Reviewed by cornerfolds on
Birth of an Assassin was a book a little outside of my comfort zone in more than one way: I've never read anything set in Russia and, as a combat vet, I attempt to avoid books about war. But I decided to give this one a try and I was not disappointed.
The main character, Jez, spends half the book on the run from the KGB and I'm sure you can imagine how that goes. Staying one step ahead of the game, Jez manages to stay alive while coping with loss too great to imagine. The character development is good - I sympathized with Jez and Anna... most of the time. There were a few times that Jez made decisions that made me cringe - things that seemed to be unnecessary, in my opinion. But this is war and war is a different place, I suppose. Especially when the rules are bent such as they are in this book. The main antagonist, Otto, was as despicable as he possibly could have been. I hated him almost from the start.
While it takes quite a while to gain momentum (about 200 pages), this book is a thrill ride once it does pick up. I just wish it hadn't taken so long. The biggest issue I had with Birth of an Assassin was its dialogue. I'm not sure why, but the dialogue is extremely choppy and sometimes very unnatural. I think it is best described as someone translating Russian to English, but maybe that was what the author meant it to be. I honestly checked a couple times to see if perhaps the author was, in fact, Russian. It seemed especially odd because the rest of the writing flowed perfectly. The ending was satisfying enough, though I do wish we'd learned what happened to Jez's sisters (but maybe that's coming in a sequel).
All in all, this book is a good read as long as you can overlook the dialogue and make it through the first half of rather slow intro. I'd definitely recommend Birth of an Assassin to any military or history buff!
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 25 July, 2014: Finished reading
- 25 July, 2014: Reviewed