YMMV / The Taking

• Broken Aesop: In short: Horrifically killing off (or worse) everyone deemed "insufficiently virtuous" would be a handy shortcut to utopia.
  • Based on multiple asides about the light punishment that Molly's Axe-Crazy father got, another Broken Aesop is that society is not harsh enough on criminals who are all pure evil to begin with.
• Fridge Horror: Apparently the world has gotten so wicked that the vast majority of the adult population needs to be purged, with many a Cruel and Unusual Death. Given Koontz's Anvilicious tendencies in other books and the happy ending in this one, you get the impression that he actually wishes this would happen to all those pesky liberals, atheists, academics, anarchists, and aficionados of modern architecture.
  • It's mentioned that when Harry Corrigan's wife was murdered, her sister was run over by the killer's getaway car and as of the start of the story is still in a coma in the hospital. What became of her by the end of the story?
• Squick: The rain smells like semen.