Review: A Thousand Eyes by Junior Burke

Title:  A Thousand Eyes

Author:  Junior Burke 
Publisher: Cosmic Egg Books

Publishing Date:  May 25th, 2018

Pages: 240
Genre: Adult Horror

Series:  Stand Alone
Source:  ARC 

 

Todd Wendt, employed by a multinational corporation, is recovering from the tragic death of his wife and is at a loss as to what direction his life could possibly take. When he is sent to a small mountain town in Colorado he becomes aware of a series of vicious animal attacks on the local population, Over time, Todd realizes the attacks are not random but targeted at the company that brought him there, as well a himself. His decision to confront this situation ultimately transforms, not only Todd, but the entire community.

I came across this ARC and thought well that cover is cool, oh and the story sounds very interesting. Kind of horror and sci-fi mix. I am all over this book. I was more than happy to read this book. I am torn with this book. I just didn't care it. I feel there were some issues and I feel it could have been executed so much better. I can say for sure it was horrific though. 

There is a small town with crazy animal attacks. I mean crazy out of the ordinary animal attacks. People are dying. No one knows why the animals are going crazy. It is all mass confusion until one man and one detective figures out it's all people who had something to do with a pretty rotten company doing bad things to the environment.

I like the sound of this book, I just couldn't get into the story. There are a few reasons why. This will be short and maybe not so sweet. So I will just list my issues out. 

Too many characters to keep up with. I was confused for a majority of the book whenever the point of view changed. I have a hard time with multiple pov's when it's in the third person. I think there should have been maybe some kind of indication when a new pov started. Not just the pov confusion bothered me about the characters though. Ther was just also way too many characters to keep up with. I was also confused on who was who and I just couldn't connect to any of them. I really didn't care who died and who lived. 

The storyline. I liked the idea but really it felt too much like the book series Zoo. Too many things were the same for me to really get into this book. I felt it was just a do-over. I also felt it was too rushed. Things just didn't fit into place for me and didn't flow or feel natural to me. 

I finished the book. I wanted to see where the story would take me and I kept waiting for something big to happen. Then the end happened and I was like really that's it. It was very anti-climatic. 

The only thing I really liked it that the bad guys got what was coming to them. 

Just couldn't enjoy it. 

Junior Burke is a novelist, dramatist and songwriter. In 2004, he founded the ezine not enough night www.notenoughnight.org which for a decade published work by some of the most compelling writers of today. His novel Something Gorgeous appeared in 2005. This work of speculative fiction explored the historical background of the era that spawned The Great Gatsby and was lauded for its invention by the UK's Historical Novels Review.

From 2005 to 2010, Burke served as Chair of Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and was a literary source for such publications as Le Monde and The London Observer when they presented features on the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s On the Road. Burke was one of the chief organizers of the first-of-its-kind Poetic Film Symposium held in Boulder in June, 2011, a collaboration between Naropa University and the University of Colorado. His account of the event, "Notice What You Notice" appeared in Bomb Magazine.

In 2013, he co-authored One October Midnight, a musical theatre work, contributing book and lyrics. The musical, based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe, received its world premier at the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival in Hamilton, New York. This year, he will release Spot of Time, a song cycle inspired by classic works by such writers as W.B. Yeats, Arthur Rimbaud and Gertrude Stein.