Review: Totally original
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 5, 2013
William L.K. Give us a world that blends the world we know with a totally foreign world far from our own, but totally believable.  Blending two different stories together, one from our time and another which could be our future, our past, or another dimension all-together, it doesn't really matter.The short first part of a three part saga, starts out with Becki, a young girl whose is tied to a tree during a giant storm. A large creature has the Czar of Stritonoly in its grip, tearing into his flesh. A persistent beeping sound fills Becki's head and she passes out. So begins the complex story of a royal family living on a purple planet, made rich by the slave labor of a strange race called the Acidel.The humans in the story are both gathered around a comatose girl named Becki, and the Czar of Stritonoly and his wife and two children. The story has two parts because the characters are living simultaneous lives in the two worlds with each of their actions influencing the different worlds.Becki has a drug addiction in both worlds and it causes her to skip between her differing personalities.  Her brother Dimitri in the purple world, is addicted to the sweat of the Acidel, an innocent species who work on Stritonoly. What the author has done so brilliantly, is to blend the two worlds. The Acidel have pale rubbery skin, and their sweat causes hallucinations.  They are mushrooms in our world, and yet have their own lives in another dimension. One of the main characters is even named Shroomy, a nickname in the drug world for mushrooms.This reminds me of what the native people have always said when asked how they knew the uses for each of the plants.  They claimed that their shamans would go into the spirit world and talk to the plants. I found the author's insight fascinating as he moved between his imaginary worlds, stretching the readers mind in directions in the same way that Carlos Castaneda did In his books, The Teachings of Don Juan.Eye of the Storm leaves us with a giant storm hitting Stritonoly and Becki in a hospital on earth, dying from a drug overdose. Needless to say I stared reading the next book in the series immediately which is Barok's Exodus. All three books were given to me in exchange for a review and I'm so glad the author approached me because this is not the genre I usually read and I would have missed a great book.