THE SUNDAY REVIEW | I AM THE MISSION – ALLEN ZADOFF

He was the perfect assassin. No name. No past. No remorse. Perfect, that is, until he began to ask questions and challenge his orders. Now The Program is worried that their valuable soldier has become a liability.

And so Boy Nobody is given a new mission. A test of sorts. A chance to prove his loyalty.

His objective: Take out Eugene Moore, the owner of an extremist military training camp for teenagers. It sounds like a simple task, but a previous operative couldn’t do it. He lost the mission and is presumed dead. Now Boy Nobody is confident he can finish the job. Quickly.

But when things go awry, Boy Nobody finds himself lost in a mission where nothing is as it seems: not The Program, his allegiances, nor the truth.

The riveting second book in Allen Zadoff’s Boy Nobody series delivers heart-pounding action and a shocking new twist that makes Boy Nobody question everything he has believed. – Goodreads

It’s been over a year since I read the first book in this series, Boy Nobody (aka I Am the Weapon), so my memory of it is a bit fuzzy. But from what I remember I found the concept (teenaged trained assassin) really compelling, if slightly unbelievable, but the tone of the book got a bit emotionless and overly technical at times.

This book definitely had its moments like that, but surprised me by not only becoming much more personal, but providing some explanation for the stark mission focus in the previous book. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s in there.

The story for this one wasn’t one that appealed to me quite as much in terms of the supporting characters, however the main character was much more sympathetic in this book. While the last book was about a powerful man and his conflicted daughter, who both had moments where they were vulnerable and where you really pulled for them, this one had a whole cast of unlikeable characters.

It’s set in a military “camp” mainly full of teenagers who have either been placed there by their parents or who have chosen to be there. The group is borderline terrorist, being drastically anti-government and militant. They’re dangerous and one agent has already disappeared without a trace.

Clearly, this was an intense situation for our fearless protagonist. The plot provided one suspenseful moment after another, and had me flipping pages at a frantic pace pretty much from the first to the last. It was a quick read, but I was fully immersed in it when I was reading, and it definitely didn’t allow for a moment of boredom!

You’ll like this if you liked: The Agent 21 series by Chris Ryan

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