** spoiler alert ** Dean Koontz has passed his best-buy date, if this book is any indication.

This book was pure nonsense.

It included by a silly attack on evolution. Mathematicians hate biologists? Really? I've known a number of people with Ph.Ds in math, including my last supervisor, and never heard one of them say a bad word about a biologist. Koontz has got to stop listening to intelligent design whackos and believing their silly ramblings. What's all that crap about species never reaching evolutionary dead ends? Hasn't he ever heard of dinosaurs? Mastodons? Sabre-toothed tigers?

It included subplots that had no discernible relationship to the main plot. What was that "Tom Bigger" subplot all about anyway? Was Koontz that desperate to bring his word count up to novel-length that he had to include two, not one, but two, gratuitous murderers that did nothing to advance to plot at all?

And it had no resolution to the main mystery. At least, not unless you're willing to believe that highly evolved creatures appear spontaneously out of thin air. No need for science or reason when the world works by divine stage magic.

But, unless you're able to believe that stage magic is real, you have no need to read this book, either.