Product Description

Yesterday Snowfield, California, was a charming little town basking in the golden afternoon sun. Today it is a place of nightmare.

An ancient, awesome force has spirited away almost the entire population of the town and left the bodies of those remaining bizarrely disfigured. What hope can there be for the few still left alive…?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104486 in Books
• Published on: 1990-08-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

About the Author
Dean Koontz was born into a very poor family and learned early on to escape into fiction. He lives in southern California with his wife, Gerda and a vivid imagination.

Customer Reviews

Over-the-top horror, Koontz style
"Writing PHANTOMS was one of the 10 biggest mistakes of my life, ranking directly above the incident with the angry porcupine and the clown, about which I intend to say nothing more."
- author's afterword, US paperback edition

Although Koontz wrote several books under pen names in the interim, PHANTOMS was the first book under his own name since WHISPERS. Since the publishing powers-that-be squawked whenever he produced a book differing from the previous book's perceived genre, he deliberately attempted a very different book from WHISPERS here. Ironically, PHANTOMS shackled him to the horror genre label for years to come.

PHANTOMS was meant to be an over-the-top horror story, with a full-blown monster but with a scientific explanation for everything that takes place. (Good luck working *that* out before the Big Exposition Scene, though.) Whether or not there are supernatural aspects to the monster, there are definitely scuzzy human villains littering the landscape. To crank up the tension, the story takes place in a very compressed timeframe once the action begins.

Drive-in totals (as Joe Bob Briggs, movie reviewer extraordinaire, would say)
- Small town? Check.
- Everybody missing except a handful of main characters? Check.
- Dismembered, mostly missing bodies, with occasionally body parts artistically planted where the characters have just passed through to add that special "we're being watched by a psycho" touch.
- Romance subplot, being Koontz.

Mind you, a lot of that would also apply to JURASSIC PARK, which didn't seem to be hurting any the last I knew. Still, if you read this one alone on a dark night, don't come crying to me if you can't sleep. You've been warned.

Not my cup of tea, but tastes differ.

Frankly, if Koontz didn't have extraordinarily bad luck with Hollywood (his plots generally seem to be dismembered in translation), I'd have expected this to make a successful film; Koontz tends to use lots of concrete visual imagery, which *ought* to simplify matters.

Phantoms: Genuinely scarey
I never used to read much until I was given a huge pile of books from a friend who was going to throw them out - even then I didn't get round to reading any until one night nursing Insomnia I decided to read one - starting with Phantoms, I've got to say I loved it from the word go. Straight into the action and truly terrifying. I felt a bit stupid at first but it really is scary. However the ending isn't all that fascinating as the rest but still good. Full of twists and puzzles I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a god horror novel - well its got me started anyway!

Very Good Read
IF you're a fan or horror and suspense, this book has got the lot.
What has happened to the town of Snowfield? Why has half the town vanished, and the remaining souls found dead in bizarre circumstances. ??

A gripping read that forces you to turn that next page. A well written horror that stabs at your fears and leaves you feeling rather alone and "venerable" in the house after you have put it down.
When books leave me with an after effect like this, I know I have be thoroughly entertained and my mind suitably messed with.