Shadowfires

De: Dean Koontz

Narrado por: Jane Oppenheimer

A haunting hair-raiser resurrected with a NEW recording and NEW narrator.

“His prose mesmerizes…Koontz consistently hits the bull’s-eye.” –Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Rachel's request for a quick and clean divorce enraged her husband. She’d never seen Eric so angry, so consumed by pure and terrifying hatred. Then, in the heat of the moment, Eric was killed in a traffic accident. Shocked and relieved, Rachel had nothing left to fear. Until Eric's body disappeared from the morgue—and suddenly, Rachel is being stalked by someone who looks just like her dead husband.

©1987 Nkui, Inc. (P)2022 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

An original Dean Koontz book

I probably read this book back when it first came out and it is still a great story. I liked the early books using a lot of freeways and cities in California. Very good narration.

Good story.

The narrator is very listenable... is that even word? She is very adept and nd I've enjoyed listening to her before.

Immensely enjoyable, but for one little thing…

A great Dean Koontz story, but, I have always been a “word” person and mispronunciations and grammatical errors just take me right out of the story. I don’t want to blame the narrator. She has a lovely voice and wonderful intonation. It may not be her fault. It may have been the copy she was reading from, but there were so many errors, I had to start counting them. I only started from Chapter 29, when it got too much to bear. After that there was:
Bezendrine instead of Benzedrine ,
Gutsy wind instead of Gusty,
En-con-ridion instead of En-chir-idion,
Cir-CUR-itous instead of Circuitous,
Dishearting instead of Disheartening,
Acrinoid instead of Arachnoid,
Imoliating instead of Immolating,
…they open fired instead of opened fire.
There were many more. Perhaps it is a matter of editing by the producer?
I don’t know whose job it is, but they were sleeping on the job in this one.
Sorry.

FANTASTIC BOOK!!

Koontz has done it again! Could hardly tear myself away from it. Oppenheimer was outstanding, she covered all based with her voice.

It was so brilliant and the descriptions were so vivid. Enjoyed it very much.

Nothing was wrong with the book. I enjoyed every word! Well written suspense in every turn!

Awesome!

this was an awesome story that was exceptionally well read! Definitely recommend this one for listening!

Narrator needs help with Mexican accent

The story was pretty good. I agree with other reviews that it was a bit wordy. The main issue that completely threw me off was the narrator trying to do a Mexican accent. She made Julio sound like Dracula.

What really sucks is when I’m completely immersed in the story and then she does the Mexican accent. I get completely thrown off and I don’t know if I should feel offended that she didn’t take the time to learn this accent or just irritated.

Unfortunately the narrators lack of knowledge of how a Mexican accent should sound did ruin more than a few parts of this book for me.

For an early DK novel it’s still very good.

I tried reading DK in the 80’s but just couldn’t get into his work. Partly because I felt his stories were unnecessarily and overly violent, and partly because it seemed that children were too often subjected to terror and the violence I mentioned.

This book however is, to my pleasant surprise, actually quite good. No kids involved and the violence, with two exceptions, isn’t over the top. The language will be offensive to Christians in some places with good reason but overall isn’t as bad as many other books I’ve read or listed to recently.

J. Oppenheimer does a very good job throughout though there are a few goofy mispronunciations. For example, gutsy wind instead of gusty wind and denomic instead of demonic. But overall she is excellent.

Hope this is helpful to y’all and enjoy your day.

Bad accent when narrating

Narrator was good, but wish she would not have tried to speak with an accent when speaking for Julio Verdad, I am a naturally Spanish speaker and that was awful.

A Dean Koontz Masterpiece

Dean Koontz engages all the best elements of storytelling in his latest novel, Shadowfires. A brilliant but brutal scientist fears the eternal damnation his parents promised would befall him because of the perversions visited upon him by his uncle as a child. He most sincerely wishes to avoid death at all costs. He develops a genetic “cure” for death, a promise of immortality, but the test mice, which came back to life after being killed, soon bashed their heads against their cages and had to be destroyed.

His beautiful, much younger wife has had it with his cruelty and hatred, and seeks to divorce him, refusing all but a token pittance of the incredible wealth he has already unearthed from his amazing discovery, for the “cure” promises to change the world as we know it. He is so infuriated by what he considers the insult she has dealt him by refusing his wealth, he threatens to kill her and stomps across the busy street outside the lawyer’s office, where he is struck by a truck, bashing his head in, killing him on the spot.

Then his body disappears from the morgue. The police, the government, the company investors, and a number of other agencies get involved in the search, which reveals again and again a cache of dead bodies and horrifically brutal damage, much of which seems aimed at the beautiful and good-hearted woman now his widow.

This novel is chock full of those who would be in power at the cost of their souls, those who would be legends of goodness and truth, and those who just want to make it home safe to be with the ones they love. All the elements converge to make one damn good story. I couldn’t stop reading it unless I absolutely had to!

A thoroughly satisfying read, this novel brings to “life” a monster whose journey blends Dr. Frankenstein with his monster, shapeshifting from the wondrous to the horrific to beyond imagination, and the total gamut of hopes, dreams, schemes, deepest longings, rages, lusts, and truest love.

And throughout rages hunger, Shadowfire and Changefire, heat that permeates existence with an intensity heretofore unknown.

I’m pretty sure this creature will become legendary in the most infamous sense. Don’t miss it.