Mr. Koontz does it again!!!! With the fourth novel, Jane is on the hunt to save her son. Characters from the past come back to help Jane in her quest. Dean always seems to invent unique characters, that grow on the reader and become very enduring.

The fifth novel from what I hear will be the final showdown between Jane and the evil masterminds seeking world dominance. Dean has this reader on the edge waiting to see what happens next. The twist with the controlled people in this novel was out of this world. What happened to them. You'll have to read to find out

Jane Hawk's mission to prove her husband--and countless others--did not commit suicide seems to be coming down to the wire. I keep thinking, "What else can happen to poor Jane?" And Koontz keeps answering me with a phenomenal story. Love the cast of characters in these novels--even the bad guys are fleshed out. I also love that Mr. Koontz (or the publisher) turns these out rather quickly. I don't have to wait so long I forget what's happened in the last book. Can't wait to read the next one!

Let me preface this by saying that I have been reading Dean Koontz for much of my life. My aunt first introduced me when I was a teenager and I've read his books since. Some of them are amazing, and some of them...not so much. Unfortunately, this is one of the "not so much." To be honest, I couldn't get very far in this book. I read the other Jane Hawk books and felt that they were being unnecessarily drawn out, and could have been condensed into one, maybe two books. When I first started The Forbidden Door, I felt like I remembered most of what had occurred in the past books, which is good, because this opens up about 2 minutes after the last book ended. I couldn't get into this book at all for two reasons:
1. You do not need to make a character-based series when she is working on what is, at heart, one mystery. I keep assuming she'll figure out how to really end it, but there's always someone else that's involved and she has to go after them which leads to someone else and it gets repetitive.
2. EGON GOTTFREY. What is wrong with this guy?? Egon Gottfrey believes in the "unknown playwright" who controls everything, like the people who created the matrix. "Were he to have dinner with two or twenty others, he would still be alone, for his own mind is the only thing that he can prove is real. If the cafe, the town, and the world are illusions, then so might be the minds of other people who occupy the phantom physical bodies with which he interacts. Only the Unknown Playwright knows for sure." It's just pages of that nonsense that has nothing to do with the book at all and I couldn't take it seriously. Gottfrey references The Matrix, but this is exactly the plot of The Matrix and just didn't really fit in with the book at all, at least the parts that I read.

I was sorry to have to put the book down, but I couldn't get into it, and to be honest, I don't feel the Jane Hawk series is one of Koontz's best. I never got truly invested in it. I can only read how beautiful and awesome and low carb (yes, for real, that is referenced several times) Jane Hawk is. She is so far from a normal human being that no one can relate to her, and I couldn't empathize with her, which is rare for me with any character.

This is a great followup to The Crooked Staircase. I love Jane, the main character, in these books. She is a strong take no prisoners woman!! Dean Koontz is always a sure thing and this book is no exceptionn!

The Forbidden Door by Dean Koontz is the forth in the Jane Hawk series and finds Jane still on the run from the conspirators that are taking over the government from within and inspiring countless people to end their lives prematurely. This time, her primary mission is to move her son, Travis, from his current hiding place to a safer one. Her enemies know she is coming for him and are waiting for her and doing their best to find him before she does. It is a complex journey; one that she is not sure will end well. She has many contacts from her time in the FBI...not all above board but most willing to help, for a price.

Jane is a complex and compelling character. She is smart, fearless, loving, and loyal. She is not lacking in courage and is so desperate that she will try anything. She is a planner and her plans seem to work. Some of the characters from the conspiracy have interesting depth and consistency, giving one pause, as the live situations that have formed their personalities are rampant on our society. The plot is complicated, a myriad of roadblocks thrown in Jane's way, keeping the reader in constant suspense. Will she get past this one? At the same time, books and movies like inspire constant worry in those of us who have lost faith in the government.

I recommend this book for action/thriller readers. It could be read as a stand-alone but would probably be a better experience if read as part of the series. It is a page-turner with plot twists at every turn.

I received a free ARC of this book in order for a fair and honest review. #netgalley #theforbiddendoor

The forbidden door is by far the best in the series so far. Dean has a flow to his book that I like. This book is moor abought othe characters and less of Jane but still a great read. Highly recommend reading. Can’t wait for the last book! Dean right faster!

Jane Hawk is back! I was eagerly awaiting this latest installment of this spy thriller series involving kick-ass female rogue special agent Jane Hawk. Although it felt a bit drawn out in parts - too much filler and I skimmed, there was plenty of suspense, evil villains, and high-tech gadgetry to keep me engrossed. Jane is a character I cheer for at every turn and look forward to the next book in the series.

