Dean Koontz, The Funhouse Review

Good Points
Enjoyable to read in a light hearted way.

Bad Points
A weak storyline with little to no suspense achieved. A poor and predictable ending. The chracterzation is non-existent.

General Comments
Synopsis of Dean Koontz, The Funhouse:

"Years after leaving the carnival, her hated first husband, and the child she could never love, Ellen has a new life, a new husband, and two beautiful children, but now the carnival is coming back to town, and Ellen is going to have to pay for her sins".



The first of two books released under the pseudonym "Owen West", it is a novelization of the movie of the same name. Based on the screenplay by Larry Block, the book was released three months before the movie, and went through several printings and sold over a million copies. It was later revised and released under his own name by Berkley in 1994.



What you have here is just another run-of-the-mill, bog standard horror novels, with the same story line as a thousand novels before it and predictably another thousand after it. If you're looking for a novel to unplug your brain to and race through then this is as good a book as any. You can guess the twists involved from the minute you open the book. It's just another one of those books that looks super scary when you're a kid gazing at the cover in wonder, but when you grow up you realise what they are - just mindless fun. And why the hell not! Just don't expect a masterpiece.



The characterization is poor and the storyline is wafer thin. The events that take place to Ellen and her family are predictable of the horror genre and the grand finale is poor. The book is reasonably enjoyable to read in a light hearted way, but nothing more than that.