Review: meticulous revenge served on ice
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 5, 2012
I have discovered many good authors, and more wonderful books since I bought my Kindle, but there are a few, a very few, authors who stand out for me.  Each one has a distinctive voice, and each one pleases me so much that I will buy any book that author writes, with or without recommendations.  Of course, that doesn't guaranty that I'll like each and every book, but the probability is that I will.  I can count the number of these very special authors on the fingers of one hand ..and I have just added a name to this extremely short list.  Ian Fraser is such an author, and here's why.The first thing that impressed me was the writing style.  It is unique, usually graceful, always sensuous in the true meaning of the word ...it involves all the senses ...and it can range from spare and direct when describing fast action to marvelously poetic with no pretentiousness, to dreamy and almost surreal.Then I got involved in the story ...and while the elements aren't unique, the way they are handled are.  The narrator remains a bit of a mystery in some ways; we learn about him gradually, as the story unfolds, and he is always presented in a way that keeps him just a little impersonal, although we learn a great deal about his life.  I found this disorienting at first, because I'm used to learning such things as name, Nationality, and physical description right from the start, but I had to piece information about this character together as the book progressed.  In other ways, however, we get to know him extremely well, and, while he seems to keep his distance from the reader, by the end, he becomes dear and important.The world of this book is Dystopian, although that is not so prominent as to make this specifically a dystopian novel ..but a drama set against a Dystopian background ...and that background is all too believable for comfort.  Within it, though, specific locales, especially in the 3rd world are presented brilliantly.One of the things I treasure about this book, and what will remain with me, is the way Mr. Fraser can bring an exotic city to vibrant life.  His descriptions of Thailand, some cities in India, and Africa are so vivid and full of life that I was in danger of forgetting, exactly, where I was.  I could hear, see, smell, taste and touch his locales ..they surrounded and immersed me as though I walked those streets, and, for a while, I did.  People tend to form their impressions of places not from grand buildings and monuments but from an amalgamation of minutiae ..and the author understands this, and uses it to wonderful advantage.While the characters are not developed in the usual conventions of fiction, by the time the book is over, the reader realizes that these people are 3 dimensional, living, breathing human beings ...and that what happens to them matters.At heart, of course, this is an action novel, and the action is fast, furious, deadly, and presented so well that this reader found out, precisely, how long she could last between breaths.  The plot is tight, and has an inevitability about it that is so logical it couldn't have proceeded in any other way.  It twists and turns and takes strange paths, always interesting, always engaging.  I knew what had to happen, but, until the very end, I didn't foresee how it would happen; and that, when all was said and done, was also totally logical and completely understandable.This book has managed to imprint itself on me, as truly wonderful books do, and I will be reading a great deal more of this author ...everything I can find, to be perfectly honest.