The Dark'Un

By: Ronald Kelly

Narrated by: Joe Geoffrey

Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

It was passed down from generation to generation. The legend of The Dark'Un, the strange beast that roamed Pale Dove Mountain. The dark monster that no one had ever seen - at least not and lived to tell about it - except, so it was said, old Fletcher Brice who lived at the foot of the mountain. No one really believed in The Dark'Un. It was just a story to make a child's flesh crawl.

Until Old Man Brice died.

Now, the people of Tucker's Mill, Tennessee, would be forced to believe.

©1991 Ronald Kelly (P)2013 David N. Wilson

Great Story. Needs Different Narrator

This is a unique and interesting story. Unfortunately, the narrator has a jovial voice and an upward lilt to the end of almost every sentence which is more suitable for YA. This book is dark and violent and requires someone like Dick Hill, Richard Ferrone, or R.C. Bray to read it. The narration is not dreadful, it just doesn't match the story at all.

The Creature Feature Turned On Its Head!

Story – 4.5 Stars (rounded up)
Narration - 4.5 Stars

In “The Dark’Un”, Ronald Kelly takes the typical creature feature and turns it upside down!

Doing this without spoilers is going to be hard, but here goes;
Everything is exactly as you would expect, at first, luring you into a sense of creature feature familiarity. The townspeople are quite normal, the evil industrialist is the epitome of evil, and his mercenaries are too stereotypical. But as the action starts, one begins to believe that all may not be as it seems. And then, everything not in the center turns upside down!

In my opinion, this isn’t horror any more than Sharknado was, but it’s still awesome and a heck of a lot of fun. In fact, one part made me laugh harder than I have since January. My wife thought I was gonna choke!

Kelly also lets his imagination run wild by adding a thing or two that reminded me of imagery right out of “Yellow Submarine” the animated movie! All this plus a bit of environmentalism!

Recommended – if you don’t require anything extreme in your horror.

Such a cool monster

One person knows the secret of the mountain and it’s inhabitants. The inhabitants that have become somewhat of a myth or legend.
When unscrupulous business men have bad intentions on the mountain they find out the creatures only give a couple warnings.
Sorry, super obscure review but this has some or the coolest monsters ever and I don’t want to risk spoiling anything.

Disappointed by the story, turned off by narration

I finally just gave up on this one.

I enjoyed Fear by the same author but this was pretty bad.

I understand "The Dark 'Un" is the name of the story but 'Un means "One" so to hear every single character say "'Un," regardless of whether or not they would have had a southern accent was off putting.To have every character respond to a reference to the entity in the story with "You mean, the dark 'un?" could be a drinking game if you're so inclined but it grew tiring rather quickly.

In addition, while I listened to this title because of the narrator's voice in the sample, he failed to change his intonation or accent for any character until an Asian, an Hispanic and an African showed up (at which point he gave them the stereotypical voices that you would think they would have), and his overly cheerful sounding narration of the rest of the story ruins the tone.

I had read Fear years ago and when listening to it remembered why I enjoyed it so much but if this is an example of what most Ronald Kelly stories are like, I probably won't listen to or read any others.