An Actual Essay I Submitted to my English Teacher Two Years Ago.

(SPOILERS FOR THE DOOR TO DECEMBER BY DEAN KOONTZ)

This is an essay I actually submitted to my English teacher two years ago, regarding ''The Door to December'' by Dean Koontz. Before the text begins, it is important to note that where I'm from, nobody knows who Dean Koontz is, he is not popular nor famous, neither I nor anyone I'd at the time spoken to had ever heard of him. Also, I hadn't yet heard of the ''People'' magazine, and that's not a local thing, that's just my lack of common knowledge. Secondly, yes, I was allowed to swear in this project, I had a really cool teacher! Anyhow...

''Here we are, at the part where I express my opinion on the book. As a warning, this portion will most probably be the longest of the three, because I have a lot to say. And sadly for Mr. Koontz, quite little of it is positive. 

If I had to describe ‘’The Door to December’’ in two words, I’d say ‘’fire kindling’’, as that seems to be the only use you could have for this abomination. I am not joking when I say I genuinely hated this book, and it took tremendous effort to go through the five hundred and eleven pages of this torture of a book, without jumping out a window.  

Let’s start with the cover. First impressions are important, after all.  

Depicted on the cover, for about half of it is a blurry picture, of what I’m supposing is meant to represent Melanie in the sensory deprivation tank. Now they already failed there if that’s what they meant to depict, because sadly giving a sensory deprivation tank a submarine-like window defeats the entire purpose of a sensory deprivation tank. For about a third of the cover is the title. And then, in big bold letters, taking half the page, more place than the title, are the words ‘’Dean Koontz’’. First time I saw the book, I believed the title to be Dean Koontz, seeing just the absurd velocity of the name. Of course, spread out around the name is praise for the book, and ‘’With a New Afterword by the Author’’. Okay. They seem to be focusing a lot on Mr. Koontz, but maybe the spine will be of further interest. You look at the spine, and are immediately met by ‘’ #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Dean Koontz’’ in big white on red letters. The title is displayed in smaller font at the bottom. Okay, well, maybe I’ll get to know what the book is about on the back. Right? 

You turn the book around, 

And all you see is the face of: 

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR DEAN FUCKING KOONTZ! 

Why?! Who the hell is Dean Koontz?! There’s no text, nothing, just a picture of him! What possessed someone to think this was a good idea?! My theory, is that they realised how much of a hot mess their story was, and henceforth tried to hide as much about the story as possible to fool people into reading it.  

And then, I thought ‘’Hey, maybe I can look past appearances. Maybe, the book is really good, and just has a weirdly egomaniacal cover.’’ I opened it. The first thing I saw; 

 ‘’CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR DEAN KOONTZ’’ 

What the sweet and sour fuck?! How did publishing look at this and think ‘’Yes, this seems fine’’? One of the sources for the praise isn’t even properly labeled it’s just marked as ‘’People’’!  

Look, I know I’m going on way too long about the cover, you’ll find ranting runs in the family with (older brother who was in his class the year beforehand)’s ten page Frankenstein document, but I mean this is just ridiculous! I’m supposed to look at a cover and know what a book is about not just get slapped across the face time and time again by Dean Koontz!  It’s such an obviously bad idea, I don’t see how publishing managed to take this as a serious option, let alone print it like this on possibly millions of copies! 

And the bad publishing doesn’t stop there. Oh no. During the book you’ll find several typos that apparently nobody noticed, despite some being so obvious. For example, if you turn to page two hundred and five, you’ll find a narration start with quotation marks. It’s a very obvious mistake. Anyone who reads it will notice it. But apparently, neither the great literary maestro Dean Koontz, nor his publishers took notice of it!  

Also, it’s just plain not well written. I mean Haldane always starts swooning for Laura at the weirdest moments, Laura at some point gets even more motivated to save her own fucking child’s life when she notices how pretty her child is (Dean’s words, not mine), I mean shouldn’t your child’s beauty be the last of the things you’re concerned about when it comes to SAVING HER LIFE? What’s worse is that she takes notice of this mid panicked flight from what she believes is an invisible demonic force trying to bash her child’s brains in with the rage of a thousand Vikings, and also from the FBI. And for a mystery novel, there sure as hell ain’t much mystery! By the time I reached chapter seven (which is less than a hundred pages in), I had already figured out Melanie had developed psychic abilities and was killing the dangerous people. And that’s only clearly revealed at the very end! I mean, before we even get into the action of the book, before Ned Rink tries to kill her, I already knew!  

Hey while we’re here let’s talk about Ned Rink! Rink is a hitman sent to kill Melanie, who then dies immediately before he even steps out of his car. We get an entire chapter talking about his childhood and what led to his violent ways and his deformity and yadda yadda yadda, just for him to be immediately killed off. Why? What purpose does it serve? It’s not like you can empathise with him as it’s literally stated that he ‘’never killed a child before, it ought to be interesting’’. It’s not like a ‘’Oh look at what murder takes away, how much a life is’’ not a ‘’Oh wow poor Ned’’ because Ned isn’t just a poor soul with no other options, he’s a cold blooded murderer who’s motive is being bullied as a child. There was no reason for all that detail! We get barely any details on the lives of most of the other villains who actually play a larger part in the story than dying!  

