Victor

Story was great. Technical fiction was well done.

Reviewed: 07-11-24

I didn't like the way Colt kept agonizing and moralizing about having to kill someone. A bit more cold blood would be better. He's a spy. Get over it.

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Absolutely Fantastic

Reviewed: 04-21-24

I love all the Gabriel Allon books, but his one has to be one of the best. The book intertwines a Mossad Operation against the Russian President with the events of the 2020 election in the US, and the result is a work of art. Strongly recommend this book, and can't wait to listen to the next one!

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Absolutely Fantastic

Reviewed: 11-19-22

This is the third book in the series. Each subsequent book has gotten better, and this third installment does not disappoint. I love the "assassin superhero" genre, but usually I find the plot lines too idiotically simple. Almost always - the hero does something obviously and absolutely dumb and then has to fight his way out of it. "Gray Man" is a perfect example - he does something dumb so often it makes you want to scream. But not so with Victor the assassin. He rarely does something dumb and is always cool, logical and pragmatic. In this sense he is a lot like "Mitch Rapp." This series is great and I recommend it highly.

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Too much to take

Reviewed: 02-01-22

This is a terrible story. I purchased the entire series, and unfortunately, listened to the entire series as well. Although the first book in the series was actually fairly good, by the start of the second book it really became hard to listen to. The theme of the story is reminiscent of the recent movie "Don't Look Up."

We are all very much aware of humanity's failures, particularly in light of recent history. Even so, the sheer number of idiotic actions in this book makes you want to wretch. When faced with an imminent alien invasion, the Earth's response is to make every stupid mistake you could possibly make. Each nation actively tries to sabotage every other nation so that theirs could be the first to make contact with the aliens and steal whatever tech they can. Earth's society is allowed to totally disintegrate in the meantime, with major nations deciding it was a good time to break up. They finally manage to send up a crew that's so dysfunctional that they wind up killing each other, have sex with aliens, and are led by a main character so infuriatingly righteous that regardless of how many times someone tries to kill him, he forgives them so that they can try again, and again, and again. And again.

I wanted to stop listening, but I'd already paid for the book and didn't want to try to return it. Very disappointing.

But the narrator was good.

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Absolutely Authentic

Reviewed: 01-08-22

Been Dominican, I've read many books by Dominican American authors about their experience in the US. This was without a doubt the most authentic one I've read. Dan-el's experiences growing up in NYC, being admitted to elite schools where all the students were from much richer families, the dangers of walking home to your bad neighborhood every day are exactly what many of us go through. Some reviews surprisingly complained about the language used, but his choice of words is exactly the way people in these neighborhoods talk. There are primarily two ways to talk -there is your professional voice, and then there is the voice you use with your friends. A very moving story.

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OK if you are not looking for anything deep.

Reviewed: 11-16-21

Some spoilers, so reader beware. The overall concept of this book was quite good. However the writing was absolutely juvenile. The two main characters were teenagers, and as is usual in many of these stories, they did so many stupid things, one after another, that after a while you just wanted to slap them in the head and tell them that they got what they deserved. I find it hard to believe that even teenagers could be that dumb.
How is it possible that the police, FBI, CIA, and military want you so badly that they are willing to kill anyone to get to you, and do it repeatedly right in front of you, yet you can't get it through your head that its not smart to go into a McDonalds just because you are hungry or want to go to the bathroom? You mean you really can't understand that you shouldn't tell your story to random girls, no matter how hot they are or how short their pants are? And you have to argue and go against every single sensible precaution your adult guardians tell you? Hard to believe.
Overall it was OK. But this is not a serious book for adults.

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2 people found this helpful

Not Science Fiction

Reviewed: 11-25-19

This is not science fiction - its an apocalyptic horror story that has more in common with "Night of The Living Dead" than with "2001: A Space Odyssey." The aliens are unthinking monsters that the protagonists are continually fighting. The reason for the invasion is never explained. The characters are idiots. How many times do a person's dreams have to come true (in a big way) for people to start thinking that maybe they are not just simple dreams? The characters never catch on. If every time you hear a scratch noise or see a shimmer of blue light a monster shows up, you'd think you would become extremely sensitive to scratches and blue light. These characters don't - they always assume "oh, its probably nothing" only to be rudely awakened. The narrator is Ok overall, but he tries to make "scratch, scrape" sound scary every time he says it - he only succeeds in being irritating. I forced myself to listen to the end only because I already had so much time invested, but it was real work. There are better books out there. "Fear the Sky" is a million times better than this book.

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5 people found this helpful

Absolutely Terrible

Reviewed: 10-25-19

The only good part of this book is the first chapter, where the characters are introduced and the premise is set. After that, it devolves into an absolutely frustratingly detailed history of the most minute aspects of the character's lives from childhood onward.. The book purports to be about a Pandemic released onto the world for misguided purposes. That is about one tenth of the book. The rest is hour after hour of unnecessary character development. Without exaggeration, the main story never gets anywhere. The world is falling apart and all the author can talk about is characters' childhood traumas, what their parents did in WW II, failed love affairs from 20 years prior. Total waste of time. I've read other A.G. Riddle books, and found some to be just OK. This is most definitely going to be my last A.G. Riddle book.

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Totally unbelievable

Reviewed: 09-21-19

SPOILER ALERT - I struggled getting through the first "Gray Man" due to an altogether too ridiculous, cliche and predictable story line. But I thought I'd give it another shot with book two. This was even worse. The idea that a high level assassin, assigned to kidnap a foreign president, would endanger his mission in order to save an irritating woman he just met during an unplanned two hour stopover is ridiculous. The idea that he would do it after discovering that she is a overzealous self righteous moron working for the International Criminal Court is worse. He then proceeds to several times risk his neck to save her from certain death, killing several bad guys in the process, and his only reward is her insistence that for killing her attackers she will indict him for war crimes, thereby totally compromising his identity. The idea that he doesn't just just put a bullet in her head and be done with her made me stop listening for two days. Finally I managed to force myself to continue, only to find that he he threw away his entire future by ignoring a CIA order to kill the foreign president, which would have been totally justified, in order to hand him over to the ICC. That's when I had enough, but it was almost the end of the book.

The only reason I listened to this story was that I very much enjoyed "Red Metal." by the same author. But this will be the last "Grey Man" book I listen to. If you are going to write about an assassin with a sense of morals, at least make the character consistent - something like Jack Bauer or Mitch Rapp. But a covert assassin with the heart of Jimmy Carter is a bit much (and I actually like Jimmy Carter's heart).

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2 people found this helpful

So Dumb It Was Excruciating

Reviewed: 02-03-19

Absolutely unbelievable. Evil, power hungry, ruthless liberals in charge of the government and killing navy seals just to make a quick buck. I can't believe I listened to the end, because it was just so implausibly dumb and filled with not so subtle attempts to subliminally espouse right wing ideology. I suppose it might be considered exciting, if we hadn't already heard the same story a thousand previous times.

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1 person found this helpful