The Forbidden Door is a powerhouse novel the I could not put down, taking me about a day and a half to read. This series has been phenomenal and each book has gotten better. Jane Hawk stops at nothing to reach her son before the Archadians, who are just starting to realise that they don't have as much control as they thought over their adjusted people. I am eagerly awaking the next book. Oi really hope they do a tv series or movies based off these books.

Jane Hawk is a character that has come to feel almost like family to me. Throughout the series, she has been written in such a realistic and vibrant way, that I have found it very easy to become heavily invested in her plight to prove that her husband, and others, did not commit suicide but were programmed to do so through the experimental use of invasive, biological, nanotechnology.

In this fourth novel of the series, Jane continues to show courage and determination as she battles, tirelessly, to stay alive and keep her young son safe from those that would use him in the most nefarious of ways. Since she has been labeled a rogue FBI agent and 'hawked' (pun intended) to the public as an exceedingly dangerous and unstable criminal that has committed treason, she must employ the use of clever disguises to hide her identity. She finds that she must rely on the help of not only strangers she befriends along the way, but those who are involved in the types of illegal activities for which they should, lawfully, be arrested. Through everything, she continues to be hunted, mercilessly, while trying to gather the evidence she needs to expose the secret society of extremely powerful people called the Techno Arcadians that are running the horrific project which is turning innocent people into mindless, biddable, husks willing to do anything they are told to do, including murder, prostitution and suicide.

Once again, Koontz brings the techno thrills and cyber chills that have been the driving force in this series, while also giving you a kick butt, take-no-prisoners heroine with the heart of a mother lioness that you can really champion. And, I applaud him for his unique ability to stay fresh, modern and relative in a very demanding and exacting niche of the literary market.


#TheForbiddenDoor #NetGalley

*I received a complimentary ARC of this book from NetGalley & Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine in order to read and provide a voluntary, unbiased and honest review, should I choose to do so.

A thrilling read that blends suspense, thriller, technology, and an Orwellian future. To be honest, this was my entry point into the Jane Hawk series, which may have left me confused with some of the characters and backstory. However, I do plan to check out the first three before the fifth debuts. I liked the trio of protagonists, especially Bernie. They each brought something unique to the team and meshed well together. The antagonists were equally as interesting.

However, I thought there were too many plot threads that either were tied up too quickly or left unresolved. The central narrative was woven throughout but there were a number of subplots that were either superfluous or needed more detail. Again, this could be due to my lack of background to the book series.

Overall, a solid 3.5. Would recommend it to others, although possibly reading the books in order would be better.

I think this was the best of the series so far. It was a little different from the others as it focused on Jane trying to rescue her son instead of going after the Arcadians. A few of our favorite characters make an appearance and we meet some new people that do not mess around. I love the way some of the regular people band together in different situations and it was good to see the Arcadians looking less indomitable at times. The story had some interesting twists and I'm looking forward to the next in the series.

Published by Bantam on September 11, 2018

The Forbidden Door is the fourth Jane Hawk novel. Each book is a long installment in a very long story, so there’s not much point in reading The Forbidden Door unless you’ve read the first three novels in the series. Despite Dean Koontz’ undeniable talent, I’m not sure it is worth the effort to read an unimaginative mind-control conspiracy story that could have been told in one or two books, or at most a trilogy, but that Koontz expanded to fill five books.

Jane Hawk was an FBI agent until her husband killed himself. Since he wasn’t the kind of guy to end it all, Jane did some research and discovered that suicides were spiking. She is apparently the only person in the world who managed to connect that statistic to a vast conspiracy involving nanotechnology that takes control of the human mind and renders people submissive to the orders of their masters.

The masters are the usual gang of high powered business leaders and politicians who want to shape the world by killing everyone who might make it better (people who, from their perspective, would be making it worse). The grand guru of the scheme devised a computer model to select the victims.

Jane is chasing these guys while hiding her son from them, since they are also chasing her. I’ve long wondered why the bad guys didn’t try harder to find the kid, and in this fourth novel they finally listened to me. The plot of The Forbidden Room involves the conspirators narrowing the search for Jane’s son, who eventually stays with a genius named Cornell Jasperson who is coping with autism, agoraphobia, and a host of other mental disorders and fears, all of which Jane’s son and his two dogs seem on the verge of miraculously curing. Like all of the “good guy” characters in this series, Cornell is a paradigm of niceness.

