Rating: 4 Stars
Source: France Blog Tours
Description: The horrors of World War 2 have never completely gone away for Eytan Morgenstern. A genetically engineered gentle giant, the Mossad agent finds himself racing to stop a mysterious group bent on mass destruction. With the help of his arch-enemy Elena and a Czech reporter Branislav Poborsky, Eytan must stop this group from killing more innocent people and to protect the person he cares for most.
Genre: Mystery
Why I Picked This Book: This is out of my usual genre of reading but I found the premise intriguing and I wanted to step out of the box a little.
My Impression:
Pros: In an action oriented book I normally find that character development is one of the things that gets left out. The characters tend to be one dimensional, the good guys can't be beaten and the bad guys are villainous-ly evil. One of the things I loved most about this book was that this is the exception to that rule. Eytan is kind of awesome. He's this giant man who was basically designed to be a killing machine yet he lives by his code of ethics. He lets compassion for the innocent drive him instead of hatred for the enemy. He's funny, charismatic, watches Kung Fu movies in his free time but when he has too he can also kill 3 heavily armed soldiers in seconds. While Elena is less likable I did begin to empathize with her. The good guys were profiting from discoveries made in the most inhumane ways possible, the bad guys had some good intentions, The plot kept me turning the pages to find out what would happen next and what would become of Elena and Eytan.
Cons: There was a lot of jumping around both in terms of location and timeline. While the change in locations was fun the changes in timelines made it feel a little disjointed. While all the flashbacks were helpful to character development, it always took me a page or two to get re-involved in the story.
Overall: While this wasn't perfect I really enjoyed this fast paced thriller. The characters were what really made this book enjoyable for me which I find unusual for this genre. This is the second book in the series but I had no problems jumping into the story. I didn't feel like not reading the first book impacted my enjoyment.
Would I Read More of this Series/Author?: To be honest, while I was enjoying this book I kind of thought this answer would be no since it is a bit outside the box for me. However, when I put this book down I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen to Eytan next! So yes, I'll be reading more!
Would I Recommend this Book?: Yes!
thanks for your nice review and good points about the characters. if your readers would like to read more reviews, an excerpt, a guest-post by the author and enter the giveaway, the tour page is here: http://francebooktours.com/2014/08/14/david-khara-on-tour-the-shiro-project/
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this one!
DeleteI love this type of thriller and wahoo for reading outside your norm. It is always fun when a book holds your attention
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely going to be looking for more like this!
DeleteI agree ,action/adventure books tend to suck at charcter development so that this story has it is a huge plus. Eytan sounds interesting as does the premise so, another book for my library wish list!
ReplyDeleteI was pleasantly surprised with how well the character development was done
DeleteEytan sounds like a great character. What makes novels like this good to me is strong character development. I don't mind plot driven novels but the characters have to have substance or else I have trouble feeling invested in what happens to them.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! That's my normal problem with thrillers. This was a nice surprise
DeleteInteresting story line. I'd enjoy reading it ..
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoy it!
DeleteI really did! I was a little nervous because it's outside of my usual reading but it worked.
ReplyDelete