When you read fiction, are you a fan of:
If so, then I think you'll like Orphan X.
Orphan X is based on Evan Smoak, a former dark operative trained from an early age to do unspeakable things to very bad people. He was recruited from an orphanage as a young child and raised through a secret government program to become the operative Orphan X. The Orphan program rigorously trained it's recruits to be "off the grid" assassins, teaching them skills like survival, armed and unarmed combat, self-mastery, and everything in between.
Evan's greatest struggle is summed up by his mentor/father figure Jack:“Always respect life. Then you'll value yours. The hard part isn't turning you into a killer. The hard part is keeping you human.”
When Evan broke from that life, he continued his work by helping those less fortunate. Tortured souls in hopeless situations could always call on the mythical Nowhere Man through a highly guarded number. He takes one case at a time. He focuses on the outcome. He has never failed someone he promised to help. Evan's former life isn't finished with him though. When a new case draws him into something much larger, Evan has to decide who he can trust while confronting people connected to the same program that created him.
This was my first experience with Greg Hurwitz's writing. When you start with a new author, you have to learn their writing style and sometimes that can take a while to get into a book.
I found that Hurwitz's writing style was easy to read and easy to get into pretty quickly. He isn't overly descriptive, but he gives enough details to make the story engaging. The story itself has a master's craft to it. The slow stuff is done quickly, the high action sequences are slowed down.
The main character is likable even if he is more of an anti-hero working through unprocessed trauma. Personally, I recommend the book if you like books like Lee Child's Reacher or Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity.
Nothing is perfect though, so let's talk about things I didn't love. One thing I don't love about the book is the author's repetitive over-the-top assassin trope. Evan lives alone, can't make human connection, always has the finest things in his penthouse, etc.
I understand the reasoning behind it, but I just feel like too many assassin characters have that same setup. It's like a cookie cutter for a character. They have to have the super spook setup to be legit.
The only other thing I would take the author to task on is that when he gets into describing some items, he really goes over the top on descriptions. An example is his description for a vodka the character drinks:
“Kauffman Luxury Vintage vodka. Distilled fourteen times and filtered twice, once through birch coal, once through quartz sand, it was produced from the wheat of a single year’s harvest, making it one of the only vodkas released with a specific vintage, like wine or champagne.”