Blind God's Bluff: A Billy Fox Novel (The Billy Fox Novels)
Billy Fox is not having a good day. Some tough guys are hounding him for some money he owes them, making not-at-all subtle threats about damage to Billy’s person if he doesn’t make good. Billy is on the run when he comes across a man with no eyes, just empty sockets, who appears to be under attack by a swarm of nasty fairies. Well, as it turns out, the eyeless man is a god who’s supposed to be playing in a high-stakes poker tournament. He recruits Billy, who appears to have some small supernatural powers of his own (hey, who knew?), to play in his stead. If he’d known who his opponents were going to be (an Egyptian mummy, for one; a succubus, for another), Billy might have turned down the gig. On the other hand, anything’s better than getting beat to a pulp by the tough guys he owes money to, right? This is the kind of story someone like Mike Resnick or maybe Joe R. Lansdale would have knocked out of the park, but in Byers’ hands, it doesn’t have the light, effortless tone it needs to be completely successful. You can feel the author working hard to convince us to suspend our disbelief, and occasionally the story creaks under its own weight. Not a bad novel by any means—it has many moments of excitement and humor—but not as good as it might have been. --David Pitt