The Nowhere Man

Jonathan Arnold reviewed The Nowhere Man by Gregg Andrew Hurwitz

Review of 'The Nowhere Man' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Really exciting thriller - I mean I read it in 3 days! The end twist I wasn't all that keen on but it worked.

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This is book 2 of The Orphan X series and moves the story along pretty well. I could actually hardly put it down, as Evan Smoak is captured by some mysterious guy, thrown into a locked room and basically challenged to break out. And Evan has a tight schedule, because he needs to rescue a captured woman who was shipped by cargo container to someone to be a sex slave. He knows exactly when she will arrive in Florida and needs to bust out before that happens.

He spends most of the book getting closer and closer to escape. It is really interesting, because the guy who grabbed him doesn't know what he has and, while he has some pretty good precautions, he has never …

Really exciting thriller - I mean I read it in 3 days! The end twist I wasn't all that keen on but it worked.

More:

This is book 2 of The Orphan X series and moves the story along pretty well. I could actually hardly put it down, as Evan Smoak is captured by some mysterious guy, thrown into a locked room and basically challenged to break out. And Evan has a tight schedule, because he needs to rescue a captured woman who was shipped by cargo container to someone to be a sex slave. He knows exactly when she will arrive in Florida and needs to bust out before that happens.

He spends most of the book getting closer and closer to escape. It is really interesting, because the guy who grabbed him doesn't know what he has and, while he has some pretty good precautions, he has never captured someone like Evan, so he keeps getting surprised by just how good Evan is. Evan keeps thinking back to who he was and how he got here, as the bizarre world of his captor gradually gets exposed.

The final escape is a little hard to take, to be honest. But before and after that, I really enjoyed the cat and mouse game he plays with the captor. He really is given very little to work with, yet he challenges it every time. Pretty cool.

Like I said, I could hardly put it down, right up to the last page, even though there were a few eye rolls. How he manages to keep challenging his captor is fun to read, as is the additional time pressure of needing to escape to rescue the girl. Very nice twist on the story and I have already taken out book 3, [b:Hellbent|40996328|Hellbent (Orphan X #3)|Gregg Hurwitz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1532960281s/40996328.jpg|56227588]!

eyolf reviewed The Nowhere Man by Gregg Andrew Hurwitz

Review of 'The Nowhere Man' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Disappointed? Underwhelmed? Both. I was considering to strip it of yet another star, but figured it's decent enough to merit an above-average verdict, but there it stops.
There is a tedious predictability in having the hero of a series put under extremely hostile conditions impossible to get out of, and then getting out, in a deus ex machina kind of way at that. If you've created a character who can do anything, why destroy the illusion (because, come on - that's what it's all about) by having a Black Hawk coming out of the sky and saving him at the last moment?
The writing seems instrumental in a strange way: with some attention towards displaying the author's knowledge of intricate details of weaponry and vodka distillation techniques, and yet he manages to give one of the male villains a feminine name form (Setyeyiva), probably because it looks and sounds exotic.
…

Disappointed? Underwhelmed? Both. I was considering to strip it of yet another star, but figured it's decent enough to merit an above-average verdict, but there it stops.
There is a tedious predictability in having the hero of a series put under extremely hostile conditions impossible to get out of, and then getting out, in a deus ex machina kind of way at that. If you've created a character who can do anything, why destroy the illusion (because, come on - that's what it's all about) by having a Black Hawk coming out of the sky and saving him at the last moment?
The writing seems instrumental in a strange way: with some attention towards displaying the author's knowledge of intricate details of weaponry and vodka distillation techniques, and yet he manages to give one of the male villains a feminine name form (Setyeyiva), probably because it looks and sounds exotic.
Meh.