The narrator, John Rain, is a Tokyo-based professional assassin who performs jobs mainly for the LDP, Japan's dominant political party. His specialty is making deaths look natural. Rain is an interesting character: he's half American and half Japanese, grew up partly in each country, and was part of a clandestine US military/CIA operation in the Vietnam War that ran recon and sabotage missions into Cambodia and Laos. He's also an expert practitioner of judo.

The job he completes as the story begins seems to go well but sets into motion a chain of events that places Rain and the people around him in grave danger. One of these people is Midori, an attractive and accomplished jazz pianist with whom Rain becomes romantically involved. She is also the daughter of the man Rain has killed. The plot settles into a familiar thriller novel scenario: Rain must figure out who the bad guys are and what they want, and neutralize them before they can kill him and Midori.

Rain is always on the move around Tokyo, mostly on foot or by metro but sometimes by car. He does a lot of what he calls surveillance detection runs (SDRs): taking circuitous routes from point A to point B designed to expose any potential pursuers. The SDRs (so many of them!) are described in detail, so the book is chock full of Tokyo geographic references: streets, buildings, stores, hotels, train stations, etc. I'm sure this lends the book great verisimilitude for readers familiar with Tokyo, but for the rest of us the barrage of Tokyo place names sometimes feels overwhelming.

The story is clever and includes many creative elements and several interesting characters, but the plotting and pacing are sometimes clunky, and momentum was uneven. Eisler is an intelligent writer, and the two later books of his that I've read are excellent. But in this, his first book, he seems to have been still working to master the tools of his craft.

Primo di una serie dedicata a John Rain, ex infiltrato della CIA in Vietnam, divenuto micidiale killer, questo thriller spicca per la sua... normalita'! Senza infamia e senza lode, la lettura scorre via senza particolari sorprese su binari fin troppo lineari. John Rain puo' essere pero' un personaggio interessante in se', e forse gli si puo' dare il beneficio della seconda prova. Nota positiva per l'ambientazione giapponese che fornisce molti dettagli sugli usi e la mentalita' del posto, oltre a una interessante descrizione di Tokyo.

Gostei do livro. É literalmente o típico filme de ação que se vê na televisão ahahah. Mas o livro em si é bom e divertido e é fascinante ler uma obra na perspectiva de um assassino.

Excellent book. Great character dialogue and good plots. A true thriller.

Eisler’s *Livia Lone* series might be one of my favorite series ever and John Rain showed up in book #3—inspiring me to give these books a shot.

Intriguing first entry, I'm down for more John Rain!

“I wandered the earth a mercenary, daring the gods to kill me but surviving because part of me was already dead."

“The person who returns from living abroad isn't the same person who left originally... Your outlook changes. You don't take things for granted that you used to. For instance, I noticed in New York that when one cab cut off another, the driver who got cut off would always yell at the other driver... and I realized this was because Americans assume that the other person intended to do what he did, so they want to teach the person a lesson. But you know, in Japan, people almost never get upset in those situations. Japanese look at other people's mistakes more as something arbitrary, like the weather, I think, not so much as something to get angry about.”

“People like to say the West is a guilt-based culture, while that of Japan is based on shame, with the chief distinction being that the former is an internalized emotion while the latter depends on the presence of a group.

This series was recommended to me by Author Stephen England on Twitter. I like to read a series in order so started with book 1. The writing is so good that I am still having a tough time believing that this is the author's debut book. The story easily flows from chapter to chapter and the pace is just right. The author spends time to build out the character of John Rain, his backstory and the locales in Tokyo where the story takes place - which I personally loved. The plot is totally believable and finishes very well. I eagerly look forward to reading more books in the series. It doesn't hurt that most of the series is offered as a part of my Kindle Unlimited subscription - but I would have gladly bought them even if this wasn't the case.

Maybe i was just not in the mood for it....
I get what all the other reviewers are saying, the character build up with all the minute details. JR's favorite haunts and the endless number of Japanese streets and businesses do build up the atmosphere and gives you a good feel of Tokyo and the culture. However I found this a bit slow and after getting to a third of the book with little happening I had to put it down. All that Japanese was getting annoying. I do speak Japanese and I understand to be realistic a bilingual guy would switch between the languages but it felt overdone for me.

