** spoiler alert ** Well, I WANTED to give this one four stars, but there were too many aspects of it that irritated me. The plot line involves a number of the usual flawed Koontz heroes, including a recent prison parolee and her aunt, a ten year old crippled girl and her wigged-out Mom and serial-murdering-UFO-chasing dad. Of COURSE there is the "dog who is smarter than most of the humans" (Old Yeller, a female black and white dog, go figure), as well as the identical-twin-ex-Vegas-nude-showgirls-also-UFO-chasers-who-are-protectors-and-would-make-the-NRA-proud gals.

The central figure, however, is Curtis, who is more than he appears and turns out to be an alien who is being chased both by bad-guy ET's and the FBI. There are references to hsi mission on earth and how his mother had trained him well but was murdered by the Bad Guy ET's; I would have liked more of the back story on this character and would certainly have been willing to add another 3-040 pages to get it; maybe a sequel with the back story, Mr. Koontz? Anyway, Curtis takes on a human visage in the form of a 12 year old boy (WAIT! Jeff Bridges and John Carpenter already did that, in "Starman!") Curtis (and the dog) have an ability to see beyond the human forms to the bad-guy ETs underneath (Hey! Koontz already did that in "Twilight Eyes!"),, and the dog is able to spell out words ("Hey! He already did that in "Watchers," thus far my personal favorite of his; I think it's Mr. Koontz's personal favorite, along with "Mr Murder," which I own but have not yet read, but I digress). Well, OK, Old Yeller types words on a computer through Curtis's direction, whereas in "Watchers" the dog himself had the intelligence to do so; and what the heck, we have the "Dog as alien" in "Tick Tock!"). OK, you see why I'm a bit irritated.

On the other hand, this is a dandy "chase" movie. It also has elements of Quantum Mechanics (new physics theory indicating that what we thought were real subatomic particles may not be so, and the Buddhists (and some other more outre practitioners of what my (new, as of 1/1/11) wife refers to as "woo-woo") refer to as consciousness and, ultimately, "God". This actually is a nice part of the book (for a layman's view of quantum mechanics, I recommend the movie, "What the %$**^(*&_ do we know?" and the book, "I'm Not Really Here" by Tim Allen(!) - review on that comin' up in short order). And another fun part is when one of the characters tells Curtis, "You shine," several times. I certainly interpret this as a homage to Stephen King's "The Shining," as the ability seems the same in both books, and refer to children with the ability to understand and communicate on a deep level (well, OK, "Grok" from Heinlen's "Stranger in a Strange Land").

Well, OK 3 - 1/2 stars.