Jenn's Review: Inside Out

Summary: Torture. Ghost detainees. And a massive cover-up that continues even today. This is the propulsive thriller that only former CIA operative turned bestselling novelist Barry Eisler could write.

Marooned in a Manila jail after a bar fight fatality, black ops soldier Ben Treven gets a visit from his former commander, Colonel Scott Horton, who explains the price of Ben’s release: Find and eliminate Daniel Larison, a rogue operator from Ben’s unit who has stolen ninety-two torture tapes from the CIA and is using them to blackmail the U.S. government.

But other players are after the tapes, too, and to find Larison, Ben will have to survive CIA hit teams, Blackwater mercenaries, and the long reach of the White House. He’ll also have to find a way to handle Paula Lanier, a smart, sexy FBI agent who has her own reasons for wanting the tapes and is determined to get them before Ben does. With the stakes this high, everyone has an angle—everyone but Ben, who will have to find the right alliance if he wants to stay alive.

Review: Both Julie and I loved Fault Line so I was thrilled to find out Barry Eisler's new novel was a sequel, though quite able to function as a stand alone. It starts out with a brawl and snowballs into a full scale conspiracy.

This one is a little heavier than Fault Line, probably due to the fact that Ben's brother Alex has been taken out of the mix. This was a little more along the same vein as the John Rain series which I've started, but not finished. It was the family connection that originally drew me into Fault Line more so than his John Rain series, but I think I'm more attached to the character of Ben because Eisler set up roots for the character so well in the first book.

The plot is terrifyingly realistic, ripping it's facts from the headlines and creating it's own account of the details surrounding it. One of the quotes Eisler uses was quite definitive for Ben:

‘There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.’ ~ Irving Kristol

Ben has become increasingly disenfranchised through his recent experiences (In a way, he kind of reminds me a little of Seeley Booth) and he's starting to become more aware that everyone has an agenda and their own version of the truth to back them up. This is something that Ben will continue to struggle with, as there is no easy resolution for him. It's messy, but I imagine the real world of spies and assassins is messy.

There is a little more 'alphabet soup' with all of the government agencies being involved in this one and sometimes it took a minute for me to juggle the acronyms and remember who's who. The action, however is phenomenal and well worth any minor acronym confusion on my part. It took twists and turns I didn't foresee and was wrapped up without being too neat and tidy, leaving plenty of room for continuing the story throughout the series.

I've read some flack in other reviews for this novel regarding one-sided political agenda, and here are my thoughts on the matter: if you don't like Barry Eisler's politics, you probably aren't going to like his books, but that goes without saying for any author and their views, be they political, worldly, or other-worldly. And at no time did I feel that Eisler was pushing an agenda ~and I can't say that for just any other author. It certainly gave the reader a lot to think about and consider.

Eisler even worked the character of John Rain into this series via name dropping by other characters. I think it will be fascinating to see how he incorporates Rain into this series further down the road... it will also motivate me to move the rest of the John Rain series closer to the top of my ToBeRead pile.

Final Take 4.0/5

Julie's Review: Fault Line

Summary:In Silicon Valley, the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. In Istanbul, a cynical undercover operator receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he is the next victim. And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley's nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy. Alex Treven has sacrificed everything to achieve his sole ambition: making partner in his high-tech law firm. But then the inventor of a technology Alex is banking on is murdered... and the patent examiner who reviewed it dies... and Alex himself narrowly escapes an attack in his own home. Off balance, out of ideas, and running out of time, he knows the one person who can help him is the last person he'd ever ask: his brother. Ben Treven is a Military Liaison Element, an elite undercover soldier paid to "find, fix, and finish" high-value targets in America's Global War on Terror. Disenchanted with what he sees as America's culture of denial and decadence, Ben lives his detached life in the shadows because the black ops world is all he really knows—and because other than Alex, who he hasn't spoken to since their mother died, his family is long gone.
But blood is thicker than water, and when he receives Alex's frantic call, Ben hurries to San Francisco to help him. Only then does Alex reveal that there's another player who knows of the technology: Sarah Hosseini, a young Iranian-American lawyer who Alex has long secretly desired... and who Ben immediately distrusts. As these three radically different people struggle to identify the forces attempting to silence them, Ben and Alex are forced to examine the events that drove them apart—even as Sarah's presence, and her own secret wants, deepens the fault line between them. A full-throttle thriller that is both emotionally and politically charged, Fault Line centers on a conspiracy that has spun out of the shadows and into the streets of America, a conspiracy that can be stopped only by three people—three people with different worldviews, different grievances, different motives. To survive the forces arrayed against them, they'll first have to survive each other. ~amazon.com

Review: As Jenn said "it's a grabber" but that's a good thing when talking about a book. Fault Line is most definitely a CIA thriller but it has a little of everything. We meet Alex Treven when he's waiting for the most important client of his career to arrive for a meeting. Little does Alex know but we do, that client isn't showing up. This starts Alex on a whirlwind adventure that he really doesn't want to experience. He realizes he's in too deep and can't handle the situation, he contacts the one person he doesn't want to, his big brother Ben. Next we meet Ben while he's on a mission and one that he executes well but not without its mistakes.

There is some serious family baggage between these two and definite some misunderstandings. It's not the family drama that I enjoyed in this book but the CIA/Covert Ops. With Mr. Eisler's background I have a feeling that this book is pretty real. I'm thinking that Conspiracy theorist would love this book. At times, the technology part was over my head but I did get the general gist.

