The Digital Renaissance: Review: Gaze of the Burning Eye: Covenant of Three Keys, Book One

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Review: Gaze of the Burning Eye: Covenant of Three Keys, Book One

Gaze of the Burning Eye: Covenant of Three Keys, Book One by JD McKelvin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This review was a long time coming … and I wish I could blame it on the size; at just over 600 pages, it is a fairly big book; which was only significant because it was also a wick slow and somewhat boring for most of that. It started with a good premise … a little fantasy power struggle between European Rus and what appears to be an arabian empire (where Djinn play a prominent role), but all of the characters were simply horrible and unlikable with a significant amount of unnecessarily course and graphic violence (including rape and other physical abuse). In fact, a good portion of the first part of the book simply follows the capture and slavery of a Rus princess that really adds little to the over all plot … which I am still not clear on, but seems to involve magic Djinn and a mysterious burning eye in the sky that also appears to add nothing to the story except the title track.

There are a few places where we see a little action, but that all seems to be resolved and over way to soon and way too easily, giving the impression that this is just a long lead up to a totally different story in the next book. I am sure it all makes sense in the author’s head, but he seems to struggle here to get it all down on paper (so to speak), and that makes it easy for the reader to lose focus (and take 6 times longer to actually finish the story that it should have).

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#GazeOfTheBurningEye #CovenantOfThreeKeys #LibraryThing

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My Ratings Explained ...

[ ***** ] Amazing Read - Perfect story, exciting, engrossing, well developed complex characters, solid plot with few to no holes, descriptive environments and place settings, great mystery elements, realistic dialogue, believable reactions and behaviors; a favorite that I can re-read many times.
[ **** ] Great Read - Highly entertaining and enjoyable, exciting storyline, well developed characters and settings, a few discrepancies but nothing that can’t be overlooked. Some aspect of the story was new/refreshing to me and/or intriguing. Recommended for everyone.
[ *** ] Good Read - Solid story with a 'good' ending, or has some other redeeming feature. Limited character development and/or over reliance on tropes. Noticeable discrepancies in world building and/or dialog/behavior that were distracting. I connected enough with the characters/world to read the entire series. Most of the books I read for fun are here. Recommended for fans of the genre.
[ ** ] Okay Read - Suitable for a brief, afternoon escape … flat or shallow characters with little to no development. Over the top character dialog and/or behavior. Poor world building with significant issues and/or mistakes indicating poor research. Excessive use of trivial detail, info dumps and/or pontification. Any issues with the story/characters are offset by some other aspect that I enjoyed. Not very memorable. May only appeal to a niche group of readers. Recommended for some (YMMV).
[ * ] Bad Read - Awkward and/or confusing writing style. Poor world building and/or unbelievable (or unlikeable) characters. Victimization, gaslighting, blatant abuse, unnecessary violence, child endangerment, or any other highly objectionable behaviors by Main characters. I didn't connect with the story at all; significant aspects of this story irritated me enough that I struggled to finished it. Series was abandoned. Not recommended.