Tried to get into this story, but the author kept pulling me back out. The story takes place in Japan and in addition to locations, neighborhoods and police/political ranks in Japanese, the author insists on presenting a lot of dialog in Japanese, then providing the translation. If you're trying to learn Japanese and want some practice, I'd recommend this... otherwise there are much better authors out there who showcase literary skills, not linguistics.

Having previously read a mid-series book, it was a relief to go back to the start. My first experience of John Rain in Extremis showed me a rather one dimensional man - a hired killer, cold and efficient but not much else. However, this book brings the character alive, drawing out his background and the key events that shaped the man. The first half of the book is my favourite part as Rain shows himself to be a rather complex dude with a lot to offer, over and above his propensity to induce ‘the big sleep’ - to order and in a way likely to be deemed death by natural causes.

The descriptions of Rain’s home turf in Tokyo and his various haunts and pleasures (jazz, whiskey and women) are excellent. Conversations are well drawn and characters development is first class. I really wouldn't have minded if the book had focused wholly on these elements, particularly his burgeoning relationship with young jazz pianist, Midori. I'm sure an excellent book – albeit a different type of book – could have been developed from these early threads. Would Rain be worth reading about without the action man antics? I think so.

Once the action starts this book feels much more like my first experience of the series, although these sequences don't feel quite so clinical, so mechanical and are probably all the better for that. The story also gets much more complex, as additional characters and various twists and turns are introduced. It’s not that the second half of the book is unsatisfying, it’s just that - for me - it doesn't quite match up to what preceded it.

I know that these thoughts won't match everyone's experience of this book. Simply put, I think it's that although I do like action packed thrillers I prefer the human elements of these stories. And the human elements here are very good indeed. Overall, I really enjoyed meeting John Rain again and I’ll definitely be signing up for the next episode.

7/10

An interesting opening novel to a series I'll be happy to continue with due to a number of interesting factors. This is the first time I've read a novel about an assassin outside of the western world which opens up a whole new playing field and there was enough background information for the lead to make him an interesting but not unique character worth reading about.

I loved the Japanese setting for this, I don't know that world having never been there but I felt the book was described well enough for me to easily be drawn in and taken along for the ride with all the locations and traditions described well enough for me to easily digest them. I also liked the nuances of the lead, John Rain (also known by another Japanese name which I now forget), with him enjoying jazz music and whiskey bars and having a troubled background in Japan due to his mixed race of Japanese and American. These alone would have been entertaining to read about, without the action thrown in around it, and would have kept my attention long enough which I may have enjoyed even more.

The action is ok, some scenes are a little like paint by numbers and I felt like it was an episode of "Burn Notice" at times where they explain ad nauseam on the ways to outfox your opponent. These scenes floated by me but I really enjoyed the parts where he described himself as a soldier in Vietnam, some of which stood out as the best in the book.

I listened to this book and the author was the narrator doing a good job without ever being totally compelling. It felt that he spoke the Japanese parts more as a showing off device of "look at me and my bilingual skills" rather than adding anything but that is a small gripe. I would equally pick the next book up in either text or audiobook.

Overall a good start to the series with plenty of promise and I'll look forward to getting the next book to see if things can develop further. Worth a read.

If you like this try: "Transfer of Power" by Vince Flynn

So... I was trying to think of how to eloquently state everything I was feeling after reading this, then I read my GR friend DG's review, and that pretty much sums it up. Beautiful, sad, exciting, poignant.

I liked how instead of all the usual guns and knives and bloody violence, John was straight forward and simple and if you needed killing he snapped your neck and was done with it. It seemed more realistic that all the flash. All the complicated particulars of his traveling around the city and backtracking and covering his tracks and all the other stealthy-stuff could have felt over the top and boring, but I actually didn't mind it. It was interesting and I liked John's inner voice. Harry was a great addition and I'd like to see more of him.

While the ending with(out) Midori made me sad, it also felt very real and true to the way the story was going. I really hope she turns up again in future books though! I was so so SO glad that Holtzer got what was coming to him. I loved the somewhat anti-climactic way John finally killed him. You know how in movies the hero talks and talks and builds up and you know something will end up going wrong? But John is a professional and he gets the job done because it needs to be done.

The one thing that annoyed me was that after all the crazy over the top SDR and precautions that John took, when he finally decides to hand over the disc to Bulfinch... he just walks away?! You knew they've been following him, why would you think someone wasn't going to try to kill him. I assumed he was gonna follow all the way to at least his apartment!

The details the author wanted to explain got in the way of the story. I didn't hate the book, just didn't enjoy it.