Two very nice characters who played important supporting roles in earlier novels, a black sheriff named Luther Tillman and an elderly widower named Bernie Riggowitz, return to play similar roles in Jane’s quest to save her son from the clutches of the conspirators. The plot consists of Jane figuring out how to reach her son and get him to safety (again), alternating with scenes of her son and his dogs bonding with Cornell and scenes of the bad guys doing their mind control thing (which turns out to have a flaw, suggested by the novel’s title, that creates a new kind of danger).

Like other novels in the series, this one feels padded. In fact, the entire novel seems like filler. Koontz always does a masterful job of creating likable characters, but in this series characters tend to be created and discarded in a series of mini-stories that are consistent with the larger plot but that could just as easily have been omitted. I suppose that’s an inevitable product of turning a one-novel idea into multiple novels.

Nor does Koontz imbue his characters with the kind of complexity that characterizes his best work. Hawk is such a capable, caring, selfless individual, seemingly lacking even the slightest imperfection, that she also lacks any dimension of depth. Cornell and Bernie are at least quirky, but they come across as stereotypes (Cornell reminded me of Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man and Bernie reminded me of a less crusty version of the grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine). Sadly enough, the novel’s most interesting character is a bad guy who believes he has been cast in a play and is being directed on an illusory stage by an Unknown Playwright.

Koontz at his best is such a good writer that it is disappointing when he isn’t at his best. The entire series seems to have been written on auto-pilot, and The Forbidden Door does so little to advance the plot that it stands as the weakest of the four books. Book five is scheduled for 2019. I hope that Koontz can find his groove after cashing in on this unoriginal premise. I recommended the first three books because they are mindlessly enjoyable, but at this point I would hesitate to recommend the series as a whole, and I view The Forbidden Door as a novel that is only worth reading for the sake of finishing the series.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Forbidden Door intensifies the storyline for Jane in her quest to rescue her son. I always enjoy reading a series because it revisits characters that are quite enjoyable in the previous installments of the books. I love that Dean Koontz throws in a couple of nut case characters in the mix too. The unknown playwright is so believable I found myself wondering often who it might be. While this story has not yet ended for Jane or Travis, the sense of urgency is felt throughout the story. I found myself liking not only Jane and her band of crusaders, but even the not so legal characters that she does business with. I am really looking forward to the next book in this series The Night Window in May of 2019!

I received a free copy of this book from the author. I had the opportunity to review or not.

I am a died in the wool fan of Dean Koontz. I love Jane Hawk and her will to live; her never surrender determination to save her son, and her intense desire to clear her husband’s name. She’s the hero you want with you in a fight. The characters she goes up against are as ruthless as any bad guys in a real or written script. But they are blinded by their passion to create a new world and really don’t understand Jane. Thank heaven! Her skills and their underestimation of her abilities keep her going. This series has been a non-stop adventure taking us to places of evil so intense it is hard to imagine.

Mr. Koontz creates worlds we dare not go to except in books. And these books show off his great talent. As well as his twisted mind! I did find this book to be a bit overlong, but there was no way I wasn’t going to finish it. Can’t wait for the next one.

The third book in this series ended in such a cliffhanger that I couldn't wait for book 4 to come out. Then I started reading it, and I read some more, then I read some more. It took me 6 weeks to finish this book which is a very long time for me. The cliffhanger was addressed but the book itself dragged on and on and was a little boring. There's a lot of repeat information from previous books to get readers who may not have read all the previous books caught up.

I really like the concept of this series. Jane Hawk is a great action character, and I've enjoyed the friends she has made along the way. This installment was still exciting, although about 2/3 of it focused on the "bad guys" pursuing Jane, and I felt like those parts were too long. But the parts related to the Forbidden Door were so chilling!!

I would definitely recommend starting this series at the first - it'd be hard to pick up at this book. I'm excited to see what happens next.

This has become for me a seriously addicting series. Although it is what might be considered a long book, the pages fly by and one is totally immersed in Jane Hawk's quest to undo evil and protect her beloved son, Travis.

In this book, the fourth of the series, Jane is once again battling the evil members of the Arcadian group who through the ability of nanotechnology are able to infiltrate one's brain literally doing away with free will and putting the recipients in the total power of the Arcadians. This diabolical group has infiltrated all levels of government, business, having successfully succeeded in painting our heroine Jane appear as a serial killer. Of course Jane is on every wanted list imaginable, and the Arcadians's goal is to stop her and find her son in order to do so.

