Audiobook Review – Currency of Souls by Kealan Patrick Burke

Posted August 13, 2018 by Carole in Audiobook, Book Reviews / 28 Comments

Currency of Souls by Kealan Patrick Burke
Narrated by Rich Miller
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Publication Date: June 1, 2018 (audio)
Date Read: August 3, 2018
Length:  7 hours 30 minutes
Source: Audiobook Boom
★★★☆☆

Welcome to Eddie’s Tavern, the only functioning waterhole in a near-dead town. Among the people you’ll meet tonight are: Tom, Milestone’s haunted lawman, who walks in the shadow of death; Gracie, the barmaid, a wannabe actress, doomed to spend her hours tending bar
in a purgatory of her father’s making; Flo, the town seductress, who may or may not have murdered her husband; Cobb, a nudist awaiting an apology from the commune who cast him out; Wintry, the mute giant, whose story is told only in cryptic messages scribbled beneath newspaper headlines; Kyle, the kid who keeps a loaded gun beneath the table; and Cadaver, who looks like a corpse but smells real nice and occupies his time counting stacks of pennies.

And then there’s Reverend Hill, who will be in at eleven, regular as clockwork, to tell them who’s going to die and who’s going to drive. Welcome to Eddie’s, where tonight, for the first time in three years, nothing will go according to plan.

My Review

This was okay for me.  I liked some parts more than others and thought it was a decent story overall.  I was really excited going into this book because I was in the mood for a little horror and I have heard great things about Kealan Patrick Burke’s work.  I am glad that I decided to give this book a listen.

The beginning of the story actually ended up being my favorite part of the book.  The book opens with Tom going to Eddie’s Tavern for his normal Saturday night.  Everyone at the bar spends their Saturday nights together waiting to see if they will be picked for an unpleasant task.  Nobody wants to be there but they know there is really no choice in the matter.  The group of characters at the bar were great.  All of them were incredibly unique and added something to the story.  I couldn’t wait to see what they were waiting for.

Of course, things do not go as planned on the night in question.  Honestly, things go about as bad as they possibly could.  There are new characters introduced and a few unexpected situations but the magic of those opening scenes in the bar just never seemed to return to the story.  The story had a lot of different threads and kind of seemed to be all over the place at times.  Things did come back together by the end of the story some things didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I thought that Rich Miller did a good job with the narration.  I thought he had a very pleasant voice that was really easy to listen to hours at a time.  My only complaint would be that it was hard to tell when there was a change in point of view of the story which was confusing at times.  Overall, I think that he did a great job keeping the story moving forward.  I wouldn’t hesitate to listen to his work again in the future.

I do think that some readers will like this one more than I did.  I did have good time with this one even though I had to go back and listen to certain parts more than once when I found myself feeling a bit confused.  I do hope to read more of Kealan Patrick Burke’s work in the future.

I received a copy of this audiobook from the author / narrator via Audiobook Boom.

About the Author

Born and raised in a small harbor town in the south of Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke knew from an early age that he was going to be a writer. The combination of an ancient locale, a horror-loving mother, and a family of storytellers, made it inevitable that he would end up telling stories for a living. Since those formative years, he has written five novels, over a hundred short stories, six collections, and edited four acclaimed anthologies. In 2004, he was honored with the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy.

Kealan has worked as a waiter, a drama teacher, a mapmaker, a security guard, an assembly-line worker, a salesman (for a day), a bartender, landscape gardener, vocalist in a grunge band, curriculum content editor, fiction editor at Gothic.net, and, most recently, a fraud investigator.

When not writing, Kealan designs book covers through his company Elderlemon Design.

A number of his books have been optioned for film.

Author Links: Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

28 responses to “Audiobook Review – Currency of Souls by Kealan Patrick Burke

  1. This sounds like a really good read. I read Sour Candy by this author and really recommend it. I remember it being super creepy. Great review.

  2. This sounds like one of his milder ones. Some of his books get crazy. I think I'd like this one and will check it out. Maybe I'll read instead of listen to it. Thanks for the wonderful review.

  3. I wonder if this would be better in print? Sometimes I find it can be a little bit easier to keep track of confusing stories because it's easier to reference back that way. That being said it still sounds a bit confusing and probably not one I need.

  4. I don't think I will pick this one up because it sounds a bit too complex and confusing for me. I don't like it when too many new characters are introduced and nothing is making too much sense… But I am glad you could at least enjoy the beginning.

  5. I don't know. It sounds interesting but I'm only half way on it. The Reverend Hill sounds fascinating though. Anne – Books of My Heart