The New American reviews The City

October 16, 2014

Dean Koontz’s characters are often a strange lot, and Jonah Kirk is no exception. In the hands of a lesser author, the story of a young black man with a gift for music growing up during the 1960s in Koontz’s unnamed city would probably become a painful dull preachment on the social ills of that era. When the reader discovers that another major character had been among the Japanese-Americans who spent the years of the Second World War in the Manzanar internment camp in California, the possibility for such preachment would often be redoubled. Not so with The City. Koontz does not offer characters who define themselves as “victims,” or who wallow in morbid self-pity. Far from making such characters objects of pity, Koontz leads the reader to see the strength which comes from adversity. As one character declares in the course of the novel, “Too many experts make art political, ’cause they believe great artists always held the same convictions as they themselves do. But the last thing art should be is political. Yuck. Double yuck. Keep your mind free. Trust your eye and heart.”

Read the full review @ The New American.