This book reminded me of a few others. The main plot reminded me of Stephen King’s Firestarter: Shadowy agency chases girl with powers. There were a couple of scenes very reminiscent of X-men 3’s Phoenix. The writing is strong and unobtrusive – the actual words pass very quickly – and there are some nice visuals. No noticeable spelling errors and the grammar is OK.

There were a few reasons I did not get on with this. There are a few continuity issues: for example on p277 she reacts with shock to learning another character had died. The problem is she’d already learned it many chapters earlier. Another problem is that the book kept introducing new Point of View characters for chapters, without explaining how their plot threads interacted. Also, multiple Point of View characters is fine, but the author doesn’t always identify the character whose Point of View they are writing from. After three pages of a chapter where the character was just called ‘she’, someone spoke to her and I discovered it wasn’t the character I thought it was.

Finally, it hit a couple of my pet peeves, the helpless bystander. Despite being set in the US, it seems no civilians ever carry guns, learn self-defense, or put up a fight unless they are named lead characters. Also it quickly gets to the point where everyone seems to be either a helpless bystander or a member of the cabal. The “Surprise, I’m a Bad Guy” gets very old, and I got to the point of assuming it, which made the final twist a bit of a yawn.

I found it difficult to empathise or like the main character. She is introduced as a terrorist and a killer and then confirmed to be both, so I’m sorry, I don’t care how pretty she is, I’m rooting for the other side. It is mentioned repeatedly that she’s culpable in the death of hundreds, and her only redeeming feature is apparently that she is pretty and can draw. While the people chasing her are extremely nasty, she’s quite capable of being spectacularly ruthless herself, and she keeps getting innocent people involved and as a result killed by the cabal after her. If she’s done something this bad, simply making the guys after her worse isn’t a good way to get readers rooting for her – it just left me wanting everyone involved locked up (or shot).

There are other factions involved, but as they don’t stumble on the main plot until the last chapter and never meet the main characters, they seem rather irrelevant.

I’d have forgiven all this for a strong ending, but this is not a complete story. Despite being the first book in the series, it closes none of the plot threads it opens. It seems less a complete book than the first set of chapters of a split novel. You never find out why they are after her, who they are, what they want, why they have all this power, why she’s a terrorist etc. There are no explanations of odd events through the book. Despite reading all of it I’m tempted to give this as “Did Not Finish” simply because the ending of the story or even the ending of an installment is missing.

Action fans who want a read where they can turn their brain off may enjoy this. Its a brain-dead actioner, although I’d recommend getting the triology rather than this stand alone. The lack of an ending really frustrates.