Miku the Literary Cat Review: Dean Koontz The Eyes of Darkness
Did this novel predict the coronavirus? No, shut up Daily Mail.
Miku’s take:
“Mum and Dad have been around the house a lot because of something they call lockdown. It’s so good. Breakfast, lunch and dinner and undivided attention.
I liked this one because there were moments where my Mum was scared and that makes her even more grateful than usual to have me around.”
two out of four paws, I think this one predicted an end to the virus, but I never want lockdown to end.
Miku’s Mum’s take:
Dean Koontz appears to have almost written more books than I’ve read. The list is long, but he’s not an author I’d come across before. He doesn’t write about SOTB’s favourite theme too much. This one lured me in with an IRL click bait sticker asking “Did this novel predict the Coronvirus outbreak?”. I couldn’t resist, so I dared to answer the question by reading it.
So does it?
In short, no.
BUT there is one eerie sentence 8/9ths towards the end that justifies the marketing team having a field day. And hey, it worked so well done them.
Set in Las Vegas, the novel is part espionage thriller, part apocalypse threat, and final part supernatural horror. We follow successful show producer Tina in the approach to delivering a big new production on the strip. A lot of time is spent on this backstory and sadly we don’t revisit it later in the book, nor do her skills play any part in the rest of the narrative. Fun to visit sin city for a little adventure anyway.
While this career backdrop is set up, we learn that Tina’s son has very recently passed away. A devastated Tina is looking to move on with her life, past the grief.
The drama kicks off when one day she finds a message on the chalk board in his untouched room. NOT DEAD.
From this point it’s pacy and the characters are decently recognisable.
This book squeezes its way through a semantic crack to end up reviewed on this site, so it wouldn’t be top of my list to recommend. If you are stuck in an airport for a few hours this is the kind of the book that will take up the time.
