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What are readers saying about One Door Away from Heaven?
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Whitney posted a review at 2011-03-07 02:49:52.
(Language: English)
 
I adore Koontz. This was not my first Koontz, but it is one of my favorites. I love how he always refers to Heaven or a higher power in all of his books. My favorite is The Taking, but this is a close second! I have already recommended this to several people and even loaned out my copy! {Only to have it not returned. )=}
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Rupinder posted a review at 2010-04-15 10:16:15.
(Language: English)
nice...........
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-02-04 06:16:41.
(Language: English)
I really enjoyed this book! You have to keep an open mind as it gets pretty far-out, but that's what I love about Dean Koonz. He's always imaginative with his characters and storyline, yet meaningful in the overall picture. There is a lot of suspense, as usual, yet lots of humor too. I couldn't begin to tell you a summary to befit this great book! Enjoy!Jennifer just loaned me this book too, so will start on it after I read The Innocent Man.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-07-16 07:15:10.
(Language: English)
It's a book about hope and courage.There's a part in the book that says"Sometimes not often, but once in a great while-your life can change for the better in one moment of grace, like a miracle. Something so powerful can happen, someone so special come along, some precious understanding descends on you so unexpectedly that it pivots you in a new direction
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-08-24 08:58:21.
(Language: English)
There's so much going on in this novel is was hard to keep up. And it was just weird.
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Taylor posted a review at 2009-11-02 03:52:29.
(Language: English)
Ok, this book is a little more complicated, but stick with it and you will absolutely love it, I did! The plot is so strange and you will be enchanted with it, not wanting to put it down.
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Liezl posted a review at 2010-07-05 05:31:23.
(Language: English)
SUPERb!!!
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-02-06 04:22:14.
(Language: English)
Interesting.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-12 05:48:55.
(Language: English)
This one is good, but kind of a tear jerker at times!
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-06-09 05:45:41.
(Language: English)
Another one of those audio books I didn't remember reading until I was a couple chapters in. Koontz has a nice way of creating real characters with real flaws and wrapping them around a surreal plot based on a nugget of science fact.
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Konnie posted a review at 2009-05-22 04:00:58.
(Language: English)
I had a great time with this wonderful story. a story about redemption, terror, dogs and aliens. That is quite the package! A little boy(little alien to be precise) is running from a pack of assassins. His traveling companion is his dog "Old Yeller" who is neither old nor "yeller". Who they meet along the way is just half theadventure. Their tale intersects with that of handicapped wise acre Leilani Klonk who ust may be killed by her stepfather on her next birthday and Michelina Bellsong, a lost soul out of prison. How do these stories interweave? That was the fun part. I love the message at the end...even though some people may find it a bit schmaltzy.
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A Reader posted a review at 2012-01-11 11:51:11.
(Language: English)
weird but not as weird as his other novels. pretty good read
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-01-21 01:05:23.
(Language: English)
Great Koontz book - it's got aliens, dogs, and fudged-up family/relationship issues all together in one big cheery... er... not so cheery story. But the ending is good.Pulling bio-ethics into it was a spin I didn't see coming - using Peter Singer quotes and saying how bio-ethics philosophy is EVIL INCARNATE was a rather low blow, and a not-too-subtle political agenda to an otherwise excellent book. But it reinstates the fact that extremism of ANY sort (religious, political, whatever...) is dangerous.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-02-09 02:50:58.
(Language: English)
This is one of my favorites!
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-09-08 07:24:25.
(Language: English)
One of my favorite stories of all time! Part of it is told from the point of view of a loyal, sweet dog. I bawled at the end of this book! Love it!
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-06-26 12:25:11.
(Language: English)
Love it! Love it!
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Michael posted a review at 2012-01-17 02:40:07.
(Language: English)
Wow. Great story, but utilitarian bio-ethics is scary stuff. The logic is flawless,which is what makes it all the more frightening. Food for thought for when the government takes over healthcare...
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-04-30 06:49:54.
(Language: Romanian)
in romana "La un pas de Paradis"
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-09-09 06:44:41.
(Language: English)
excellent example of Koonts' exceptional writing style!
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-02-18 03:58:44.
(Language: English)
This book is almost one of his best books because all of the characters are memorable. However, I was disappointed with the main antagonist, Preston Maddoc, and how he had died. I believe it will take more than the ending to kill off his character.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-20 01:57:55.
(Language: English)
Wonderful!
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-05-13 05:59:17.
(Language: English)
It took me awhile to get into the plot...but after the first few chapters I found that I had to keep reading to see what was going to happen next....there wa somehting about the 10 year-old girl that made her seem real...it was something different from Mr. Koontz...it had humor and some sci-fi action going on....definitely another side to Dean Koontz's intriguing story-telling.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-03-29 03:44:51.
(Language: English)
I enjoyed this book very much. I wasn't sure where the story was going to begin with, which is a good thing, but it gradually came together and I think this is one of his best.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-02-04 04:16:00.
(Language: English)
This is my favorite Koontz book, and I've read them all, except for his most recent. The plot is engaging and fast-paced, the dialogue is crisp and witty and entertaining, and the characters are the kind you never forget. It's the sort of book that leaves you sad it's over when you get to the last page. I would love to read a sequel to this, using those main characters. It's superb! This is truly a masterpiece in fiction.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-10-08 12:37:53.
