Twilight Eyes fails on every level: conception, plot, character, development, setting and writing. Even the title is weak. The novel focuses on a seventeen year-old boy who has the inexplicable natural ability to see through the disguises of certain "people" and recognize them for what they truly are: porcine creatures bent on exterminating the human race, driven by their predisposed hatred of humankind.The narrator of his own story, Slim MacKenzie is a seventeen year-old drifter from Oregon, who is athletic, sensitive, morally upright and older than his years, traits that we are constantly being reminded of as though Koontz is trying hard to convince us of their accuracy. Slim is uninteresting and unbelievable, as flat as his prose and with less charm than the ink that was wasted in printing the text. The narration itself is marred by the fact that the narrator is ageless, seventeen or a hundred and two, leading me to suspect that it is not Slim himself narrating but someone pretending to be him, and I am left with the notion that Koontz has merely immersed himself in what is essentially a juvenile male-driven fantasy.Throughout my reading I kept wondering about the narrator Slim's vantage point is and his motive in telling the story. The events occur in 1963, but it is unclear at what stage in his life Slim is currently in and how distanced he has become from the events he is relating. The voice is ageless and remote, trance-like and devoid of personality, not seventeen but neither forty, which is likely what impels Koontz to keep reminding the reader that Slim is only seventeen. Koontz takes it for granted that this is even an issue, but while we don't require actual details of Slim's present circumstances, we do need to be somewhat grounded with narrator and narrative. The story should have been written in the third person. This would have eliminated the need for the grounding that Koontz is unable to deliver, and would have made Slim so much more interesting. I believe Koontz chose to write the story in the first person in order to allow for some dull moralizing that weighs the book down as heavily as a building would sink a rubber dinghy.With such an illusive narrator we can only guess as to what inspired slim to tell his story. It is arrogant and unprofessional of Koontz to assume that the reader will blindly trust the narrator, yet Slim does not even attempt to convince us that these goblins are real, and he proceeds with the presumption that we automatically believe him. Moreover, he is not trying to warn us of the danger of these hell-bent goblins, as he tells his story in a fairly casual way, withholding key pieces of information and revealing them at seemingly random points of the narrative. Slim is not even focused on these goblins and their threat to humanity, as he wades in a swamp of unimportant particulars. The emphasis on the most personal details of his sexual relationship with lover Rya Raines leads me to question his sensitive and moral nature, for he ends up coming off as an immature and overly-sexed man-child, bragging about giving Rya two orgasms before he even enters her, gushing embarrassingly over her perfectly rounded breasts, and then describing in odd detail his own orgasms: "through the medium of my sperm I passed my own heartbeat into her, the two now thumping as one." (p. 143) Perhaps this description is supposed to contrast the "spurting" blood of the goblins in the following paragraph, with "its thick warm jets of thick crimson serum," the serum in contrast with the semen, one giving life while the other steals it away (though this fails not only because of awful execution, but because Rya cannot have children and hence the life-giving aspect is moot). I don't believe any contrasts are attempted here; it is all part of a juvenile male fantasy.Story-wise very little happens. Over 451 pages we are given very little in the way of story and plot, with a rambling narrative that lacks direction. Instead of story we have naïve Christian moralizing and philosophizing (I don't mean that Christian moralizing and philosophizing itself is naïve, just that Koontz's own practice of it is less than insightful). Throughout the narrative Koontz/Slim reminds us that some people are good, while others are bad. Some are so bad that they may as well be evil "goblins," though overall humankind is filled with more good than bad and we should not harm the good because there is some bad in the flock. Destroy bad and maintain good; such is the purpose of life. Koontz tries to add ambiguity by illustrating extreme scenarios of "real" humans who act as though they are goblins, trying to drown us with the notion that the creatures may have a valid point in their desire to destroy humanity.The novel is written with an agonizingly grating stream of repetition. Not only do scenes repeat themselves, but descriptions from death to sex are essentially reformatted every few chapters. We are plagued by constant repetition of how evil these "goblins" are, beaten over the head with overused adjectives such as "evil," "dark," and so forth, and are told over and over when and where Slim and Rya make love, and just how his semen intermingles with Rya's inner self, or some such nonsense.This repetition is not reserved for descriptions and scenes, but the narrative is approached with a single, lacklustre technique. Koontz begins each scene with a statement, either an idea, the introduction of a character or a single event, and he then proceeds to analyze that statement, however mundane. Koontz sticks to this pattern so avidly that I was able to survive the final hundred and fifty pages by reading only the first sentence of each paragraph, while reading in full those few scenes that manage to progress the limited plot. Someone with literary capabilities or a wide range of interesting ideas may succeed with this kind of dragging, but Koontz's analyses are obvious and trite, and his method succeeds only in interrupting the meagre story. Perhaps aware of the repetitive structure, Koontz breaks off once in a while to gives us a series of brief sentences that are supposed to heighten tension, but that come across as dry and lazy.I keep pausing in writing this review, and do apologize for its messiness, but I find myself inappropriately attacking Koontz, then quickly deleting my frustrated comments. I suppose what makes me angry is that Koontz was incredibly lazy in putting this work together. Comments on this site indicate that even his fans dislike this novel, and it is unfortunate that he would go ahead with such a publication since, as I understand it, he has quite a range of followers.(Read my entire review & a brief parody at: Casual Debris.)
