In the last few days, Synchronicity has presented me with three books and news of a real-life horrific event, each of which has fed directly into the next. From "true crime" crime fiction to serial killer gorefest to a news item on a brutal assault to finally, AUGUST'S EYES, an ARC I chose to review this week due to the author (a don't miss option) and the eager anticipation of a long-term close Goodreads friend.

Glenn Rolfe is a superb, and as yet underappreciated, author. Come on, people, the illustrious Stephen King is NOT the only good thing to come out of Maine.
Glenn has the soul of a poet; multiple times I stopped myself to reread a gloriously poetic line, sure I had never read anything so lovely.

We also know from previous works that Mr. Rolfe is a master at "coming of age," again deftly presented here. He also grasps psychology [oh does he!] as if he himself had lived several lifetimes. He doesn't flinch at the examination of evil, either: neither human nor Other.

Caution: Kudos to Mr. Rolfe for not dwelling in the gore. However, be aware that the subjects here are horrendous and horrendously painful, so know before you commence.

I got this free ARC from Net Galley for an honest review. I do not like child molesters or child rapists. That being said this book was very hard to read. Having to read this book with an open mind you just have to grin and bear it. This book was brutal and nail biting and at times very gruesome. I feel kinda dirty reading this but it was well written and worth the read.

Glenn Rolfe is the author of some 57 books according to Good Reads, so I am somewhat embarrassed that he has slipped under my radar until now. That somewhat prodigious output leads to August Eyes, an interwoven story that is part coming of age, part supernatural horror that fits very much in a 1980s horror movie style but based mainly in the 1990s and present day.

The main protagonist is Johnny, who witnessed his friend being kidnapped when they were youngsters. After being pursued by the attacker, he keeps that secret to himself, even when the boy’s body is found. Secrets are usually about bad things, and have a habit of consuming people, or manifesting into something worse. Flash forward to the modern day and Johnny starts having nightmares revolving around the mysterious and creepy August – whose eye sockets are hollow and who has a propensity to summon spiders from them. From there the story unwinds between the nightmares, that slowly gives him clues, to the reality. From his dream diary, he starts picking up on things, such as the local strange man who is hiding secrets, and their young 16-year-old gardener, who plays out as the son he never had, gets heavily involved.

The book is clearly influenced by some popular authors, the story covers very familiar territory of a malignant force coming back to have a second wave after a traumatizing experience first time when people were younger. Think Stephen King’s IT, or one of many Graham Masterton novels. Whilst the story is therefore a path well trodden, I have to say there was probably not enough freshness amongst it to elevate it to a higher rating.
The story arc is somewhat predictable, building to a final set piece that was somewhat inevitable. There were few shocks along the way, and I felt that some of the scenes that were obviously well thought out, fell somewhat flat in their execution. Whilst the book trundles along harmlessly, it felt more of a quick read without needing much thought, rather than something I was actively engaged in. The dream sequences were also repetitive. There were quite a few of them, which acted as a nice break to the rest of the story, but each one failed to significantly build on the others, which left the experience somewhat lacking. If they had changed more between them, or offered a reveal of something else, their inclusion might have been more justified to me. I link this to quite a linear story, which gave little scope within these dreams to do this.

Otherwise, the characters are nicely fleshed out, if somewhat predictably, although I did find the scenes in the library and with the doctor somewhat convenient. The doctor analyzing his dreams and offering a background to the cursed town near instantly and the library visit uncovering all the details in (seemingly) no time at all with little suspense.

As a teenager in the 1990s, I love the music there as much as anyone, but I felt the references to it were overdone somewhat, instead of just mentioning a band t shirt, having to reel off 5 or 6 band names from that time that the characters listened to, as if hoping that by doing so the readers got the message about when the story was set? It seemed a bit crude to me at least. There is also a name drop of recent horror authors at the start of the book that seemed to also be somewhat out of place, even if it was praising their work.

Overall, it was a decent enough read, but not one that I would say was a must read. It very much reminded me of an airport lounge book, which is no criticism at all. Thank you to the author and Flame Tree Press for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for an honest review.

My thanks to Flame Tree Press, Glenn Rolfe "love." and Netgalley.
Truthfully? I haven't much to say about this book. I may have read half of it. Fuck! Truth is that I love Rolfe! But, I also know when someone is trying their luck at a "well told tell!"
This felt like someone trying to "do" King! I had a few times where it may have looked like I was stroking out! A bit painful, to say the least!
I have no other option than to give this 2 stars. Believe me, it's an awful feeling! But, I must be true.

