Review: I Am the Weapon (The Unknown Assassin #1) by Allen Zadoff

Summary

Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school, in a new town, under a new name, makes few friends and doesn't stay long. Just long enough for someone in his new friend's family to die -- of "natural causes." Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, and moves on to the next target.

When his own parents died of not-so-natural causes at the age of eleven, Boy Nobody found himself under the control of The Program, a shadowy government organization that uses brainwashed kids as counter-espionage operatives. But somewhere, deep inside Boy Nobody, is somebody: the boy he once was, the boy who wants normal things (like a real home, his parents back), a boy who wants out. And he just might want those things badly enough to sabotage The Program's next mission.

Rating

Review

This is my first novel from Zadoff, so I came into this completely unaware and without expectations. There is one confusing thing ... sometimes the cover of this novel say Boy Nobody instead of I Am the Weapon and I don't know if it's because the novel has a different name in other countries (which has happened) or if they changed the name ... who knows, I didn't really investigate to see what was going on. But if you see the other title, it's this novel.

Anyway, gosh. I'm pretty torn on this one. I mean, it was good. It kept me interested but I think the reason it had me hooked was because I was trying to see if the writing style would change. It was just VERY detached. Don't get me wrong, I can see how that may have been intentional. This is a novel about a boy who has no past and essentially no future because of his profession. Of course he's detached. But it still made for a very creepy pov. It's hard reading about someone who essentially commits these horrible acts and does it without feeling or a second thought. Basically, this could have been totally intended. I don't think that I'll read the next in the series because of how this was written.

It was well written but the style in which it was delivered was just strange and almost foreign to me. Yeah, there were tons of twists and turns. Yeah, there were quite a few surprises and I'm still shocked that I was 73% into the novel before I found out the main characters name. Like I said, it was weird. I did like the ingenious ways that the Boy Nobody would communicate with his handlers. Some of these ideas were just mind blowing and it made me wonder how far from the truth some of these things actually are.

I know I said I probably wouldn't pick up the next novel in the series but there were a lot of questions left unanswered at the end of this first installment and I would kinda like to know what happens next. This is one that will hook you. You are drawn in by this intricate story of this lost teenager. It really makes you wonder. A good book for food-for-thought.

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