Again an earlier Koontz, this one has a lot of the fun stuff Koontz has, such as clairvoyance (a different type of clairvoyance,; our hero sees both the "social" and the more gruesome aspects of...well, I'll let you read the part about the Goblins (again from some long-ago experiment gone bad; think of "Phantoms"), , a sort of sideways love story,a smattering of gore, suspense and, best of all in this work, the world of carnies and its patching together of misfits of all sorts (ALL sorts!) who accept each other and band together to...well, I'll let you read that part. Hey, let's not forget that ubiquitous dog-who's-smarter-than-the-humans! This one doesn't make his appearance till the last, oh, eighth of the book, but his significance becomes quickly obvious. Think I'm a-gonna name my next dog "Growler." Has a few surprises along the way, plus a satisfying denouement. Throw in a little H. P. Lovecraft, some science fiction and you get one I recommend strongly. Remember, "Watchers" remains the benchmark!
What do You think about Twilight Eyes (1987)?
A masterpiece.Dean Koontz has written many great stories, but this may be his best ever. A haunting, chilling tale, following the journey of Slim MacKenzie. He's a drifter, but he's no ordinary man. With eyes the color of twilight, he's been blessed with a psychic gift: premonitions. He's also been cursed, for Slim can see the monsters hiding among us, feeding on our suffering.And when Slim joins a traveling carnival seeking sanctuary, what he'll find is a hunting ground-with humanity as the prey.What makes it even more compelling, are what he sees, the "goblins" hiding inside, the monsters wearing the perfect disguises, looking and sounding all too human, invisible to us, but not to him. And, look around, at some of the horrible things done to people by other people, it makes the idea of "goblins" hiding inside, all too real. Fiction, yes, but you never know.This is a keep you up late, page turner, can't put it down kind of book. You'll be wrung out by the power of the story, and the characters who struggle against the monsters hiding inside.
—Gerald
Read this one YEARS ago and came across it again so I thought I would re-visit it. So far it is just as good as the first time. Dean Koontz has always been one of my favorites though. Will update when I am done reading it. Well, I finally finished this one. It was different than I remembered but it has been a long time since I read it. It was great but still left me with a lot of questions. It seemed like the story kind of got away from him and he just gave up toward the end and wrapped it all up. I need to know what happened to the Goblins. Did the coal mine shut down? Did they ever really make a difference? I know it was left open to give room for another book but I don't care for that personally. I like my little wrapped up story. :)It was still a good read though and I am glad that I picked it up.
—Shelley
This was first published under the pen name Leigh Nichols, and I enjoyed the strong female lead character, and the empathy shown towards a grieving mother. At first it appears that Tina is experiencing a delayed emotional breakdown after her son was killed along with his scout troop in a bizarre accident that left no survivors and no bodies. When she becomes convinced her son is still alive and trying somehow to contact her, the only person to believe her is a man she's barely met. Luckily the guy is ex-services, and ideally placed to deal with the sinister men who are determined to kill her in order to keep quiet a very dark secret. In particular this book stands out in my mind as one of the first I'd come across in which a main character feels physically sick after killing (albeit justified). Much slimmer than the megatomes Koontz would later produce, the writing is 'tight' and the suspense gripping.
—Julia Hughes
