Predator: Eyes of the Demon

By: Bryan Thomas Schmidt - editor, various

Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez, Kevin Kenerly, Joe Hempel, Lucy Rayner, Traber Burns, Natalie Naudus, Hillary Huber, Bradford Hastings, John McLain, Neil Shah, Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

A brand-new anthology from a diverse lineup of authors, offering taut and dramatic exclusive tales set on Earth and in dark reaches of space, featuring the ultimate hunters known as Predators

This session features fifteen never-before-seen original short stories set in the expanded Predator universe from the first film, featuring the ultimate hunters, the Yautja from the movie Predator. Set in the recent past, the present, and the future, these edge-of-your-seat adventures by many of today’s top SF and horror authors take place on Earth and in the dark, unforgiving reaches of space.

The diverse, multi-ethnic group of authors includes New York Times bestsellers, Stoker Award winners, and acclaimed contributors to the Alien and Predator universes. Included in this volume are: Native American award-winning horror author Stephen Graham Jones; Linda Addison, the first African American to win the Stoker Award; Peter Briggs, screenwriter for Hellboy; New York Times bestselling author and visionary podcaster Scott Sigler (Aliens: Phalanx); award-winning author Ammar Habib (The Heart of Aleppo); New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry; Emmy-nominated writer Joshua Pruett (Mystery Science Theater 3000); Tim Lebbon, author of the Aliens vs. Predators Rage War trilogy; and many more.

©2022 Bryan Thomas Schmidt (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Great mix of stories

This was another great add to the lore of the predator universe. I really enjoyed the mix of perspectives for the stories

Predator anthology Vol.2

These story's take place in the future most and approximately the present. And mostly a collection of female perspectives hunters. Check them out when you can.

Great collection

I was enthralled by most of the stories in this collection. The piece by Jonathan Maberry had great bits of humor to it. I think my favorite was either Bitter Hunt or Monster, but were well written.

15 predator films, abridged

This is an anthology, in case you did not read the description. That is broadly also the biggest problem with this title. The predator films are broadly formulaic but each film is individually long enough for character development, sub-plots, and other things to spread out the 'Jason Voorhees from another planet' equation. the stories are all basically what you get if you condense the predator film into a 45 minute short film and then repeat it 13 times.

Each story is very well written and enjoyable but this is just not a book you should try and consume in an extended sitting. If I had come to this epiphany sooner, maybe I would have scored it differently but I think that unlikely. The performances were done well but none of them were especially memorable. I think this could have been improved by the sprinklng of sound effects or some background music in some scenes for better immersion.

There are a few interesting breaks in the formula but not nearly enough. There is some expansion on the Yatuja lore/culture that diverges from the established material Dark Horse set down when they had the intecetual property rights. I am not sure I agree with the alterations but I am unsure how many people are even aware of it and if it is a problem for the broader audience.

The low story score is stongly due to the overall sameness of each story and the need to incorporate some background sound effects is what lowers the performance score. Not truly a bad audiobook but not a great one either. If you like the Predator film franchise, I recommend this while it's free, or if it is one a big sale, but not worth the full retail price.

An excellent fan-verse collection

Love the way each story is of different time and place not all in human pov

I’ve listened to all other Predator books

Didn’t like that several stories had the Predator killing people that weren’t threats. This doesn’t match with lore and was intended to spicy up the story, but changed the culture of the Predator. The focus on female characters became distracting. Love strong female protagonists (Ripley!), but this intensional focus of female leads and readers was distracting. Probably the worst Predator book I’ve listened to.

A tough listen

This was a tough one for me to listen to, I ended up skipping several stories, because of the narration,

But the choices they made for narrator are really kind of perplexing. The wrong vocal tone for stories, like this, very monotone, reading, not engaging at all. Wasting characters from this universe, and what seem to be pretty decent stories with narrator to make it extremely boring to listen to, I skipped half the stories in this audiobook.

This was interesting...

A few of the readers were not that good but overall I liked the collection. My favorite story was the one about Dutch. I don't want to give any spoilers. My only complaint was some of the language.

Amazing!!! I Hope for more!!!

loved it from start to Finish! The stories that tell the predator and human point of view are my Favorite and especially the stories just about the predators! Look forward to listening to more!!

A disappointing follow-up

EDIT: I have no complaints related to this anthology being "woke." Several of the stories with female predators and female protagonists were pretty good plots, and Machiko from the old AVP novels was a fantastic main character. My complaints are about the mechanics and narration of the stories. I'll list a few in an edit below.

Not completely awful but falls far short of the excellent "If It Bleeds" anthology. There are some decent stories but half it more are quite forgettable and several have some small but glaring errors and questionable writing and editing decisions.

Somehow most just don't have the heart or the sense of realism and immersion (within a fictional universe of alien hunters that is). the only one I'll give full marks for having the vibe down is The Ttans. several others are good but they just don't make me feel it. honorable mention to The Fix Is In as a sequel. It feels believable, just not very interesting in terms of content. I hope we get another follow-up story.

Also in a few spots the narration was so drawling that I checked my phone to make sure I wasn't on a reduced speed playback setting.

EDIT: Particularly, apparently Predators can now use one hand to just rip the head and spine off of a still living human without killing them first or cutting it free in any way. Like they're picking berries. Also being heat shielded is not the same as being invisible. Arnold still had to hold still and huddle against things not to be noticed even covered in mud. I'm also not aware of any weapon meeting the description of a sniper rifle that has to be manually cocked. Oh and Yautja are now bulletproof except when they're not. This is a brief sample. A lot of it just feels sloppy, like it was written by people who don't really value the lore of the universe or put effort into things feeling realistic in that context.

I'm going to return this one and go back to listening to "If It Bleeds."