Night of the Prowler

By: Jon Athan

Narrated by: Harry Roger Williams III

Length: 6 hrs

Publisher's Summary

Assist the customers. Stock the shelves. Sweep the floors. Take out the trash. Survive the night.

Zoe Doyle, an 18-year-old girl saving up for college and her first car, is working the night shift by herself at a secluded gas station for the first time. Her hopes for a normal night quickly diminish as she meets the local creeps, but she perseveres. Then she hears a news bulletin on a radio: A suspected serial killer undergoing a psychiatric evaluation has escaped from a nearby mental institution. Alone and afraid, her imagination runs wild. 

Is he coming here? Did I already see him? Is he watching me now? - she thinks. 

Unbeknownst to her, she’s correct. The hyperviolent serial killer known as the Prowler is heading her way...and he’s killing everyone in his path. 

Jon Athan, the author of 2020’s Do Not Disturb, brings you a shockingly suspenseful and violent slasher inspired by the classics. Can you survive the night of the prowler? 

Warning: This novel contains graphic content. Listener discretion is advised.

©2021 Jonathan Sixtos (P)2021 Jonathan Sixtos

Narration is keeping me from finishing

The narration of this novel is truly terrible. I honestly thought it was some kind of weird text-to-voice computer generated speech, but it's actually a human being that sounds like he's reading a single word at a time. Bizarre starts and stops plague this audiobook.

This if more Hostel than it is Friday the 13th

I LOVE slasher movies. I grew up on them. I had a picture of Freddy Krueger above my bed. I watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time when I was little enough to sit on my brothers lap. A good slasher movie brings back a bit of nostalgia from my early years. In my teen years Freddy became less a killer and more a comic. He was still killing people, but you could cheer for him. It was a fun / entertaining spin on an ugly situation. Those are the kind of slashers I grew up with and those are the kind that I love. This is not one of those slasher "stories".

This is an ugly story, with an ugly killer that contained extremely graphic kills that spanned over 5 minutes each. Describing the viscosity and color of the various fluids, the tones of the screams and whimpers, the shape and sizes of each wound and piece of mutilated flesh. After the first two kills, I just clicked the 30 second skip ahead button on the audible app. Then I clicked it again, and again and again and realized that the descriptive kills lasted from mid chapter to the end. Eventually when I saw there were 6 minutes left in the chapter and the latest victim was "incapacitated" I wrote them off as dead and just skipped to the next chapter to progress the story.

I'm not a prude mind you. I've seen many graphic scenes of violence in film. One weekend when I was a teenager I rented the faces of death 1 thru 3. At the end of that weekend I questioned my viewing choices and wondered if any long term mental damage was done. This book kind of reminded me of that. Its not just that it was graphic, but it seemed cruel for cruelties sake and the cruelty just took so long. Stalk, capture, kill that's the basic slasher roadmap. That's fine, but a 5 minute oral description of said kill just felt boring and a bit unhealthy if I'm being honest.

That doesn't mean the author cant write or that the narration wasn't good. Some of the narration grated on my nerves, but all in all it was pretty good. I did listen to the entire book in one sitting. Granted as I said I fast forwarded at least a half hour of descriptions of sadistic playtime, but that's still a good 5 and a half hours straight that I listened to the story.

In summary:
It was amusing, but it was boring in its drawn out cruelty. I'm not sure I would spend a credit on a sequel if it came out. I'm not sure I'd spend another credit on a book by the author. It was soo close to being a great slasher experience, but in the end I felt like I had listened to the love child of Faces of Death, Hostel, and a random 1980's video nasty. I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it, except 3 stars "pretty good".

Jason, Leatherface, Michael, and Eugene

A great love letter to classic slasher flicks. Silly at times but when shit gets serious it gets very serious.

Non stop thriller

This was a great slasher, on the edge of your seat thrill ride. I felt like I was with Zoe in that gas station being terrorized. I am a horror fan, but listening to this on audible, there were a few times it had me looking over my shoulder and feeling chills. It's a non stop thrill ride that will have you surprised around every corner.

Just read it, the narrator is like a robot

The narrator is one of the worst ones I've heard in my entire life. It's like they fed the text into a machine, with lurching speech and inappropriate intonation. It's like he's reading a novel for a class of kindergarteners recovering from their frontal lobotomy

weird narration

I liked this book but the narrator was so stilted it took me out of the mood of the story

Great Slasher Story

If your looking for character development or tons of back story and hole fillers, then this is not for you. But if your looking for a good slasher...then don't skip this...

Do not pass this one by

I don’t usually get scared and I certainly don’t typically tense up so bad that my body aches the next day, but gotdang. This is literally about a deranged night prowler. I mean, it’s way more complicated than that but that is the gist. It is 100% intense, on-the-edge-of-your-seat type of novel. I read Dead Body Disposal earlier in the year and thought, I bet it can’t get worse than this… nope. Negative. Wrong. This is a brutal slasher that will haunt you for a long time to come. To me, Athan cannot write a bad novel (I have read 5 so far an will continue his novels.) If you want something that feels 90s and will leave you disturbed, this is the one for you.

brutal

the violence and depravity and attention to horrific detail is taken to a whole new level you have been warned.