After some thought, I feel a need to talk about the actual book that I mentioned. I have not re-read "Lightning" in decades so I'm going from my own fuzzy memory.
Laura Shane was born during a freak lightning storm, and if I remember right, it was during a snowy blizzard and not through rain. Starting with her infancy, a mysterious blond man appears in Laura's life every now and then, saving her from catastrophic events. Laura, being very young, comes to think of him as her guardian angel.
But who, and what, is he really? This is the mystery that the book takes you on.
Mr. Koontz's books won't be for people who want a 100% "pure, Christian" book. One of the best (in my opinion) aspects of his stories is that he really digs into the psychology of the characters. The bad guys think and talk like bad guys, so yes, there is some language, but it's not excessive like in most entertainment today. It's just enough to give you a feel for the character's plans and motivations. Mr. Koontz's earlier works had a bit more mentions of sex, when editors hounded him that he wouldn't be able to sell books without it, but now that he has the freedom to stick to his own true style, there is very little sex in his works, maybe a sentence or two here and there, and again, it's often used to display the mental state of a character.
I know other Christians will slam me for reading such things, but because my calling is to people who have lived messy lives and ask big questions ("Why didn't God save me from my pedophilic father when I was young and helpless?!",) I prefer stories that dare to dive into the real messiness of real life, with nothing prettied up or sanitized, the way life actually is.
One of the things that has embedded "Lightning" in my mind forever is an instance where Laura, as a child, is in danger of an orphanage employee who has nefarious intentions towards her. Although she survives unharmed and he is killed during their encounter, it also results in of Laura's new and beloved adoptive mother.
Years later, when Laura is an adult, she's able to confront her "guardian angel" and asks him why he didn't intervene to save her adoptive mother. And he explains to her that he had certain limitations on when and how often he could appear in her life, and that this was one situation in which, since he saw that she made it through "untouched" (by the orphanage employee, at least,) he decided not to interfere.
Mr. Koontz often has things like this in his stories that make me ponder our own relationship with God. Though God has no limitations, we all have incidences in our lives in which we wish He would have saved us from something, and many of us dare to wonder why He chose not to. The answers that Laura's "guardian angel" gives her had me thinking about why God might choose not to save us from some things rather others, deciding which will make us selectively stronger.
Mr. Koontz writes mostly standalone stories, but he has a "Frankenstein" series in which Dr. Frankenstein is a megalomaniac who is trying to replace the human race with his own Replicant creations. His first creature, the monster from the original Mary Shelley story, becomes the hero of the series and is trying to stop his creator.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the story for me is when Dr. Frankenstein's creations start to go haywire. One group isn't allowed free will or to feel pain, only to serve and obey, but they also feel no purpose to their existence and are not allowed to self-delete. As a result, some begin to feel an unquenchable sense of anxiety and begin doing things like gnawing off their own fingers because they have no other way to express what they feel.
In an age of cloning, DNA splicing, gene editing, and attempts to create "designer human beings" with this or that "weakness" taken out of a person's genetic material, these books had me pondering how far God will let is go when tampering with His original design -- and how much havoc we unleash when we keep trying.
I've read interviews in which Mr. Koontz has said (due to the extreme things he's gone through,) he has gone back and forth regarding the Christians faith, but is "definitely back in the believing camp" again, at least last I knew.
This thread has reinforced my resolve to try to finish my current fan letter to Mr. Koontz, which is why I won't be on CC as much -- I'm using that time to tackle his letter like I would a paper for a school assignment -- so far I'm up to 6 pages of raw material that desperately needs editing and polishing.
Thanks for giving me an extra kick of motivation!
