Customer Reviews

Currency of Souls

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed this book and it was well written it has a lot of different ways it pulls you but thankfully you don't get lost and the book was easy to follow. I think I would have given it more stars but there were places that I didn't really understand why they were added to the book and I didn't completely get the very very end of the book with the TIME FLIES I have an idea of what it means but I may be wrong or maybe it is one of those things that is left for you to guess at.
This is a book that will put your imagination to the test because there are a lot of unusual things in this book. I did love the premise of the book tho and love the whole ghost town idea.

KP Burke is well on his way to being the new master of "quiet horror." However, CURRENCY is wild, over-the-top, violent, and about as far from "quiet horror" as it gets. Guess what? He still rocks. If you haven't read this guy, you don't know what you're missing.

Currency of souls is a story about a town of people who are damned and the story of a man who is fighting to make things right. There is a mixture of genres within this story, you'll find a bit of mystery, horror, and SF. I can't just give it one label because there is so much happening. Some stories of the character I enjoyed more than others and wanted to know more about them and their backgrounds. If you've ever read any of Kealan's previous work, you'll find it a bit different. It was a very enjoyable read. I do recommend that you pick it and give it chance. You can't go wrong with Kealan Patrick Burke.

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Courage.

When I finished reading Kealan Patrick Burke's latest novel, Currency of Souls, that was the word that came first and foremost to my mind. Courage. It takes some mighty large cajones to write a book like this. To take a large cast, give each and every one an uber-detailed, dark and dirty past, throw them in a cocktail shaker called Milestone, throw the contents onto the bar like a toss of the dice, and to have the balls to honestly record on the page whatever insane asylum train wreck comes up... Good God!

What the hell is this book even about? Debt? The Devil? Revenge? Regret? Sixties lounge singers? Native American Mythology? Murder? Fathers and Sons? Husbands and Wives? It's like an unsettling feeling that you can't quite describe... or one you don't want to describe. I know that the story moved me. I know that the story stretched my imagination to its limits to keep up with what it was being force-fed. Like a grisly car crash, I know that I couldn't look away once I caught a glimpse. I know that it doesn't come close to falling into the contemporary genre categories. I know that when I finished reading it I felt like I was privy to information that I never wanted to know, but that I now need to know.

I know that I loved every second of it.

As a reader, every once in a great while you get the opportunity to experience a story that doesn't just go against the grain, it scratches it up beyond comprehension leaving broken and bloody fingernails behind... and still succeeds as a brilliant story. Every once in a great while, you get to come across as story that questions everything you thought you knew about what the concept of story means. Burke has made me question everything about reading and writing, and for that, I thank him.

Welcome to Eddie's Tavern, the only functioning waterhole in a near-dead town. Among the people you'll meet tonight are: Tom, Milestone's haunted lawman, who walks in the shadow of death; Gracie, the barmaid, a wannabe actress, doomed to spend her hours tending bar in a purgatory of her father's making; Flo, the town seductress, who may or may not have murdered her husband; Cobb, a nudist awaiting an apology from the commune who cast him out; Wintry, the mute giant, whose story is told only in cryptic messages scribbled beneath newspaper headlines; Kyle, the kid, who keeps a loaded gun beneath the table; and Cadaver, who looks like a corpse, but smells real nice, and occupies his time counting stacks of pennies.

And then there's Reverend Hill, who will be in at eleven, regular as clockwork, to tell them who's going to die, and who's going to drive.

Welcome to Eddie's, where tonight, for the first time in three years, nothing will go according to plan.

Not for the faint of heart. This book is out there and it was fun to escape to a place where you have no idea what will happen next. The dead don't stay dead and living wish they weren't and deer speak and cigar store Indians are a pretty good shot with a bow and arrow.

In the dead-end town of Milestone, Eddie's bar has its regulars; a diverse group of sinners looking for retribution or escape.

No one is as they seem and as the story takes off and the cast grows, things take a series of unexpected twists. Vehicular manslaughter and fires abound, Eddie's rises like a Phoenix to claim its victims. Currency of Souls is a story of death and rebirth, retribution and transformation.

