This book features a storyline where Evan is actually captured by the government for the first time, and persuaded to look into a shady powerbroker who can supposedly persuade and influence people to do whatever he wants without them even knowing it. It's a good hook, and it highlights one of the things I love best about this series, which is the villains are really well-developed and always unique. Yes, this series has done the "Evan against another operative from the Orphan program" bit a couple of times, but the recent books have really stretched beyond that. The last book in the series (2022's "Dark Horse"  ) featured a villain who becomes a kind of odd friend to Evan in this book... and in this book the villain is someone who isn't really necessarily a villain at all (at least in terms of the kind of bad guys Evan normally accepts assignments to take out). Which leads me to my next favorite thing about this series...

Evan is constantly growing. Evan's backstory is that he basically lost most of his humanity to become a living weapon, but his mentor tried to teach him a few things to keep him from going all the way off the deep end and just becoming a killing machine. Now free from the program, Evan is slowly putting together the pieces of what could be considered some semblance of a life, and learning to regain his humanity, little by little. This book continues to push Evan along that trajectory, so fans of the books aren't just reading really well-paced, well-plotted action/thrillers; they're also following along on Evan's journey from lone operator to someone who has rebuilt his life.

Overall, this was a great installment to the series, and - as always - I look forward to the next book in 2024.

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Created Mar 24, 2024 at 11:26pm • Submit your own review...