I enjoyed Mr. Eisler's writing style. I liked how we saw Ben change even if it was just a bit. I like how he pretty much called all of us out on our prejudices based on culture/race. I'm sure we've all had the thoughts that Ben did in the book, even when we know they are wrong.

As an American citizen/patriot, I think there are definitely things that the general public shouldn't know. There are things that keep us safe and we are better off not knowing how they are accomplished.

I will most definitely be reading Barry Eisler again. I hope to see both the Treven brother's back in action and wouldn't mind seeing Sarah Hosseini again.

Final Take: 4.25/5

Jenn's Review: Fault Line

Jenn's Review: Rain Fall

Summary: John Rain, a Japanese American konketsu, or half-breed, learned his lethal trade as a member of the U.S. Special Forces. Although tortured by memories of atrocities he committed in Vietnam, he has become a paid assassin, a solitary man who lives in the shadows and trusts no one, even those who pay extraordinary sums for his ability to make murder look like natural death. But the aftermath of an otherwise routine hit on a government bureaucrat brings Rain to the attention of two men he knows from the old days in Vietnam: a friend who's now a Tokyo cop and an enemy who betrayed Rain long ago and is now the CIA's station chief in Japan. Like the gangster who hired Rain to kill Yasuhiro Kawamura, they want something the dead man had--a computer disk containing proof of high-level corruption, information that could destroy Japan's ruling political coalition. The search for the disk leads them to a woman Rain has come to love, a talented young jazz musician who also happens to be Kawamura's daughter.

Review: I'm huge spy/assassin story fan so I have been looking forward to picking this up off my TBR pile. This is Eisler's first novel (from '02) and having read his most recent, Fault Line, I must say it's wonderful to see how far he's come as a writer. Not that Rain Fall is a poor first novel, far from it. I found this first book of the Rain series to be a solid, entertaining read.

Although the character's aren't overly developed (I would like to know a little more about Kawamura's daughter, Midori), Rain is a likable sum of his experiences. Eisler does a nice job of infusing back story throughout the novel, keeping the reader's interest by weaving a little more plot exposition with each back flash. I did find the plot a little far fetched at times (for an assassin, Rain has an astonishing ignorance of the workings of the intelligence communities ~ and what paranoid assassin hands over valuable intel to a soft target civilian???) and at times a little repetitious (his recon around several blocks every time he goes to a meet or a stake out), but at least Rain is consistent. It was almost written like a movie script, so it was no surprise to find out it had been turned into a film (Gary Oldman!); unfortunately, it seems to only have been released in Japan, Rein fôru: Ame no kiba.

Personally, I wasn't crazy about the ending, but not from a writing standpoint. I was routing for Rain on a personal level, but the ending that Eisler wrote is far more realistic. I look forward to reading the rest of the series ...and just maybe I'll try and rent the Japanese movie when it comes out on DVD (praying for English subtitles).

Final Take 3.8/5

Jenn's Review: Fault Line

Summary: In Silicon Valley, the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. In Istanbul, a cynical undercover operator receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he is the next victim.

And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley's nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy.

Alex Treven has sacrificed everything to achieve his sole ambition: making partner in his high-tech law firm. But then the inventor of a technology Alex is banking on is murdered... and the patent examiner who reviewed it dies... and Alex himself narrowly escapes an attack in his own home. Off balance, out of ideas, and running out of time, he knows the one person who can help him is the last person he'd ever ask: his brother.

Ben Treven is a Military Liaison Element, an elite undercover soldier paid to "find, fix, and finish" high-value targets in America's Global War on Terror. Disenchanted with what he sees as America's culture of denial and decadence, Ben lives his detached life in the shadows because the black ops world is all he really knows—and because other than Alex, who he hasn't spoken to since their mother died, his family is long gone.

But blood is thicker than water, and when he receives Alex's frantic call, Ben hurries to San Francisco to help him. Only then does Alex reveal that there's another player who knows of the technology: Sarah Hosseini, a young Iranian-American lawyer who Alex has long secretly desired... and who Ben immediately distrusts. As these three radically different people struggle to identify the forces attempting to silence them, Ben and Alex are forced to examine the events that drove them apart—even as Sarah's presence, and her own secret wants, deepens the fault line between them.

A full-throttle thriller that is both emotionally and politically charged, Fault Line centers on a conspiracy that has spun out of the shadows and into the streets of America, a conspiracy that can be stopped only by three people—three people with different worldviews, different grievances, different motives. To survive the forces arrayed against them, they'll first have to survive each other.


Review: As it is my first time reading Barry Eisler, I wasn't sure what to expect. I often have trouble reading books written by ex-military or ex-agents as they tend to get a little too heavy with technical jargon for me ~this is certainly not the case here! He does an exceptional job of keeping things realistic yet accessible. Though I must say that I saw where he was going with the plot, I really enjoyed how he got there.

Eisler convincingly writes from the viewpoints of the three main characters in this novel, a literary style that can be disengaging if not done well. Each of the characters has their own conflicting politics and belief system and Eisler has made each sympathetic to the reader: the profiled, the profiler, and the self-proclaimed family martyr. In the end, Sarah, Ben, and Alex have their core ideals challenged, and find those to which they formerly clung seem far from solid.

This is a fascinating read of espionage and modern political morals. A must-read for the spy fanatics. Look for it in stores March 10, 2009.

I'm definitely adding his Rain series to my "To Be Read" pile!

4.8/5.0