This isn't the original cover, but I think it's the best. The amusement park silhouette and bloodred sky are beautifully ominous and hark back to a time when book covers actually reflected what the book was about, not what the marketing department wants you to think it's about. Most of the reprint covers, of which there are many, seem more emotional and artsy, but don't convey the suspense you are about to encounter at all. Compare to the most recent reprint cover:
See? Artsy fartsy. No suspense at all. Not even the hint of some danger, or any danger that might befall our hero. They even use the same font from the Twilight series (patooie!) on the title!! As if to trick the parents of angsty teenagers into thinking they've bought their daughter the best christmas present ever! Thhhbbbbbb....
Here's Amazon's synopsis:
Slim MacKenzie is no ordinary man. With eyes the color of twilight, he's been blessed with a psychic gift: premonitions. He's also been cursed, for Slim can see the monsters hiding among us, feeding on our suffering.
And when Slim joins a traveling carnival seeking sanctuary, what he'll find is a hunting ground-with humanity as the prey.
And when Slim joins a traveling carnival seeking sanctuary, what he'll find is a hunting ground-with humanity as the prey.
Seems like fairly standard Koontz fair of a outsider who has an extrodinary gift that he uses to save some innocent lives. I seem to keep stumbling on "new" Koontz books with a regular pace, but fortunately, most of them stand up to the test of time due to their lack of science and current events, yet timeless and gripping writing. "Phantoms" is the only one so far that does not, with a now laughable 10 gigabyte supercomputer. I would go down the wikipedia list of his novels and read each one in sequence, but it's such a dauntingly large list that I prefer to just discover them and think they are new without knowing the date of publication until later.
