I did not enjoy The Forbidden Door as much as I did The Whispering Room. I still love Jane and Trevor. And of course Bernie and Luther. Now I also love Cornell and his unique look at the world. I enjoyed every part of the book that contained these characters. All other parts of the book made my mind wander.

This is a continuation of the story from the previous novel, the characters are defined and the story leaves you breathes throughout the whole book.. I can wait for the continuation of this story in tee next book.

This was my first Koontz novel. He writes wonderfully well plotted tales that are just a tad too Techno and SciFi for my taste. In this one, Jane Hawk is attempting to rescue her son from pursuing Techno Arcadians who want to use him as a pawn to capture her. There is lots and lots of action and a cast of characters that could terrify most anyone. Perfect reading for those who like the genre. Thanks to Net Galley and Bantam for an ARC for an honest review.

A fantastic book. Extremely entertaining, captivating and interesting read. I could not put it down. Wonderfully written with strong, intriguing characters. I want to read more from this author. I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.

First of all, I love this author and his writings. This book, as all his other books, did not disappoint. It is the fourth book in the Jane Hawk series and I think one of the best. Jane Hawk is a super FBI agent that is bent on ridding the country of the evil force using technology to control people. She, along with people she has befriended along the way, must find a way to keep her son, Travis safe. The book revisited old friends and introduces new characters that will aid Jane in her adventures to save the world as we know it. I would recommend you read these books in order, as this will give the reader a full explanation of actions and events referenced in the book. I cannot wait to read about Jane’s next adventure.

I got an ARC in return for an honest review on NetGallery.

I give this fourth book in the Jane Hawk series a tentative four stars. I say that because yes, it's still loaded with the suspenseful paranoia that Koontz is so good at, and there's plenty of action to keep things rolling. Except that it doesn't roll that far. We don't see nearly as much of our heroine, Jane Hawk, in this one. In fact, she almost takes a backseat to the many bad guys in this terrifying conspiracy for world domination. While I appreciate the author's ability to paint a scene, this one got a little wordy and drawn out. It takes a bit before the title is explained, but I have to say that it certainly added another chilling layer to this story. So, while this one had its ups and downs for me, I'm still intrigued by Jane's story and recommend it frequently. At this point, I'm invested in the outcome, whatever it may be, so will be checking out whatever's next for Jane and company.

Our favorite Rogue FBI agent is back in the fourth installment of the Jane Hawk series. Jane has been very busy and successful collecting the evidence she needs to expose the Techno Arcadians and the nanotechnology they use to control the minds of people they deem to be a threat to the ultimate “utopia” they are striving to achieve. Beyond all odds, she has managed to stay a step ahead in this game of cat and mouse until the unthinkable happens. Jane’s five year-old son, Travis, has been carefully hidden away from these monsters who seek to do him harm in order to draw out his mother and put an end to her crusade once and for all. Using the best technology and the vast amount of government vehicles and tools at their disposal, the Techno Aracadians have finally discovered the whereabouts of Travis and will use any means necessary to capture him. With her son in the sites of her enemies, Jane must cross the country under the nose of these terrorists to save her child before it’s too late. The race is on.

The Forbidden Door is my favorite book in the Jane Hawk series so far. Jane is one of the best female heroines in any of the books that I’ve read to date. She’s extremely sharp, brave, and good to her core. Koontz has created such a believable and brilliant character and I continue to be amazed at the wisdom with which he so vividly captures the unbreakable bond between a mother and her child and also the lengths in which a mother would go to protect that bond. Jane reminds me of a mama grizzly bear going after the poachers who have taken her cub. This book was also a relief from the constant kidnapping and interrogation of Jane’s enemies. While it’s a great storyline and necessary to the plot, the story needed a bit of a shakeup to keep the reader interested and this book was perfect for that.

While Jane is the main Protagonist and an extraordinary character, she is not the only great character in the series. The cast throughout all four books is made up of a motley crew, each character being more interesting than the last. In this installment we are introduced to Cornell Jasperson. Cornell is an unusual person, both in appearance and personality. He’s a gangly, 6’9” tall, African American millionaire with Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s such a well rounded and lovable character and, in my opinion, does a wonderful job of representing people suffering from this horrible affliction. He’s easily my second favorite character, behind Jane, to be introduced thus far. I pray he’s fated to have a happy ending at the conclusion of the series.

At every turn in this story it seems like there is no way for Jane to come out on top, but she always does. Koontz has such a vivid imagination and takes his characters to places I would never guess at. This series has been wildly entertaining and I’m completely invested in the outcome of these amazing characters. I can’t wait to see where Dean takes us in the next installment, The Night Window, expected to release in May 2019.

