Book Cover from Amazon
Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman by Jim Bernheimer
Dead Eye: The Skinwalker Conspiracies by Jim Bernheimer
SERIES REVIEW
Last month I went over an awesome sci-fi/mystery series by Liana Brooks, this month I thought I would talk about another favorite author’s who has a mystery/urban-fantasy, Jim Bernheimer and his Dead Eye series. The series is from early in his writing career, but the character and supporting cast have all the quirks and humanity you expect in Bernheimer books. I would love to see more books of this series, but it doesn’t make nearly as much money as his D-List Supervillain series.
Writing being the uneasy mix of creativity and putting food on the table means if a author has a choice between writing two stories which he is interested in, he is going to choose the one more likely to get recompense. But, maybe, the Supervillain creativity well will run low and Mr. Bernheimer will need a break and we will get a book three in this series. Each of the books is good as a stand-alone so read away! (Oh, and purchase them, so, you know, the drive of putting food on the table makes writing more of these books more tasty to the author.)
Book Cover from Amazon
Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman by Jim Bernheimer
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
My name is Mike Ross. I’m a Ferryman. I help people with ghost problems, or ghosts with people problems. Funny thing, no one ever helps me with my problems. Civil War ghosts bent on killing me, Skinwalkers who just want my body, and a vindictive spirit linked both to my bloodline and my destiny… It turns out the dead still hold a good deal of influence over the world, and they don’t want to give it up. I’m in way over my head. Fortunately, I’m too stubborn to quit.
MY REVIEW
Another excellent Jim Bernheimer book, in yet another genre – this one Urban Fantasy. He gets to do his normal snark, but at lower levels then the superhero (Confessions of a D-List Superhero) and the sci-fi police procedural (Prime Suspects) series. He continues to master the first person Point of View voice.
The book is from early in his writing career and shows a passion, just an underlying something, that makes me feel this is a personal favorite. I love the description on the 2nd page; it leaped off the page
“Me, I was still under warranty, so they shipped me back for replacement parts…”
The character’s voice is captured in this sentence – partial despair with a breath of hope, but mostly getting on with life. Of all the characters Mr. Bernheimer has created, I think I identify with Mike Ross the most.
The overall manuscript feels like a collection of short stories, with each vignette separate but a connecting overall story arc as well. Makes it easy to read a section and put down for other activities; I read it in one gulp per my normal reading habit. As mentioned the story is earlier in his writing career so some of the transitions are bumpy. But the character makes the trip worth a little shimmy. The fight scenes are brutal, dirty exchanges concentrating on survival; the character is getting on with life, and plans to keep it with training from the wrestling team at high school and the all-expense-paid training from Uncle Sam. Towards the end of the book, the fighting gets more Fantasy/magical and isn’t quite as fun – but makes up for it by making the magic stronger as the main character learns how to cope with the new necromancy world he has been thrust into. Be interesting to see what happens next, as the character continue to grow into his full potential.
Give me two pennies, because I want to take another trip with the Ferryman.
Book Cover from Amazon
Dead Eye: The Skinwalker Conspiracies by Jim Bernheimer
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
My name is Mike Ross and I’m a Ferryman – like in the Greek myth. I didn’t ask for, or really want, the job, but I’m trying to make the best of it. Most ghosts are okay and just need a little help to get where they need to go. Unfortunately, there are lots of exceptions, like power-mad psychopaths, spirits still trying to fight battles long since lost, and the worst of the lot – the Skinwalkers. They live vicariously by possessing people and controlling them like puppet masters. Then they toss them aside when they’ve outlived their usefulness.
One of them stole my father fifteen years ago, and now I’m going to make that ghost pay.
MY REVIEW
A wonderful seven-hour read. While the Dead Eye series is set up with stand-alone chapters, little short stories in-and-of themselves, I read the book in one sitting. I didn’t mean to, but after about half-way through, I couldn’t put the book down.
Mike Ross has gone on a road trip to find his father with his blind Pastor friend to keep him on the straight and narrow path while crossing the country following Skinwalkers. A dirty, knock-them-down fight opens the book, but the action is slower than the first book as the magic continues to grow more and more every battle. The first few chapters don’t seem to be going anywhere, but are wonderful little vignettes providing the character’s powers, history, and introducing the cast without the typical retrospection so common in series books. Nope, Mr. Berheimer completely shows everything instead of telling us. Great storytelling.
Mr. Bernheimer has quite a bit of fun revisiting (Texas) history from a ghost’s viewpoint. Episode 17 “Dallas Texas – Paranormal Population: One” and Episode 19 “Trying to Forget the Alamo” adds an aspect of worldbuilding, making the book both tied to the real world and distinctly not Our real world (maybe, at least I hope so).
The strongest thread point of this manuscript is romantic – taking a bit away from the action of the Urban Fantasy. Page 40 captures Mike’s problem of finding love after becoming a Ferryman in two sentences, set immediately after meeting with a single-mother stripper he used to date before everything changed: “The fact that she was better off without me was unsettling … It made me wonder, what kind of gal would be better off WITH me?”
The answers which danced in my head after he asked himself this question went from bad to worse. Dead, crazy, tortured prisoner, someone so desperate and broke (mentally and financially) you never know why they love you. The thing is Mike is such a real person, even as ink on page, you pray he doesn’t end up with such a person but at the same time you hope he finds someone because he is so lonely after everything he had seen and done and the Pastor just isn’t enough. And when you are hoping, you also don’t want the author to sell some perfect person for the perfect love interest. You really do want Mike to meet someone who is better off with him.
Does Mr. Bernheimer pull it off? Well, that would be telling. I’m just going to say Victoria Poe is not exactly the person I want directing my road trip.