The Eyes of Darkness

By: Dean Koontz

Narrated by: Tanya Eby

Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

A mother’s greatest wish—or darkest nightmare—comes true in this chilling classic audiobook thriller from the Master of Suspense, Dean Koontz.

“Koontz puts his readers through the emotional wringer.”–The Associated Press

In the year since her son Danny’s tragic death, Tina Evans has suffered incredible heartache. But now, with her Vegas show about to premiere, Tina might be ready to put her grief behind her and start over.

Until a shocking message appears on the chalkboard in Danny's room: NOT DEAD. Those two words send her on a terrifying journey from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the cold shadows of the High Sierras, where she uncovers a terrible secret.

©1981 by Leigh Nichols, 1996 by Nkui, Inc. (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Good story!

Loved it. Not too far out there like some of the others. One grounded story.

Loved it!

Loved it! Great story and that is not just because I am a Dean Koontz fan.

Good, but lacking usual expectations.

I enjoyed for the story for the most part, yet the lack of depth in characters, along with the abrupt ending... left me wanting. A little dry in places, enough to almost lose me. All in all, a good book, but not indictive of his usual work, which made me such a fan of Dean Koontz. I guess you can't hit everyone out of the park... but this triple will just have to do.

The COVID-19 Precursor?

I'm not a Dean Koontz fan, as many are. I listened to one of his books years ago and found it too unbelievable. But I licked up The Eyes of Darkness after reading multiple news reports about how the author had foretold a virus from the Wuham province of China nearly four decades before it arrived.

As I listened to most of the book, I kept wondering whether this was the right volume. No reference to a virus . . . or Wuhan . . . or a plague. Only in the last 20 minutes or so did it all come together.

The plot itself contains enough intrigue to have kept me engaged. But it also was a little unbelievable, as in "how can murderers be such bad shots?" and "really, hired torturers/killers are that incompetent?" But the story generally is easy to follow, contains some twists, and definitely doesn't give away the ending.

last 30 minutes

makes you sit tight and listen to everything you have been patiently enjoying the full audible in a crystal clear crisp voice.

Robot Narrator

Good story but I found it hard to listen to. Narrator sounded like a robot.

Less polished than more recent books by Dean Kontz

I knew that this was one of the first novels by Dean Kontz (originally published under a pseudonym), but I was curious as this book became famous for "predicting" a deadly virus originated in Wuhan. Is it worth a read? Yes and no. It's an entertaining thriller, which got me hooked from the start. The characters are not super developed (I found a similar train of thoughts on two different characters, which I always find bothersome), but the story was interesting enough to catch my attention. A mother is convinced that his son, supposedly dead in a traffic accident, is still alive, and gets involved in an investigation to uncover a conspiracy. Nothing too original but with the right ingredients to get the reader interested. There are some paranormal aspects to the story that I could have done without, but it is an essential part of the plot.

If you want to read the book only because it mentions a virus made in Wuhan almost forty years before the COVID was a reality, just beware that the mention of the virus happens towards the end of the book, in chapter 39 out of 40, around 35-40 minutes towards the end of the book, and it is just anecdotic. It is a virus manmade in Wuhan, much more lethal than the coronavirus circling around the world right now, and with completely different effects on the human body. It is completely coincidental, and it is not more than a couple of paragraphs. Not worth reading the complete book just to feed one's curiosity about conspiracy theories. It is not a bad book but it starts much better than what it results in the end. I guess Kontz's writing got more polished after some more books under his belt.

Tanya Eby's narration was correct but I had issues sometimes to follow dialogs because the characters sounded quite similar at times. It was not consistent and it did not happen all the time. The character's interpretations were well done, and the audio production was good. One small thing worth mentioning is that I found the end of chapter pauses a bit on the short side, which did not feel completely alright.

love it

I could not stop listening to this book. it's a great story and the speaker did an awesome performance

Good read

It was a good book. Character development was pretty good, I wish there was more for some side characters. A side character in particular I wanted to know what came of them as we were given a lot of details about their life and then like that they disappeared. The story started slow and the narration was almost computer sounding at times with mens speaking parts only getting better after she had been narrating the book for a while. Once you get through that, you get to the good parts. Lastly, it would have gotten another star if the ending was more suspenseful and exciting, as it is, the ending is more of a conversation about how it ends. It was good. You can hear better, but you can also hear worse...

Great ending

It's Dean, of course it's worth the read. I would definitely recommend it. Now onto the next one.