Title: Eye Spy
Author: Tahir Shah
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction
Age Group: Adult
Rating: 4 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
The greatest eye surgeon of his age, Dr. Amadeus Kaine is fêted by royalty, dictators, Hollywood, and the international jetset. An epicurean of sophistication and dark obsessions, he’s devoted his life to locating the perfect food.
While treating one of Central Asia’s most depraved despots, Kaine is given a little pie to eat – a delicacy reserved for guests of the president. It’s the most delicious thing that’s ever passed the surgeon’s lips, and one that has seemingly miraculous effects.
All of a sudden, Kaine finds that his bald patch is growing over with thick black hair, and that his body is healing itself from the inside out. But, best of all, he realizes that his mental faculties are stimulated in ways he never believed possible. He can write books in a few hours, learn languages in a matter of days, and effortlessly solve problems from world hunger to global warming.
The drawback is that the dictator’s little pies are prepared with human eyes, taken from convicts working in the opal mines. Horrified that he’s unwittingly become a cannibal, Amadeus Kaine can’t think of anything but getting his hands on some more of the illicit specialty.
Obsessed in particular by green eyes, he begins hunting for victims to satisfy his wayward craving. While perfecting his method, he learns to appreciate the subtleties in taste. As he does so, a terrible affliction strikes – Occulosis.
An eye disease that has jumped the species gap from industrialized poultry farming, the virus rips through society, robbing the masses of their sight. The only man who can save the world is the inimitable Dr. Kaine, who is himself on the run.
One of the strangest tales of obsession, mania and intrigue ever told, EYE SPY will quite literally change the way you see the world.
Eye Spy is unlike any book I’ve ever read before, and surprisingly, that’s a good thing. Dr. Kaine, our main character, is a renowned eye surgeon, who is asked frequently to operate on important and famous people, including foreign dictators. It’s one of these journeys that he discovers a new delicacy – human eyes. A strange new form of cannibalism, that for some unexplicable reason, has an eerie effect on Dr. Kaine. Not only are the eyes sublime in taste, they also make him smarter, faster, stronger, than he ever hoped to be.
Dr. Kaine grows increasingly obsessed with eyes, and eating them. At first, he gets his supplies from the dictator, but as time progresses and a new virus is unleashed upon the world that turns people blind, Dr. Kaine knows he needs the supreme intelligence eating human eyes gives him, in order to save the world. As the leading surgeon of his era, and the only one who can stop the virus from spreading, the world depends on him.
Eye Spy looks taboos straight into the face, and gives them a punch. The book provides us with a tragic hero, someone who does wrong when he wants to do good, and the other way around. He alone can save the world, but if he wants to do so, he must do despicable htings. Even though so, it’s hard to dislike Dr. Kaine and impossible to hate him. We’re forced into his mind, into a mind that says obsession is all right if it is for the greater good. While Dr. Kaine rationalizes his actions, the reader is left to wonder if maybe the eye surgeon is right. Maybe it’s okay to be a cannibal, if you’re the one who can save the world.
And what about it – do we kill Dr. Kaine, or do we let him live, and have a chance of defeating this virus? What does humanity do when the fate of the world is in the hands of a cannibal?
The book is all about how blurry the lines are between good and bad, and as such, is a fascinating, riveting read. The writing was solid, but the story and plot were the most impressive parts of this book.
If you don’t mind a book that is provocative, lets the reader think about their own morals, and might occassionally make you feel sick to the stomach, then you definitely have to read Eye Spy. Ideal for horror fans, or anyone looking for a book that might shock them and fascinate them at the same time.
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