Jane is a masterful character. She is astute, cunning, and has all the makings of a terrific female lead character. She is searching for the leader of this organization who is able to enslave people with just an injection. You find yourself cheering Jane on as she battles, with the help of a few wonderful friends, this evil organization. There are some topnotch additions to the series with the characters of Bernie Riggowitz, the Auschwitz survivor, Cornell Jasperson, app inventor with a touch of autism and Luther Tillman, ex-cop and freedom fighter.

If you enjoy a book that combines a touch of humor, horror, suspense, and reading into the middle of the night, this series comes highly recommended. So looking forward to the next in the series. Until then, this reader will be pulling for Jane and waiting for her to cut the head off the snake who is leader the Arcadians.

Thank you to Dean Koontz, Berkley, and NetGalley for providing me with many hours of riveting reading.

This is another excellent book in the wonderful Jane Hawk series. Once again, Dean R. Koontz outdoes himself with this riveting series of tales that are filled with heroism, suspense, thrills, and an enemy worth fighting against. I am so glad he is a fast and prolific writer, as I do not want to wait long for the next title in the Jane Hawk books. #NetGalley #ForbiddenDoor #DeanRKoontz

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: I have a material connection because I received a review copy for free from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Former FBI agent Jane Hawk is back with a vengeance in the fourth installment of Koontz’s bestselling series. With law enforcement and the Techno Arcadians both searching for Jane and her young son, Travis, she has been forced to do things she never imagined doing before. She will do anything to save five-year-old Travis and the world as we know it.

Sure, there are things in this world that need to be changed, but not this way. Hordes of people look “normal” but have actually been altered by an injection of a Nano machine that takes over their brains to help the Arcadians create a perfect, supreme society. Part of their job is culling the herd so to speak, which includes murder and in some cases, suicide.

Jane has a personal stake in this game. Somehow they got to her husband and she will move heaven and earth to keep them away from anyone else she loves. She knew he would have never killed himself, so she started investigating and found out scores of people who were happy and productive also mysteriously committed suicide. As an FBI agent, she had resources available to help look for the reason why this happened, but now that she has become the most wanted person in the United States she has to move in the shadows. Keeping one step ahead of the bad guys both known and unknown is exhausting but Jane is relentless in her mission. Unfortunately, the Arcadians are ramping up at a frenzied pace and becoming more and more reckless causing things to begin going horrifically wrong.

The novel moves from Jane’s point of view to the Arcadians, both getting closer and closer to each other until the final confrontation of the book. As the tension rises, the forces of good and evil clash, determined to fight to the finish no matter what the cost.

Koontz is one of my favorite authors of all time. He delivers solid plots that are so realistic they can terrify you page after page. His descriptive style is absolutely stunning without dropping over the ledge of pretention. Foreshadowing is done artfully, such as …”lightning rips the fabric of the night, and thunder speaks against the window glass.” Seriously beautiful writing page after page without intruding or overpowering the plot is one of his specialties. Much to my delight, The Forbidden Door is no exception.

This is the fourth book in the Jane Hawk series, the fifth and last book, The Night Window, will be available in 2019. This is the second book of the series that I have read. Koontz does a great job of bringing the reader up to speed in an early chapter, so I never felt lost or confused.

I have read many of this award-winning author’s books, my favorite being the Odd Thomas series. The Jane Hawk series comes in a close second. Both series are totally different but are extremely well written and highly entertaining. When looking through the list of Koontz books to see which ones I would choose to be favorites, it was almost impossible. It is much like trying to pick a favorite child – I love them all for different reasons, each of them is amazing in their own way.

Copyright © 2018 Laura Hartman

I was excited to read the follow up to the first book in the series that I read, Crooked Staircase. Note that there are 2 others, but I haven't gotten to them yet. What I enjoyed the most about the book before this, is I feel like I got to know Jane Hawk and was invested in her chase of the secret government agency, the Acadians. This novel, however, focused much more on the people chasing Jane. I found that to be incredibly time consuming and confusing with all kinds of characters and backstories being told. I tediously read this book, and it took me a lot longer than normal to wade through it. The last 1/4 of the book regained the intensity and Jane storyline that I was so much looking forward to, so it ended much better than it started. But honestly, the first 3/4 was not to my liking. Hoping the next, and maybe last?? book will read like the last part of this one.