This is a hard one to rate. It’s entertaining, it’s pretty scary and there are a lot of great ideas, it does suffer though from quite a few editing problems. While I know that this ARC is stated to not be the final draft, I do not know if that means there is going to be more editing in terms of the structure of the novel or just gramsttic corrections. Hopefully it will be the former as there’s several contradictions throughout the text and it feels unfinished. Don’t get me wrong, what’s there is good, it just feels off. It’s my hope that with a bit of editing this will become a great horror story. For now it is just a good one.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

My thanks to Netgalley, Flame Tree Press and Glenn Rolfe for this ARC – my views are my own.

Glenn Rolfe is turning into a really great writer. If you’ve read some of his early works, you will notice the growth as an author. His name alone gets me interested in a book.

AUGUST’S EYES – and if I understand it correctly, this is not the polished end product – has a really great idea behind this story, and as a whole I think it has potential to become much better with a little work.

My biggest problem with this story is that it felt too long. While I greatly appreciate character development, some things became just a little monotonous. The dreams, for example, meant to build tension, had this ‘same-ness’ to them – there is too much description of the same thing over and over again. At some point in this story, you just want to get things going already. In my opinion, a lot can be cut without doing any damage to the story.

The second thing that bothered me (note, I’m not going to point out a few continuity mistakes), was the fact that the supernatural elements were somewhat vague – at what point did the cousins become such good friends, how did the dead manage to get him to do his bidding, how did the acceptance by August of the apology come so easily if he was angry enough to lure John there?

The third thing I need to mention was the lack of surprises. Everything just went from A to B – if you would have asked me at the halfway mark how this book would end, I would have called the death of John and saving of ‘the children’. There was nothing to knock the reader back on his ass, something that came out of nowhere and was unexpected. Would the death of either Pat or Sarah not have much more impact on the story?
What I’m getting at is that this story has nothing memorable about it. Next year this time, when I am a hundred books along, I doubt whether there would be much to remember. And that is a pity, because I really root for this author.

I’m rating this one down the middle (somewhat generously), because I believe there is still time to work and improve this one. I would really like to read the end product after some changes has been made.

Being the first person to review this book for Goodreads I’ll try to make it as objective and informational as possible. So here we go, you probably heard this before, but 25 years ago something terrible took place in a small town in Maine, something involving kids and a depraved evil being. Fast forward to the future and the past comes creeping back, slowly, through nightmares of a boy, now man, who thought he was so good at forgetting.
Pure King territory, really, nostalgia steeped past rolling into the increasingly dangerous present. And Rolfe does his absolute utmost to do the oh so familiar theme justice. To be fair, there are very few authors like Rolfe, he’s a lifelong trier and I admire that. Most authors, it seems, are either great right out of the gate or not and never get there, but Rolfe has actually steadily improved over the years, I’ve literally read his progress, it’s all there. Mind you, he isn’t going to hit King level any time soon, but just about every single book of his read chronologically is an improvement upon its predecessor and he’s now at the really decent level, finally. This book showed that off amply. The writing, the dialogue and especially the characters worked very well. Did he go over the top with the dream sequences? Yeah, probably. But you have a nicely creepy atmospheric scary story with some really decent characters and it makes for a pretty fun read.
I know I only offered plot generics until now, so here’s some more…main protagonist, 40, nice guy, happily married, good person, helps others for a living, kinda lonely, his only friend seems to be a local enterprising almost 16 year old kid (by far the best character in the book), dreams terrible dreams about the past he can’t remember, but apparently didn’t quite forget either. The wife seemed ok at first, but then her biological clock going off and it’s all you hear, in fact she cries for so much of the book, you almost expect her to just float away eventually. Rolfe also uses her as an homaging tools for some of his favorite authors, it seems. The man has a genuine love for the genre and it’s cute and all, but his fanboy approach results in namedropping (old man Keisling down the devil’s Creek road) that personally I find kind of distracting. Some genre fans might enjoy that sort of thing, though. Like an Easter egg.
Anyway, there’s also a highly sadistic pederastic serial killer, Native American legends, nice town with a not so nice (creepy, murderous) past and way too many cemeteries, etc. It’s like Rolfe knows the kind of novel he’s writing and checks every box on the list.
And yeah, it may not be all that original, but it’s genuinely entertaining and it reads quickly and has lots of spooky thrills for genre fans. Thanks Netgalley.