I never cared too much for Hillerman. His characters always seemed not to be real, but rather, his version of what I felt he thought someone wanted to read about. Like fantasy.

I just finished the best book I've read in YEARS -- The Highest Tide -- the first novel by Jim Lynch. It brought home yet again how important an interesting pov (in this case, a young boy) is to good writing.

I think that's one of the strong suits to Dean Koontz -- an unabashed fantasy writer. In fact, in that sort of way, Koontz is like the anti-Hillerman. Koontz is writing fantasy, but with strikingly real people, while Hillerman is proposing real life drama with stick figures.

Koontz points of view are endlessly fascinating and quite often REALLY funny.