Book Review: The Forbidden Door (Jane Hawk #4) by Dean Koontz

In the fourth installment of the Jane Hawk series we love, mind-bending A.I. nanotechnology unexpectedly loses control as "adjusted" marionettes get shuttled through the "forbidden door", spawning blood thirsty, vicious zombies.

Our heroic former-FBI protagonist is now faced with the warped creatures, along with heavily armed telepathic hunter /killers who can seemingly foresee her every move, nanotech virus-injected hapless slaves, the cabal of highly placed masters, and the vaguely god-like ultra controller now revealed as the "Unknown Playwright".

In her quest to save her son, Travis, her in-laws and the world, and avenge the death of her husband, she is allied with amiable, colorful characters encountered in previous books.

To enjoy this book, it is a must to read the first three in sequence.

This book has the usual Dean Koontz imaginative and creative brand of techno-thriller, urgent fast-paced action scenes interlaced with rich poetic expressions and elegant prose - which makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read.

But, with this fourth book, the reader perceives an inkling of deja vu, with the plot, the villains, confrontations, locations, somewhat repetitive, even predictable. The series needs fresh ideas, new locations - perhaps abroad, and at the appropriate point, an explosive Dean Koontz finale.

Review based on an advance reading copy presented by NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine.

This was the best book in this series, so far, in my opinion! There was a lot of action and I felt more connected to the main characters, as it is the 4th book in the series. Dean Koontz is a gifted writer and this is one of his best books!

This is the fourth book in the Jane Hawk thriller series. OMG this series has had some major twist and turns. Every time I think I know where the story is going, oh no I am completely surprised when it goes in another direction. These stories have been wonderful and exciting. The characters are well developed and the story is paced well. I do feel that the reader would have a better understanding of the story if the books are read in order.

The Forbidden Door is book 4 of the Jane Hawk Series by Dean Koontz. I love a great story that contains a strong, believable and memorable main character. Up until this series, Odd Thomas was my favorite character to date. However, I have to agree with an Associated Press quote that says "Jane Hawk is arguably the best character Koontz has created." Jane is strong, a fighter, passionate, able to make decisions in crisis situations, and so much more. If you haven't started reading this series yet, you will want to start today with book 1, The Silent Corner. This will introduce you to the cast a characters and give you the back story to why Jane's fight is not only a fight for her family and her sanity, but also for a much greater cause.

In book 4, The Forbidden Door the stakes have gotten much higher, and Jane's enemies are going for the one thing that they know she will coming running for...her five-year-old son Travis. Travis is her whole life and she has made impossible decisions about how to keep him safe in this fight she has been caught in. She has been able to keep him safe with a couple that she had hidden ties to, so the enemy was not able to identify the connection. When she receives a phone call on one of her disposable cell phones she assumed it was either Gavin or Jessie because they were the only one's that had this number. However, when she answered she hears "Mommy? Uncle Gavin and Aunt Jessie went for groceries, and they never came back." Her son had to grow up fast, and he knew making a call to her was dangerous. Jane calmly gives him instructions on a plan to keep him protected, and her young son has to set out on his own to the next safe house until she can be with him again. Hanging up the phone, she is rocked to her core, and comes up with her own plan to reunite with Travis before the group who are altering the brain structures of their chosen victims can find them.

There are a variety of story lines going on at the same time, which gives a wonderful tension to the story. People are starting to believe Jane's stories about what is really going on and they are joining in her fight in their own ways. I believe strongly that book reviews should never give away spoilers before the reader has a chance to enjoy them. Since this book has so many plots to savor, I will leave this review with this thought. When you are about 3/4 of the way through the book, do yourself a favor and find a block of time that you can read the remainder of the book in one sitting. There is so much action going on, and plot lines overlapping and blending together, you will not find a good spot to put the book down. So enjoy the final ride of The Forbidden Door at a time and place that you can delve deep into the wonderful story. You may need to catch your own breath a couple of times. By giving yourself time to enjoy it you can enjoy the adrenaline ride and keep on going until the end of this story.

Finally, the story of Jane Hawk is not done with this story, the next book, The Night Window will be coming soon!

No one spins a terrifying-ly good yarn like Dean Koontz. And hidden amongst the long passages of flowery prose and constant introspection by almost every character, there is a doozy. But it took some dedication to find it.


A continuation of the previous Jane Hawk novels, we continue her journey to... Well, I must admit I've rather forgotten what her journey is supposed to be. In the first novel, she was out for vengeance, bent on taking down a shadowy cartel of revolutionaries who are determined to inject nanotechnology into everyone who opposes them, turning them into virtual, mindless slaves. These same people were responsible for the suicide of Jane's husband. Each succeeding novel has her going farther astray from this noble cause and accomplishing pretty much nothing. This story is no different. In fact, we probably see the least amount of Jane Hawk in this effort that we did in the preceding ones.


