DNF at 13%. Reading this felt too much like a chore. The plot was slow, and jumped around a lot in time. Logan was a hard character to care for, because he seemed more like a character moved around by events and people around him than someone with any agency. The writing was dense and self-important. This was not a book for me.

Sun Eye Moon Eye is Vincent Czyz’s third novel now available from Spuyten Duyvil. Consistent is Czyz’s use of mythic space, most particularly that tread by Logan Blackfeather, a mixed Hopi man whose wanderings span coast to coast. He is at once an enfant terrible on an indie label, a street wizened knife fighter, an asylum inmate, and Hamlet haunted son of a man replaced by his uncle. Accenting his dividedness are the various geographies of his story. We may survey the Ghost Dancers from the lap of his grandfather, the sea-like fields of Kansas he came to, and the modern Canyonlands of the Manhattan skyline where Logan sees the Katsinas dance.

In complement to the complex characterization of Logan are the mix of genres from which Sun Eye Moon Eye derive. It could certainly be a developmental novel in Logan’s aim to find some sense of home and vocation. It might also be tagged as another life of the artist account. With two crimes woven into the story, Czyz’s novel might also be understood as Native American noir. Finally, and my personal favorite, it is the story Chief Bromden’s reticent, crafty Chief might have told in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (dir. Milos Forman, 1975) had he been prompted to do so. I sense Bromden prompted Czyz, who in turn prompts us all to find that most productive, affirming union of our ordering suns and intuitive moons.

Sun Eye Moon Eye is a masterpiece. I want to say it is reminiscent of Hunter S Thompson, but this book goes far, far beyond that (and that is a compliment I do not give lightly) In this sense, myths and dreams take the place of hallucinations, personal trauma is the catalyst, ancestry the anchor

Logan Blackfeather is mixed Hopi descent and he is on a journey to rebuild following a breakdown. However, it is the 80s and paths rarely run smoothly when you are not where you feel you should be and have no idea how to get there in the first place. A manslaughter, institutionalisation, trends and fashions, all follow Logan as he tries to navigate his way to some semblance of stability in Manhattan where he finds a job as a pianist and begins a relationship with an ad executive that is really not good for his state of mind

Vincent Czyz has a unique narrative and his lyrical descriptions are mesmerising. He is philosophising on a different level, experiencing a deeper understanding of what most see on the surface. Broadly descriptive, constructive, illustrative. A truly gifted writer

Thank you very much to Netgalley, BooksGoSocial and Vincent Czyz for this incredible ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own