Eye of a Little God

December 1, 2023
A disillusioned man desperately searches for meaning in YA author Steiger's (Cathedral of Bones, 2021) creepy and contemplative adult debut. In early 1980s Devil's Fork, Nebraska, Vietnam veteran Eddie Luther decides to take his life after he's fired from his job at the local pizza place, the last semblance of normalcy he had left. But before he can do the deed, he hears a mysterious call for help that leads him to a cryptic journal in the woods whose messages of loneliness resonate with the broken man. Embarking on a quest to find the author--and a newfound sense of purpose in his life--Eddie starts to see himself reflected in the journal's increasingly troubled messages, and he begins to wonder if he's lost his grip on reality even as he finds himself more and more drawn to it pages. Readers who enjoy magical realism and novels that defy easy categorization will appreciate Steiger's slow-burn, speculative tale of one man fighting to find his place in the world amidst both real and imagined terrors.

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December 15, 2023

Eddie Luther is a socially awkward drifter and dishonorably discharged military veteran who is fed up with a life weighed down by trauma. One snowy December evening, he journeys into the forest with a bottle of sleeping pills, suicide in mind, but then he sees a fleeting image of a red dress and finds a mysterious journal that might be a young woman's cry for help. Or it could all be in Eddie's mind. Either way, it leads him to a mysterious world beneath his small town, a place where Eddie is forced to question his own reality. Steiger (Cathedral of Bones) has created a book that could not only fit into multiple genres but also seems to openly defy horror conventions. The novel reads as a hero's quest into an underworld full of magical spells and horrific transformations, but it is also a love story flirting with LGBTQIA+ elements. It becomes a mystery as Eddie tries to track down the woman in the red dress, who may or may not be real. VERDICT Mashing up multiple genres, this is a story for fans of modern (and frightening) fairy tales.

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