The Taking by Dean Koontz

Title:  The Taking
Author:  Dean Koontz
Pages:  410
Genre:  Horror
Publisher:  Bantam, 2004
Series:  Stand Alone

"Yimaman see noygel, see refacull, see nod a bah, see naytoss, retee fo sellos."

Synopsis:  On the morning that will mark the end of the world they have known, Molly and Neil Sloan awaken to the drumbeat of rain. It has haunted their dreams through the night, and now they find an eerily luminous and golden downpour that drenches their small Californian mountain town.

As hours pass they hear news of extreme weather phenomena across the globe. An obscuring fog turns once familiar streets into a ghostly labyrinth. By evening, the town has lost all communication with the outside world. First TV and radio go dead, then the Internet and phone lines. The young couple gathers together with some neighbors, sensing a threat they cannot identify or even imagine. The night brings strange noises, and mysterious lights drift among the trees. The rain diminishes with the dawn but a moody grey-purple twilight prevails. Within the misty gloom the small band will encounter something that reveals in a terrifying instant what is happening to the world -- something that is hunting them with ruthless efficiency. Epic in scope, searingly intimate and immediate in its perspective, The Taking is a story of a strangely changed and changing world as apocalypse comes to Main Street.

Review:  I was so sure I knew what was happening in Black Lake, California, and all over the world.  I thought this was another scary story about aliens taking over the planet.  I was wrong, in a way.  This story was far more and far scarier than I expected.

Every time I turned a page, a new horror, even worse than the last, was waiting for me.  But somehow, there was hope and faith and I didn't understand why, when everything was going so very badly.  By the end, I understood....but I wasn't especially comforted because it left me asking, 'what if...?'.

This story was so scary and original that I'd give it a higher rating, but the end was just a little disappointing.  That said, if ever a book should have a theme song, this one should.  It kept the lyrics to It's the End of the World as We Know It by REM rattling around inside my head even after the story was done.

Rating:  8.5 / 10