 Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to another Retro Review, and once again we are doing Dean Koontz. Today we are talking about his novel, LISPERS. This book is about a woman who was attacked and assaulted by a man, and then he supposedly dies, he's supposed to be dead, and of course he's not. Dean Koontz has done this plot, I don't know how many times. I think this is the first time in this one, this is the first time he did it, was with this one. Me and Deely have pinpointed the first Golden Retriever book, I just want to set your heart to ease this kid, anyways. But we pinpointed that, but I think this is the first time that you're dealing with a killer who is supposed to be dead, but keeps coming back somehow. I don't remember much else about this book, other than the horror element, which was cockroaches, and it seemed a very weird mixture of the serial killer and the cockroaches. It didn't fit for me, even though he explains it in the book, it felt tacked on, if that makes sense. It felt like an afterthought, more than a fully realized, thematic thing, I guess it is. Looking at it from an author's point of view, you see it and you're like, okay, the only reason he used that was to creep you out, and that's fine. Not everything has to have a purpose, that's not what I'm getting at, but I look for a little bit more when it comes to things like that. It is icky, don't get me wrong, it's icky, and so are the sex scenes. This has some of the worst sex scenes in Dean Coons' library. I can't remember if it's this one with the ribbons of semen. I think it is, either way he likes to write ribbons of semen unspooling, it's very... That's more disturbing than the cockroaches, if I'm honest. With the book being as long as it is, I do remember feeling like it was never going to end, but I did want to finish it. I believe I ended up giving it three stars. If looking back on it now, the farther I get away from this book, the more I don't like it. There's also, yet again, another bad guy that has mommy issues, and I know Dean Coons had problems, he had a terrible mother. She abused him all throughout his childhood, and it's odd that his villains, I guess one of the things, if you want to go psychological with this and you want to deep dive into Coons, I think maybe he's writing these characters not only from a place that he knows, but a place that he might have gone. That's a disturbing concept, but we've all thought about, you know, that person deserves to die or they, you know, so on and so forth. But this time, I do remember this time being a little more uncomfortable with it, a little more author intrusion than maybe before. Again, I am looking at this book, this is a retro review, I'm looking at this book at least a year removed from reading it, and I've also read an awful lot of other Coons. So if I am mistaken in any of these things, or if you guys would like to have a respectful conversation about maybe why you feel I'm wrong about the themes or these things, definitely do that down there in the doobly-doo. If you're rude, I'll just delete you, that kind of thing, you know how we do around here. With this one, do I recommend it? I don't know, it's one of Coons' longer books and the longer his books go on, the worse they become. He uses a lot of filler, like just driving around, he uses sex scenes. It says a lot of uncomfortable material that's not supposed to be uncomfortable. Reading a Coons sex scene is like talking about sex with your parents. That's the best, that is the best way that I can put it. And that's one of the things that I'm noticing more and more, and I'm glad that he finally got away from it. Now, for those of you still hanging around, I want to make this video a little bit longer. I want to discuss something else as I build up to the servants of Twilight that I'm going to be reviewing here on the channel and me and Dealey will be reviewing later on on our individual Goodreads accounts. But it's the progression of his ideas. It seems like every single idea beforehand has an element that leads into the next book. This one has an overview, not really an overview, but there was a book that he did about reincarnation called, well I guess that's a spoiler. But that's not a huge spoiler. I think the theme of it is, oh man it's going to bother me because I already said it. But the mask has a theme of reincarnation. And then coming into this one you have the, there's a bit of reincarnation in this one also supposedly. And that's what one character thinks anyway. You have an actual book about reincarnation and then you have a book about maybe reincarnation. Stephen King does this also. He has the dark half and secret window, secret garden. And those two books complement each other as different points of view where you have the supernatural aspect and you have the could-happen aspect. And I've always loved that about King. He'll usually write a novel, not usually, but he'll write a novel and then follow it up with a novella that is thematically the same but different story wise. Or that kind of thing. With Coons, I'm starting to see the same thing. In the House of Thunder there's a deserted town and then he wrote Phantoms. In, let's see here, in The Servants of Twilight which we will talk about soon there is a mention that all I'm going to say is Rats. And then right after Servants of Twilight he published Darkfall, which the main antagonist in that book is Rats. That's all I'm going to say about that. I mean, with the, I'm trying to stay away from spoilers here. I'm trying to stay with the stuff that is actually mentioned on the, either on the dust jackets or the descriptions or whatever. The thing is, I can't remember all the descriptions. And I want to talk about this stuff. So, in Darkfall it's not just rats. And there's another thematic quality to The Servants of Twilight that leads me to believe that he was writing one book and he said, oh, hang on, let me turn around, let me write this down, this idea down and I will, I will expand upon it in another book. I know he does this because he said that's how he got the idea for Odd Thomas. He was writing something completely different and Odd Thomas is like, I see ghosts, they don't talk, I don't know why they don't talk. So he wrote that down and then he finished that book and then he went on to Odd Thomas. So I know he does that. But it's cool to see, even though I didn't care too much for this one, it is very cool to see that you can see the, maybe not the full architecture, but you can see at least some of the plans that are going into the next book. And if nothing else, that is one of the best finds I've had so far during reading Dean Coons' books. And I plan to go back and make an entire list of all the books to seemingly lead into one another. Now there are some time continuities, like there's a long time between the House of Thunder and Phantoms, but he rewrote the House of Thunder just before releasing Phantoms. So, sorry, he rewrote and re-released the House of Thunder just before Phantoms came out. So that's where we are right now. This is a more in-depth retro review. This will probably be the, I know this is the last retro review. I'm all caught up on the back catalog. So from here on out, you're only getting one Dean Coons review a month unless me and Dealey end up, you know, just going that shit crazy and reading more than one. But yeah, have you read Whispers? I'd love to talk to you about it. Again, if you disagree with me, that's fine. I don't care. Just don't be rude about it. Leave your comments down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another Dean Coons retro review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye. He's bringing me a Dean Coons retro review. Big dummy. Oh, and for you guys worrying about the stuff disappearing back here on the wall, it'll eventually come, let me get my ding-dong out of the way, it'll eventually come back. But there's a holiday coming up in holidays and the whole reason I did this, you will see. Did this is so that I can prepare and have space to do other things. Ooh. Bye.