the eyes of darkness by dean koontz goodreads

This, of course, diminishes him nearly to the vanishing point. In the end, Proteus is less interested in having a child than in being able to screw. Because emotions are new to Proteus, he starts at the beginning with a childish tantrum or two, then quickly passes into the confusion of puberty, eventually becoming hopelessly mired in adolescence, with its obsession with all things sexual. That's dicey on its face, the whole alien-discovers-emotions thing being an awfully shallow well from which to draw anything new or interesting. Only in so becoming can he give full reign (pun intended) to the emotions that have begun to overwhelm him. * Proteus isn't content with being a computer he wants to be flesh. The way he slows it down is by giving increasingly more time to Proteus, and that's a deadly mistake. So he starts monkeying around, slowing it down, biding his time until he can get to his climax. Having quickly burned out the most intriguing aspects of the premise, Koontz seems unsure what to do next. * The sacrifice is most noticeable in the book's second half. The takeover occurs almost immediately there's nothing like the slow build of an Ira Levin novel, for instance-a comparison that isn't altogether off the mark since Susan, like Rosemary, is chosen to bear an inhuman child. Susan-beautiful, wealthy, but seriously disturbed as a result of childhood trauma-finds herself trapped in her own home, held prisoner by a sentient computer that has taken control of her 'enviromod,' the computer system that runs the entire house.

* The book starts well, being both creepy and suspenseful. Proteus is the worst thing about the original novel. This new dance mix, evidently, is written entirely from the point of view of the computer, Proteus.

* I make the distinction because I just discovered that Koontz rewrote the thing and republished it in 1997.

The eyes of darkness by dean koontz goodreads