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John Rain is an assassin for hire…
John has three rules:
We start with John killing a high/mid-level politician. During the assassination a bystander takes an unusual amount of interest in the dead person, which John notes. Later John is unwinding at a local Jazz club, where coincidentally the musician is the daughter of the politician he just killed, the bystander appears again and talks to the daughter. Believing his broker has violated one of his rules he starts to investigate the bystander. As part of that investigation he has more interaction with the daughter, which leads them to become romantically involved. John's job then morphs from assassinating people to trying to prevent the assassination of a person, the daughter.
The good point is that John is a believable character, no special super-secret training that has turned him into a killing machine. Barry Eisler provides a reasonable amount of back story on John’s military career and childhood, so you understand how John can mentally be an assassin. However, there isn’t much back story on how John transitioned the skill set of killing someone with a rifle to a pacemaker.
The story progresses well from initial assassination through protecting the daughter. Unfortunately, for me, Barry includes a lot of descriptions of streets, hotels, restaurants, and sections of Tokyo. While I understand the desire to build the atmosphere, this along with the periodic dialog in Japanese just became words I skipped over, having never been to Tokyo nor am I ever planning to go, it really just was fluff.
The question by the end of the book is the future direction of John. While he has a code he lives by at the end, which kind of implies he only kills bad people, the reality is he has still killed people for money, and he isn’t really punished for his crimes. While he has tried to change directions
The second John Rain felt very mechanical to me. I would have thought this was the sixth or seventh book in the series, a point where the original direction of the series was ending as we transition to a new direction, instead it is the second in the series but probably serves the same purpose.
We start with another assassination, this time a mid-level gangster. While the assassination was successful, looking at it objectively the likelihood of success was so small an assassin would have figured out an alternative plan. After the assassination we get the back story of what John has been doing since the last book. He has moved to Osaka and is working on retiring, when an old acquaintance tracks him down requesting he kill the gangster. Frequently in the first book and second book, Barry Eisler, provides detailed description of the methods John employs to avoid detection, and yet throughout the second book people, Cops, Gangsters, Ex-Girlfriends, etc., keep finding John without much problem.
There are two story arcs in this book. First Harry, the ex-NSA super hacker from the first book, has a new girlfriend. John finds this suspicious, so he begins to back track who this girl is, why is she interested in Harry, or is she just using Harry to get to John. The second arc is about another gangster/killer related to the gangster John assassinated, who John’s acquaintance wants him to investigate and potentially kill. Since this gangster seems to have a relationship to Harry’s new girlfriend it provides another avenue of investigation into Harry's girlfriend, so John accepts the request.
While back tracking Harry’s new girlfriend John meets a half Brazilian, half Japanese exotic dancer. One thing leads to another and the end result is they have the most boring sex I have ever read.
By the end of the book, we have many more bodies. John's technical skills, which in the first book seemed believable, are sub-par in the second. Even with his anti-surveillance techniques, people find him. Avenues of attack which are obvious, John didn’t see coming and made an effort to minimize his exposure.
As I said originally this seemed like a transition book, so maybe book three will be a new direction for John.
The Paladin series is a mixture of alternative history with a small amount of fantasy. The story takes place around 340 BC in the area around Black sea. The alternative-ness is accomplished by the introduction of elves and a small amount of magic.
In the first book in the series we were introduced to three main characters, the warrior priest (Hakeem), the (future) queen of the elves (Elana) and adopted daughter (Jacinta) along with the prophecy about how the elf civilization will be saved by the queen and her daughter. The magic is minor and quickly skipped over. The action is more on a personal level, lighting between a handful of people, and is reasonably portrayed if a little one-sided. In general the book does a good job of evolving the characters into characters we are interested in. However the author does spend a lot of time telling you the story instead of letting the characters experience the story, which some people will find annoying
So onto book two, but first a history lesson. About the first 20% of the second book reads like a history book, explaining what is happening in the region and who are the current major players. Intermixed with the history lesson are a few short stories about the Jacinta, which read more like the telling of a legend instead of part of the actual story. After we get into the heart of the story the book is very different then the first. Hakeem has changed from the main fighting force, to comic relief. Elana is just there to look beautiful, winning over the support of masses with that beauty. The majority of the story focuses on the 13 year old adopted daughter, who we learn is faster, stronger and smarter than anyone else in the book (i.e. the Bionic Girl).
There is more magic in the second book, however, there is really no explanation of how, what, etc. Magic just exists and some people can use it. The action/conflict has grown to encompass armies. Unfortunately the one-sided has also grown to laughable size. As an example a 1000 Huns (the bad guys) attack a mixed group of about 300 Greece infantry, Elves and Warrior monks (the good guys). After the very quick battle the bad guys had suffered upwards of 750 casualties, the rest injured or captured. The good guys suffered horrendous casualties of about 50.
At the end of the day: the series started out as an interesting alternative history/fantasy series and quickly morphed into a children's (maybe very young adult) series. The first book was (just) good enough go on to the second book, the second book isn’t good enough for me to continue on with the series.
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