(Language: English)
Since this is going to be a rather critical review, I should preface it by saying that I am a big Dean Koontz fan, I grew up reading Koontz, and I loved most of his books up until this one. This is where he got unbearably preachy (in a sort of quasi-New Age/born-again Christian kind of way). I suppose he'd been hinting at it in his stories and novels for years, but it wasn't until toward the end of the book immediately prior to this one, From the Corner of His Eye, that he became more boldly explicit about it---and since that book still sold millions of copies, I guess he felt he had a mandate to go into full-blown Jesus freak mode in this one. Well, here's one reader he lost. I finally got all the way through this one, but only because I already had it on audiobook and had nothing better to listen to at work one day. This book is still two steps above, say, the Left Behind series, but the fact that it can be put in the same category with it for comparison at all is not complimentary. Similarly, Koontz has lost all sense of restraint in terms of style. After all, why say something in only one way, when you could treat the reader to three witty metaphors, or four...or five (usually three, though, I don't know if there's supposed to be some special religious significance to that)? And enough with the alliterative triplets! Koontz seems to think they're amusing, or poetic, or something, but a "gaggle of giggling girls?" Gag me. To be fair, Koontz can really turn a phrase, and he's generally a fine writer, but it really seems like he's trying too hard...or not trying hard enough to edit. I suppose with the super-blockbuster status he's achieved, Koontz's publisher allowed him to de facto fire his editor. As for the specific content of the novel, it's part detective story about a drunken ex-cop private investigator who is good at what he does but cares too much, part drama about a deformed little girl living with her abusive mother and stepfather and the neighbors who try to help her, and part road-trip/buddy movie about a little boy and his dog and all the interesting characters they meet on their trek...all familiar, almost cliche elements, but Koontz puts his own touches on each and manages to bring them all together at the end plausibly, though not terribly satisfyingly (the ending is frankly, even leaving aside the stupid theological elements, dumb). The main characters are sympathetic and wonderfully heroic at times (although his spunky heroines are all pretty much the same, just at different ages), and some of the side characters the boy meets during the road trip movie part of the story are hilarious (a Gabby Hayes lookalike in particular is great). The villain, however, is simply a strawman who represents the ideas Koontz disagrees with for him to rail against. Which brings us to the book's thematic problems, of which there are really too many to discuss here, but some of the major ones can't be overlooked. To be sure, Koontz is right to explicitly criticize (and even label as evil) Peter Singer, a real-life ethicist who is surely among the worst in modern academia (and that's saying something). And Koontz's broader criticisms of utilitarianism generally are often on-target. But he combines Singer with Jack Kevorkian to create his villain (whom he actually calls "Dr. Doom"), thereby attempting to brand anyone who disagrees in any respect with G. W. Bush's "culture of life" b.s. as a monster. And in case you haven't gotten the point yet, believe it or not there are more than one of these thinly-veiled Kevorkian characters (in entirely separate storylines, not just like there's a whole gang of them running around or something). Entirely absent are any considerations of whether a patient is terminally ill with no hope of anything that could really be called a human life in their future, of whether all their other options have been exhausted, and most importantly of whether *they* *choose* to end their own suffering; to assist them humanely and compassionately is literally no different from the most gruesome murder in Koontz's eyes---thus Koontz has his villain dispatch people whom *he* (the villain) views as unhappy indiscriminately, with or without their consent, sometimes with a painless injection, sometimes with an axe. In short, Koontz offers us God as the sole source and arbiter of ethics---an extremely dubious position, to say the least---or (an incredibly extreme version of) utilitarianism, as our only ultimate alternative. It should go without saying that this is a false alternative. Turning to psychology, Koontz offers us more of the same sort of nonsense. One character is a self-destructive drug addict who likes to cut herself---and Koontz informs us that her problem is...wait for it...too MUCH self-esteem? Is he serious?! Unfortunately, he is. It's perfectly true that the "self-esteem" movement that is so prevalent in our educational system today turns out neurotic, narcissistic sociopaths with absolutely zero ability to relate to other human beings, but this has nothing to do with genuine self-esteem, based on actual achievement. Rather, what Koontz has clumsily taken their word to be real esteem for the self is mere pseudo-"self-esteem", based not on an individual's actual choices or character but simply on having been born, as they are told that "everybody's special" regardless of what they actually make of their lives and selves. Koontz fares no better when he ventures into metaphysics than he did in ethics. The worst bit is at the end, when the hero asks the villain, who believes that life on earth was designed by super-intelligent aliens, "Well then who created the aliens?" Koontz seems to think that this question obliterates the villain's position, and that the obvious answer is, "God." But he seems to have failed to notice that the same question can be applied to God with equal validity. After all, if life is allegedly so complex as to require an intelligent designer in order to explain it, any designer able to fill that role would have to be even more complex, and thus in even greater need of such an explanation in turn. The only real answer the intelligent design people have to this is that the chain has to stop somewhere in order to avoid an infinite regress, so it should stop with God, who is eternal. But why have God at all, when one could just as easily posit that the universe itself is eternal (and extend this to any "irreducible complexities" within it, though I don't think there really are any in the sense the intelligent design crowd means it)? The problem with Koontz's attempts to incorporate philosophy into his novels is that he's not a very good philosopher, and this kind of sloppy thinking only hurts his books. He writes (or used to write) good thrillers, and he writes with great humor, and he should stick to that...and get a better editor.
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