Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
Blue-Eyed Devil by MJ McDuffie is an ambitious multi-genre, multi-layered novel by MJ McDuffie! The book is self-categorized as a “paranormal political thriller” as it involves a psychic/mystic/spiritual medium pursuing the answers behind the global conspiracy that claimed the life of a loved one. What a premise! The book follows Belle Brooks, a budding spiritual medium of Irish descent who lost both her billionaire husband, Sam, and her magical grandmother, Granny Mavis Brooks. Yes, wrap your head around that because it's a mouthful and a mindful! And that's not even the half of it! Apparently, Sam was implicated with some very sketchy stuff including international crime and election interference. Specifically, he was connected with interference in the Irish election and a scheme to interfere in the US elections. He was also connected to black market arms dealers and the cartels—some of the dirtiest dealing on the planet. He is often portrayed as an almost comically-evil person in contrast to the facade he showed Belle, cackling sinisterly like some mustache-twirling vaudevillian tying the damsel to a train track or something. It is discovered that he had loads of fascist propaganda that he supposedly used as motivation to rule the world someday. Belle must wrestle with the revelation that her husband may have never truly loved her and may have actually been an international criminal and power-hungry villain. However, similar to something like Past Imperfect by Joshua Cohen (another private detective-like story), there may be a clear villain, but the problem is must bigger and deeper than just him: a world-wide conspiracy involving a secret society known as the Seven Kings. Of the Seven Kings, one figure seems to stand out in this book: Reid MacAlister, who was a sort of surrogate dad or mentor to Sam—a kingmaker who seems to have loved Sam more than just a pawn in a grand global scheme. Oh, and did we mention that Granny Brooks was magical? Yes, and not only that but she seems to have passed down her gifts to Belle, who is able to act as a sort of psychic or spiritual medium to help get to the bottom of the conspiracy and solve the mystery behind the deaths of her husband and grandmother. The deuteragonist and love interest of this book is Remy Montgomery, an FBI agent who, like Belle, is coping with the pains of loss and a hunger for answers. Remy's wife, Amanda, tragically passed away before the main events of the book. He catches the eye and the suspicion of Belle, who realizes that there's much more to Remy than meets the eye. Through Remy, Belle wrestles with the idea of ever loving and trusting someone again, especially after learning about her husband's criminal activities. Through Belle, Remy hopes to answer some of the same questions and to fill some of the same holes in his heart. So, as you may have inferred, the different genres and tones of this book seem to clash. It's a lot! It's kinda like putting steak in a blender with mixed berries and chocolate. It's kinda like putting tuna and mayonnaise in your peanut butter & jelly sandwich. There's bound to be some wonkiness and wackiness there. The author clearly has a big imagination and a lot of different interests, so it's understandable they'd want to use their book as a canvas to express that. It's not like psychics can't be a part of these types of detective mysteries/thrillers. Though Shawn Spencer in Psych is technically not a psychic in the spiritual sense, he is still treated as having a nigh-supernatural ability to solve crimes. It's actually very interesting and a lot of fun. However, in this book, the spiritual stuff really seems to clash with the grittiness and hard realism of the rest of the book. There's like a cognitive dissonance there. It would be like if you put Gandolf in the middle of something like Forrest Gump or Rocky. Anyway, it always seems like the author is trying to tie one more knot into this Gordian Knot of a plot. The best example of this is the plot/subplot about Granny's secret panacea. Supposedly, Granny discovered and harvested a “spring sage” from native Ireland which could serve as a remedy to Alzheimer's disease and act as a reverse-aging medicine. You could kinda compare it to Granny discovering the fountain of youth. Now, on one hand you could say that this explains why the big-bad-evil-organization would be interested in Belle's family. You could argue that it ties the rest of the plot together. However, you could also argue that it seems tacked-on at the last minute. It is very possible that it was. Why? Well, the author explained something like they got a surge of inspiration from real-world events that allowed them to finish this book around 2020. Well, what happened in 2020? A pandemic and controversy surrounding an election. In this book, you get a controversial reverse-aging panacea and controversy surrounding an election. While the characters talk about it, it really seems like it's in the background. It sometimes feels like these things were squeezed in at the last minute or in a later draft, but the main focus was always supposed to be Belle's relationships with Sam, Remy, and Mavis. The paranormal/spiritual stuff also seems caked onto another, more grounded plot about politicians being corrupt and power-hungry (which shouldn't be a surprise). However, it's a valiant and ambitious effort that seems to be leading into a sequel. Also, when we stepped back and reimagined this as being the origin story of someone like Jean Grey or Psycho Mantis before they were recruited to fight baddies, that really raised the enjoyment factor of this book. Check it out on Amazon!
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