The writing is amazing, the descriptions incredible, but you have to be able to stretch a bit imagination-wise because along the way are killer deer, the ghost of Dean Martin, and a wooden Indian. If I said those things didn't distract me a bit, I'd be lying, but it was well worth the read. An unusual story, told in beautiful prose, rich with description and with characters so lively it's as if I was sitting in Eddie's with them.

Kealan Patrick Burke, Currency of Souls (Subterranean, 2007)

I think there's a town like Milestone in every area of the United States, though typically, in books and movies, they seem to be placed in the American southwest. (With the wonderful exception, which I plug every chance I get, of Michael Paine's Steel Ghosts.) Milestone is a ghost town that doesn't quite know it's a ghost town yet. A core of individuals still inhabit it, refusing to die off out of stubbornness, perhaps. But Milestone is like no other town of its type in at least one way.

There's a bar in Milestone. Like most bars, it's got its regulars. Eight of them, actually. There are seven who go there to drink, and one who goes there each Saturday night to pick one of those seven, take him out to the parking lot, and put him behind the wheel. Okay, this is strange enough (especially in the current American anti-drinking-and-driving climate), but trust me when I tell you it gets a whole lot stranger. After all, one of the regulars is the town sheriff. And the eighth guy? He's the town preacher. But that's nothing compared to what happens when the pattern is interrupted.

An associate of mine has been bugging me to read Kealan Patrick Burke for years, and now I know why. This slim (two hundred pages) novel is a whirlwind of unusual-yet-compelling characters, ludicrous-yet-plausible situations (wait till you meet the ghost of Dean Martin!), and a plot that's straight out of the oldest books on record, and yet still feels fresh. It has a few problems, most notably that the southern drawl the narrator affects in the first-person bits topples (no, leaps) over the line between necessity and outright corniness one too many times for my taste, but I certainly can't fault Burke for plot, characters, theme, or any of the other things we're taught are the building blocks of writing when we're in high school. This one grabs you by the cojones during the first chapter and doesn't let go until you're singing like Maria Callas when you turn the last page. Fantastic. ****

There is no doubt this is a creative and interesting book. As other reviewers have pointed out, it is well-written, contains unusual and interesting characters, and never turns into a typical horror/fantasy book. Unfortunately, in avoiding all of the usual stereotypes and devices, the author lost coherence in plot and direction. In a sense, too much happens, there are too many twists and characters. By the end, the reader really has no sense of the shape of the reality the writer intended to create. Similarly, a book that contains such a strong theme of sin/punishment/repentance must eventually reveal where the author stands, and not seemingly take all positions at once. And finally, mystical killer deer?

Clearly worth reading, but not the transcendent experience that some other reviewers portray. Creativity is wonderful, but it is even better with a modicum of discipline and focus.

Welcome to Eddie's Tavern, the only functioning waterhole in a near-dead town. It's a typical Saturday night at Eddie's, where nothing - from the bizarre group of regulars to the key-jangling preacher who just walked in the door - is typical.
CURRENCY OF SOULS is Kealan Patrick Burke's first full-length step outside of the world of Tim Quinn, the star character of the author's breakout novella THE TURTLE BOY and its sequels THE HIDES and VESSELS. It's an ambitious - and successful - step, revealing that Burke is well on his way to fulfilling the promise of his earlier efforts.
In CURRENCY, Burke wastes no time in introducing his quirky cast, from a haunted lawman and his estranged son to a nudist, a seductress, a mute and a man named Cadaver. Just as we get comfortable with this group of outcasts, Burke upsets the apple cart. It's a trick the author pulls off time and time again in the book - every time the reader gains a foothold, events take place that turn the characters (and us) inside-out and upside-down.
The book moves at a breakneck pace, and might benefit from a pause here and there so we can catch our breath. Also, the large cast (which continues to grow throughout the book), at times veers dangerously close to breaking out of Burke's control. But character continues to be a strong point in Burke's work, and the way he draws each of these people in clear, often elegant prose, ensures that we stay invested in each of them.
CURRENCY OF SOULS is a sprawling, surreal examination of hope and hopelessness, sin and redemption. It's a big step in the already exciting career of a true rising star, and is highly recommended.