A Darkness In My Soul by Dean Koontz

This 1972 science-fiction novel was one of Dean Koontz's earliest works. This book explores the facets of the human mind, its desires, hopes and and its quest for meaning and purpose. The book is divided into four parts: Divinity Destroyed, Humanity Restored, The Incomplete Creation and Man As God.

The protagonist Simeon Kelly is one of the two successful products of Artificial Creation. He has the ability to probe the minds of other people. One day he was asked by AC to explore Child's mind, another creation of AC, to unlock the missing information needed to create the shields that will be used for the pending world crisis. Child, the first supergenius ever created, has been withholding important information from Morsfagen and the rest of AC.

Simeon's tour of Child's mind takes him into strange worlds and forced him to think and reshape his view of things. Different though they were, he realized that they were both looking for meaning and purpose in their lives beyond that of their use to AC. Child however, has created an elaborate system based on myths and religions and trapped Simeon in that strange world. Unlike Child too, Simeon had a chance to get in contact with a lot of people including Harry Kelly, who treated him like a son.

He managed to get out of Child's elaborately-built world, taking with him the supergenius' psychic energy, but he failed to do what Morsfagen has asked of him. Confronted and trapped by Morsfagen, he was forced to devise another plan that would ultimately change the world.

This book explores the human psyche - the ego, superego and id, and later on, the concept of God. This is not as detailed as Koontz's later books but I still enjoyed it. He did not choose to focus on the world crisis but instead on the development of Simeon Kelly and how the events taking place around him helped shaped the conclusion of the story. As a fan who was not exposed to his earlier works, I find this really weird and refreshing. It still has the distinguishable characteristics that identifies it as a Koontz book, including a surprising ending. Readers who are not familiar with the concept of the human psyche and Greek mythology might find this a bit confusing but Koontz will explain the former in the later part of the book.