Jane's son is in danger and about to be found and held hostage or killed by the evil doers. Jane is on her way to rescue him. Then we segue off into one of several other storylines. Her in-laws realize they are in danger and escape at the last second from their ranch in Texas. We have a running storyline of the baddies going after them and being frustrated at every turn. Then we have another branch of the baddies going after a family who may have helped the in-laws escape; a childhood friend of their deceased son, his wife and their three children. They are held captive in their home by the evil agents looking for Janes in-laws. This storyline goes on for a while, with a quite interesting character being introduced in the twelve-year-old daughter, Laurie. She is intrepid and feisty and finds a way to fight back against their captors. Sadly, when this story arc ends, we don't see anymore of this family or Laurie.

Then we switch to a desert town, where Jane's son is being hidden in a protective bunker by a cousin of the friends of Janes who were originally keeping him safe at their ranch. Having a hard time keeping up with me? This is how fast and furious scenes in the book kept switching back and forth. Back to the story: Janes friends were killed off in the previous book, and her son left in the care of the husbands possibly autistic, exceedingly smart (and rich), definitely odd cousin, Cornell. Another fascinating character that I would have loved to keep seeing more of, but... The bad guys inject 50 of the local townspeople (how?!, never really explained), hoping to turn them into willing slaves to help them search for the boy. But something starts going horribly wrong with the injected ones. Instead of the usual mindless worker drones, they are turning into killing zombie machines, wreaking havoc on everything and everyone in sight.


Meanwhile, we jump back to the mentally deranged bunch searching for Janes' in-laws. Their leader is a nut-job who thinks he is in a play and everything is being run by the Unknown Playwright, and that nothing, including his own existence, is real. How this loony tune accomplishes anything in the search for the in-laws is beyond me. They pull info out of thin air, make deductions faster than Sherlock Holmes, and stay on the tail of the in-laws as if they were attached at the hip.


Now back to the desert and Cornell, who has become quite fond Jane's son. The bad guys are getting closer, led by the Ivy school educated Dubose. While searching for the boy, he often stops to wax philosophical about life, liberty and the pursuit of sex wherever he can find it. They are scrambling now to deal with the influx of zombie-slaves while still doggedly pursuing the whereabouts of the boy, and expecting Jane to show up at any moment. Which she finally does. Whew. Accompanied by two more spunky characters that I would dearly love to hear more about, the 80+ year old widower Bernie, and ex-Sherriff Luther. No spoilers but, at long last, the end.

This wasn't an easy book to get through. I admit to occasionally reading the first and last sentence of some of the paragraphs that dragged on and on (and on and on), spouting innermost thoughts about existentialism and delving into the minds of the characters, mostly the bad ones, to explain away the whys and wherefores of what they're doing. Lots of metaphors used, when it would have been just as effective to actually write about the real thing. It was as tedious as sounds. But as I said at the beginning, if you persevere and slog through all the chaff, there is a really good story hidden in here.


Oh, and The Forbidden Door? Never did find out what it is or where it's at. May have been a metaphor...

“Nature won’t allow us to be haunted backward to a primitive consciousness because of any trauma. Nature will have built into our psyche a forbidden door forever locked against the past of the species, and no event can open it.” 0h yeah??...

For the purpose of my review I’ll just let potential newbies to the series know that the Techno Arcadians, as they’re known, are the bad guys whom I’ll refer to as TAs. They are a group of elitists in all walks of life... judges, government officials, law enforcement, and also regular John Q. Public types. Many lives have been lost to this group that uses a nano-technology method of mind-control and will eliminate any threatening human beings to their movement of supremacy. They took the life of Jane Hawk’s husband Nick, a former special-ops guy in the back-story of book 1, which was made to appear as a suicide. It didn’t take Jane long to figure out what was happening but proving it was to be the most challenging, frustrating, and frightening experience of her life.

Jane Hawk, rogue FBI agent, is now a wanted fugitive after bringing down former powers-that-be of the Techno-Arcadians in the previous novels. Her life and that of her 5-year old son Travis have been threatened by this same elitist group. Her job isn’t done.

