Dark One: Forgotten is framed as a 6 week true-crime podcast recorded by a college student, cowritten by Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells. It’s a fun, fast-paced story that has a very Dan-Wells-esque vibe with fascinating crime facts and a frightening villain. It’s about a college student, Christina Walsh, who becomes obsessed with solving the story of a violinist who disappeared years ago. She travels across the US with her roommate to figure out what the police never could!
With this frame-story, I do think it is audio-only, so I apologize to any of you who don’t like audiobooks. Maybe this can be your chance to try one out!
The second episode takes place in Columbus, Ohio (the home of yours truly), and that probably made me love it even more! The featured suburb was made up (Hilldowns), which is understandable, lol. But every other Columbus detail was spot on, and it made me so happy! The moment they mentioned Picnic with the Pops, I was sold!!
This book also contains perhaps the best portrayal of a scientist I’ve ever read. They interview a psychologist / cult-specialist, and the things he said and how he said them were so very realistic for a scientist (and an Ohioan), and it made this fellow-scientist smile! (I forget the exact quote, but it was something like “As a scientist, I suppose I can’t say that it’s impossible…”) I probably shouldn’t be that excited about something so simple, but I’ve read so many poorly written scientists that it made me quite happy. The entire conversation was so well done. (And same with the neuroscientist guy. That was hilarious.)
Overall, I really enjoyed this story! I will say, the ending felt a little abrupt and left some things feeling unresolved and a little confusing. I can’t get into it more without getting into spoiler-territory, so I’ll leave it at that. It was a short-ish book, so I was okay with that, but I felt like the ending could have done a smidge better.
There were also a few bits (particularly at the end) where the sound quality was bad and difficult to hear, and/or highly fluctuating in volume. I realize that was intentional to try to provide realism for the format they were mimicking, but I’m not a fan of that art form. I’d rather sacrifice that bit of realism for a consistent volume (and speed) so I’m not constantly adjusting my volume (and then having to turn it down because it’s too loud). But, like I said, that’s more of me not being a fan of the art form.