(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

The Eye of Erasmus’ tells of Erasmus, a baby born during a thunder storm, who is clearly destined to be special and, initially, especially obnoxious with his flashing black eyes and haughty ways, until he finds love. The trouble is that the girl literally of his dreams hasn’t actually been born yet. No problem …… Oh, but there is ……. Danger lurks ……..

[Full disclosure: I received a free print copy of this book from Teresa Geering in exchange for an honest review.]

I had mixed feelings about The Eye of Erasmus, but not necessarily in a bad way.  My feelings were more of “That was good, but it could have been much better.”  I’ll explain.

The Eye of Erasmus was sort of told in an omniscient point of view, but unfortunately that means that we’re being told everything rather than shown it.  We’re told how Erasmus and Shasta feel and the narrator injects bits of information about the future not-so-subtly.  Still, for such a short book it worked out okay.  It certainly made for a fast-paced plot.  Yet at the same time, I feel if it had been told in a third person point of view between just Shasta and Erasmus with more showing and less telling, the book could have made the jump from ‘good’ to ‘amazing’.

Teresa Geering has a very pared down style of prose and that’s fine, but sometimes I feel like I really want more description.  What sort of time period did Erasmus come from?  What did it look and feel like?  I wanted to be transported to his time and feel his despair as he left it, but also his hope of finding the girl he was meant to be with.  A little more description would have made it easier to picture the setting as well as get the whole tone of the novel more quickly.  What received a lot of description and really got my attention was the supernatural elements, more specifically Erasmus’ powers.  His powers are fascinating and it would be great to see if in the sequel we learned exactly why and how he got them.

While I wouldn’t call The Eye of Erasmus amazing, I would call it good.  Because despite my criticisms, the characters were generally well developed, the plot was fast-paced and there were some pretty crazy plot twists that blindsided me.  Shasta and Erasmus kept my attention and the affection between them was real, if a little bit rushed.  Overall, it was a decent book but not a great one.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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