On topic of the other villains, you’d think a cast with over a dozen villains would lead to variety, right? Well it doesn’t! Every single one of them except one was either a pervert, a rapist, a pedophile or a combination of multiple of those. Only Mondale didn’t have a weird sex thing. Look, I get it’s based on the horrors of the real world, I know this stuff happens, but, other things happen too! And you have over a DOZEN people to attribute reasons for being a bad person to! Maybe pick other things! And before you say Ned wasn’t weird and pervy, remind yourself he had an enormous library of pornography in his house, including, and I quote, ‘’The Sperminator’’.  

The fucking Sperminator. 

Also, was this book sponsored by McDonald’s? Because I genuinely cannot reason why at some point, we just get a full detailed description of how Dan Haldane ordered two cheeseburgers, a coke, and fries from his local McDonald’s, and then get told exactly in what order he eats the following items whilst scanning computerised police files.  

Also I’d like to give a special paragraph to two words: ‘’autistic’’ and ‘’autism’’. Dean Koontz has no fucking idea what autism is. This, however, did not stop him from using them almost every five sentences. Look, I know the book was made in the eighties, there was very little known facts on autism back then. But I feel that’d be a great reason to use other words than autism! When Dean says ‘’autistic’’ what he means is ‘’nearly catatonic’’. But it comes back over and over and over and over again, just constantly: ‘’her hard autistic shell’’, ‘’she may have developed autism’’ (you can’t develop autism it’s a genetic thing!), ‘’her autistic armor’’, ‘’she may remain autistic’’, ‘’her autistic stare’’, just constantly, slapped everywhere! Just use catatonic Dean, I beg you! I swear every time I saw that word repeated, which was almost every three pages, I could feel one of my synapses snapping from sheer exhaustion from this man’s slurry of new ways to misuse the word! It was like when you teach a child a cool new word and they just use it as often as possible, but worse because he didn’t even know what it fucking meant!  

On the psychology topic, do you know who intends to do therapy for Melanie? Laura. Her mother. Now, I’m not sure if you knew, but that is a very bad idea. A large portion of therapy is that the therapist doesn’t know you and you don’t know the therapist. It’s a very important aspect as it removes bias, and a lot of fear, shame, anxiety from it. Having your mother be your therapist would be an awful idea, not to mention, it takes an extra one to two year course to be able to be a child psychiatrist, no, a clinical psychiatrist for adults couldn’t just choose to treat a child as they do not have the proper tools or training for it. Just plain out incorrect.  

More bad writing from Dean, was when he was describing to us one of his villains in the final act. I’m going to let you read the exact word for word quote from the book, because frankly, it’s something that must be witnessed firsthand.  

‘’He was a bizarre and demented clown in whose eyes one could see the crimson flickering fires of Hell, a soul in damnation.’’ 

How is anyone meant to read that and take it seriously? It sounds so silly! 

If this book taught me anything, it’s to stay away from Dean Koontz’s work at all costs. This mind-numbing book tortured me in ways no other book did, and frankly I hope it is one day returned to flaming inferno that can be seen in Albert Uhlander’s clown eyes, as I assume that’s where it was birthed. Bad writing, lazy if not non-existent double-checking, egocentricity, and predictability, a mix that lead to an absolute clusterfuck of a book. So, no. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Matter of fact, I’ll strongly encourage everyone I know to stay as far away possible from the infernal, wretched, abysmal five hundred and eleven pages of agony that compose the ear-bleedingly cacophonic symphony of ‘’The Door to December’’.  

If I must name certain good aspects from the book, I must say Dean did do a good job at writing action scenes, especially the deaths of the psychogeist’s victims. They were interestingly written, and fun to read. Also, whilst Dean Koontz may lack the talent to make a mystery novel mysterious, he was able to write good jokes. Haldane’s wit was pleasant to read and got a decent chuckle out of me. In short, Dean can write brutal murders and comedy. 

Perhaps the real bizarre, demented clown from hell was Dean Koontz all along.  ''

Supplemental:

To this day I still hold my vitriolic hatred  for Dean and his horrid excuse for literature near and dear to my heart. And whilst some of my dissections into the story and jabs at it may seem nitpicky, please be aware I'd've given the book much more grace if it weren't shit. However, as SOON as the so-called ''mystery'' of this damn MYSTERY NOVEL is introduced, you can already see coming the plot twist thirteen hundred million miles away! It is uncreative, unsuccessful in anything it tries, and all-round unappealing! I am not playing this up for the bit, I genuinely hate this book so much. It is almost concerning. I have spent  what probably amounts  to hours now of my life just whining about this stupid book, sometimes I just think about it and seethe- like when you recall an old argument, you know? I HATE THIS BOOK! I don't care how much the U.S. likes Dean Koontz, after the torment he put me through I'll be damned if I ever see his stupid face again, as displayed on the back cover of the book, instead of any actual information about it.

Fuck you, Dean Koontz.