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A review by xterminal
Currency Of Souls by Kealan Patrick Burke
4.0
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. ****
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. ****