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\/18495","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=18495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18496,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18495\/revisions\/18496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}