Book Review: Dark One: Forgotten by Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells

Book #40 of 2023:

Dark One: Forgotten by Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.]

I’m torn between three and four stars for this title. I have enough critiques and reservations that I think I’ll go with the lower rating, but I have enjoyed it, for the most part. It’s an audiobook original, presented in the form of a six-part podcast series, telling the story of a missing-person cold case (subsequently confirmed to be murder) whose victim seems to have been entirely forgotten. Not just lost in the system: the police officers don’t recall investigating and the dead woman’s surviving friends and family can barely even remember her. As the college student protagonists pursue the matter decades later, they uncover similar slayings, the work of a still-active serial killer with the supernatural ability to be utterly forgettable. In the process, of course, they also learn that they’ve forgotten things they already know about him and his crimes, and ultimately start becoming unmemorable to others themselves.

But let me back up a second. I’ll try to avoid the obvious memory jokes, but if that premise sounds somewhat familiar, you’re not mistaken. From the movie Memento to novels like The Sudden Appearance of Hope or The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, there have been plenty of tales presenting fantastical riffs on something like perpetual amnesia, and this one struggles to feel distinctive within that genre. Doctor Who literally just put out its official Redacted podcast last year about people being erased from history and forgotten, which by coincidence — I assume — hits a lot of the same plot beats. (Speaking of that august sci-fi franchise, it gets namechecked in this project when the main heroine reflects that she’s seen every episode and wishes the Doctor were there to help her sort out the weirdness. But she makes no mention of the villains the Silence whose power resembles what she’s up against, and she uses he/him pronouns to refer to the Time Lord, despite the fact that actress Jodie Whittaker would have been playing the role for most of her adult life in 2022 when this all takes place. It’s an odd authorial/editorial misstep to find in a narrative that specifically cites the program for inspiration.)

Anyway. The storyline here is largely predictable but not bad. I haven’t read the 2021 Dark One graphic novel, which I understand is more of a straightforward portal fantasy to another realm, yet I suppose that puts me in the same headspace as the characters, who are getting oblique hints of a larger Lovecraftian mystery behind their adversary but no real explanations of the wider worldbuilding. I think it still more or less works as a standalone piece regardless, although I guess I should get around to the previous volume at some point now. All in all, I’d say that this has been a successful experiment in medium/style for the two coauthors, if only I hadn’t remembered seeing so many of its best ideas elsewhere beforehand.

★★★☆☆

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