I’ve enjoyed the series, but this one the least. Perhaps because much has to be reiterated from the first 3 novels to keep new readers abreast of what has transpired. Another reason is that this one focuses more on the baddie TAs instead of Jane’s plight. And there are many new ones. Many, many. They had something go wrong with the last group of people they injected to readjust them into the mindless robots they become. The subjects erupted into bizarre behavior by blazing mindlessly through The Forbidden Door of their minds,

My favorite parts of the novel were the interactions between Jane’s son Travis and his new care-giver, the brilliant autistic (and rich) Cornell, and the two faithful German Shepherd’s, how they bonded and took care of each other. Also Jane’s grandfatherly ally, Bernie, helping Jane to rescue Travis from the threat of his capture by the TAs. You can’t help but love him and I look forward to more about Bernie and his family in Scottsdale in book 5 “The Night Window” coming May 14, 2019.

My thanks to NetGalley for the eARC and opportunity to honestly review this writing by Dean Koontz. He’s at the top of his game with this series. 👏🏻 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2492495602

In the third Jane Hawk novel I wasn't sure how the tension could get higher, but Dean Koontz made it happen. In The Forbidden Door, the stakes became more personal and the Arcadians got bolder. I was on the edge of my seat, wondering how Jane was going to get out of this one. It seemed impossible.

In the previous books we stopped following a couple characters I found interesting. I was a little sour not knowing what happened with them. But, in The Forbidden Door Bernie and Luther made a return! I was excited to see them. As often as Jane works alone it made everything feel more dangerous and climatic. Doubly so, when some old badies mix in with the new ones.

Overall, this was probably my favorite novel of the series. So many things went wrong, so many things turned out right. The suspense was sky-high as you waited to find out what happened next. Great stuff.

I received a review copy.

Sometimes it's hard to find a sequel that's better then the previous books.
Lucky for you, that's exactly what this one does. Dean Koontz knows how to write a series that keeps you invested.

Dean Koontz has done it again with this page-turning mystery. I felt myself getting drawn in by these characters! You won't want to put this book down.

Dean Koontz kept me totally absorbed in his new Jane Hawk thriller. Jane seemed to be a minor character in this book, with the focus more on the bad guys, known as the Techno-Arcadians. I learned a lot more about how their authority structure worked and how they were disciplined. Many of the scenes in which the Arcadians encountered and fought against regular civilians were absolutely horrifying. Without giving anything away, the title itself turns out to be an extremely violent and horrifying spectacle that left me gasping for breath and hurrying to read to the end of that scene. In this book, Travis is in danger and Jane has to risk everything to get to him to save him. The love of a mother for her child knows no bounds, as shown in this book that continues the saga of Jane versus the bad guys. My favorite character was Cornell, a giant man with a big heart and a lot of psychological problems. But his way of approaching problems was nothing less than heroic and I loved his gentleness, kindness and acceptance of what was happening. This book is a must read if you are a fan of the Jane Hawk series as I am, but I have to say that the violence is increased in this book and graphically described, so it is not for the faint of heart.

This is the fourth book in the exciting and suspenseful Jane Hawk series. Previously in the series, former FBI top agent Jane Hawk's husband, Nick, was believed to have committed suicide. Jane did not believe the official FBI story and investigated on her own. Now considered a wanted and rogue agent, she has discovered American citizens are being injected with nano-technology enabling the helpless victims to be downloaded with commands.

To protect Travis, her small five year old from danger, Jane has secreted him with friends at an undisclosed location. He has called to let her know his guardians have not returned from a small town shopping trip. Jane needs to rescue him before he is taken hostage.

To complicate matters further, the mind controlled victims are beginning to go violently insane and the insanity is spreading like a virus. I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series, "The Night Window".

I highly recommend this Dean Koontz thriller to all lovers of mystery and horror. Enjoy!

First of all, I love this author and his writings. This book, as all his other books, did not disappoint. It is the fourth book in the Jane Hawk series and I think one of the best. Jane Hawk is a super FBI agent that is bent on ridding the country of the evil force using technology to control people. She, along with people she has befriended along the way, must find a way to keep her son, Travis safe. The book revisited old friends and introduces new characters that will aid Jane in her adventures to save the world as we know it. I would recommend you read these books in order, as this will give the reader a full explanation of actions and events referenced in the book. I cannot wait to read about Jane’s next adventure.

I am giving this one 3.5 out of 5 stars. I am enjoying the series as a whole but there were some parts of the book that were a little long and and not as intense. This book starts off where The Crooked Staircase left off. There is a lot going on in this book and jumping back and forth between different characters and places. I don’t think we get to see as much of Jane Hawk in this book as the others. The parts with the evil Arcadians seem to take up a lot of the book and sometimes it was more of a slog to read so that is why I took off half a star for this installment. We get to see Luther come back in this book, but I wish we got to see more of him. The beginning and the last quarter of the book when Jane confronts the Arcadians was intense and more like the other books. I am curious how this will end and look forward to the next book in the series.