Review: Best Pilot Turned Into Excellent Novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 20, 2013
I readthe Preludelast Summer, when Realm and Sands was putting out shorter works to gauge interest going forward (and then ignored what folks said and wrote everything anyway.)  After reading the prelude, I said, "I don't know if the story-telling method and chronology would work for me in a larger context, but it served really well to introduce the character and his motivations to set the series up. Note that this book is very violent, but at least not in a cringe-worthy way."The prelude makes up the first 7 chapters, and the rest of the story delivered on what the prelude promised. Thankfully, the "memento-style" story telling ended after that first 7 chapters, because I don't think it could have continued, but the transition for the bulk of the novel (which is told in "real time" interspersed every few chapters with flashbacks that give you the necessary context into Amit's life) was quite smooth and definitely helped set the tone even after the shift.The rest of the novel delivered on the promise of the prelude, and although the violence did escalate and in a few spots get a bit more gory and cringe-worthy it wasn't even close to bad enough for me to put down the book.  The flashbacks and the clues that Amit finds as he works his way through the organization of criminals to find who gave the order for Nisha's death provide plenty of information to predict the ending, but also provide for multiple possibilities so you that you want to continue reading to see what actually happened. (I don't want to give spoilers, but my prevalent theory about who ordered Nisha's death and what was happening behind the scenes turned out to be wrong; it was the second person I thought likely to have ordered it that actually did.)