In the most dangerous moments of her life, Laura Shane is always saved by appearance of mysterious blond-haired stranger who comes out of nowhere, followed by lightning. He is here to protect her, than disappears as quickly as he came. What she don't know is that he was there on the day of her birth, to assure that drunken doctor would not let her crippled as was written in her destiny. Unfortunately, he is not the only one checking on her.
This is seventh novel by Dean Koontz that I read this summer and at this point I think it would be wise to take a break. It came after his smash hit "Watchers" and his publishers insisted on follow up with another novel with lovable dog, which Koontz declined - in his witty afterword he describes the battles he fought to get "Lightning" published instead and what it meant to him to have artistic freedom instead of being shoehorned into box, which I perfectly understand (although Watchers" is still my favourite of all his works). Often we see authors pigeonholed once they achieve success and they end up repeating themselves (Dan Brown is a perfect example) so its refreshing that there are still people out there ready to take risks. However, this one is not really earth-shattering suspense, although it was a best-seller - it starts just fine but my personal impression is that somewhere along the way Koontz got a bit carried away with research about technical details which cluttered the story itself to the point that for the first time with this author I left the novel aside for a while, until I decided to finish the darn thing. For some reason this appeared far more interesting in the beginning than later when story should come to some logical conclusion but it felt just perfunctory. Perhaps, deep inside, I expected another "Watchers" and didn't want to admit this to myself. Its time to move on to something else but I will definitely return to Koontz at some point.
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