Great female protagonist

I discovered Redemption through Will Jordan's YouTube channel, The Critical Drinker. I enjoyed his narrative character's openly hostile amusing and articulate narration towards things that are executed poorly... His wrath especially focused on terrible female and "diversity casting" characters. Then I realized he was an author and I decided to see if he could put his money where his mouth was. He can tear female characters down well enough. But can he write a good one of his own? He can. In fact, the book's great female co-protagonist and dark cynicism/realism really set it apart. And I've read a lot of spy thrillers. While on the surface his main female character seems a Mary Sue, she is also deeply flawed, and those traits rear themselves up over and over again. As her backstory is unveiled, she has greater and greater depth. Her relationship with the male protagonist is also enjoyable in how it oscillates both dramatically and believably. She's definitely the draw and the focus of the book. Supporting characters are fantastic, fleshed out and developed wonderfully. It's actually Drake himself who has the least agency and is the least interesting in the mosaic of incredibly fascinating supporting characters and relationships. The narrator does an excellent job on Ryan's voice and the narration, but his versions of everyone else range from fine to good enough. I ended up speeding him up 10% just to match the pace of the plot. If you love spy thrillers, get this book. If you love great female action characters, get this book. If you love great structure and foreshadowing, get this book. Highly enjoyable.

20 people found this helpful

An attempt was made

Took quite a while to get me to care and the first time I did it was for an A-hole, take from that what you will

Also when the end comes and all is revealef this insane convoluted plot doesn't quite add up

It's not bad but I don't know who I would recommend this book to or why

3 people found this helpful

Move over Jack Ryan

I loved this book. Very rarely have I loved a military/espionage thriller like this one. Jordan definitely practices what he preaches: his characters are all fully fleshed out people you care about, and even when they're at the point of breaking or giving up you never have that eye roll "oh come on" moment. He's a master at making people feel real.

what I also loved is he never made me feel stupid or ignorant. A lot of this genre can get too into itself with technical jargon and expects the user to know what the latest in military hardware is, but Jordan doesn't. He tells you exactly what you're looking at without going hard into it, and it feels like he gives a damn about the layman reading his books instead of just those hard core invested in espionage thriller.

I'm a huge fan of his persona on YouTube, the Critical Drinker, and I can 100% say he practices what he preaches regarding storytelling. I cannot rate this book highly enough

2 people found this helpful

fast paced and multifaceted character development

fast paced and multifaceted character development is Absolutely what is found in this book.

The story never went slow, it never got stale. The action and plot continued to move forward and the characters all were dynamic, changing, real people.

With the exception of a few information qualms, The book was very entertaining and praught you in to really care about the characters.

It may have been a minor mistake, but Marines do not come from West Point.

Aside from that tiny bit of factual issue, the rest of the story was extremely good.

Whereas some stories keep 2 dimensional cutouts as their characters, never achieving development with even the main character, this book achieves significant character development with almost all of the significant characters. This is quite a rare achievement!

Read this book! It'll be fine! The drinker recommends!

2 people found this helpful

great story, narrator not so much

ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would. the characters were pretty well developed, the story moved at a good pace, good balance of action and character development, and plotline with a lot of twists. My negative comments are with the narrator-his accents are odd and his German accent sounded like every bad impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger combined. Good beginning to a series

1 person found this helpful

Jack and Coke

I read this book because I came across Will's work on YouTube, and after enjoying what he had to say while guest starring on a podcast I love.  I found his Critical Drinker channel to be excellent entertainment, full of strong insight into the fundamentals of storytelling, and offering undeniable and fair criticism to modern and classic films.  I knew he claimed to be a writer according to allusions in his videos, but I didn't take it seriously until he posted a picture of a new novel release.

Well, I thought, let's see if the armchair quarterback can take a hit.

I jumped into Redemption guard-up, ready to be disillusioned if I found the critic to be lacking as an artist.  I will openly admit that, for the first few chapters, I began to lose hope.

I'll be straightforward on the front end, and let you know I enjoyed this book enormously, and I think Will has serious talent and potential.  With polish, I think he'll stand on a very high shelf next to Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, and Tom Clancy.

That said, to better facilitate a glimpse at the development of my feelings for the book, we are going to start with the hard knocks.

Light spoilers follow.

Right out of the gate, I got the feeling that I'd heard this story before.  Depressed British Spec Ops lad (see: Call of Duty) is shown at Death's gloomy door in a very dramatic prologue (see: Uncharted 2) and then we bounce back two weeks to watch as he assembles a team of elite soldiers to launch a C.I.A. operation to break a top secret badass hottie out of a Russian gulag (see: Call of Duty again, minus the hottie detail).

The rest of the book unfolds like a traditional spy thriller.  I won't go spoiling anything further, even though what I've described above is no more than set-up.  It ran the knife edge between comfortable and cliche, and, once or twice, strayed to the tedious side of the division, and the rest of the book follows the same pattern.  I wasn't shocked off my seat at any point, even by the major plot twists.

I think Will's writing style is part of the reason the book feels this way.  His tone is direct and efficient, and sometimes it can feel simple and flat.  There were a couple times I wanted to hear a description wax metaphorical, or hoped to see a little more poetry in word choice, and Will chugged right along without turning.

But as the book continued, I found I began to really care about the characters and the stakes.  It's not a story that subverted my expectations, but it didn't need to.

Even with my deliberate attempt at cynicism, this book satisfied me, and I will be reading more.  It's the sort of story you've heard before, and you want to hear it again because it's damn good.  The characters are tropey, but they're also well-realized and easy to connect with because they are familiar and human.  The plot isn't revolutionary, but it manages to hit all the high notes of a military/espionage thriller, and can very seriously be looked at as the quintessential tale of its genre.  The tropes that Will utilizes are tropes for a reason, and Redemption is an immersion in all of the reasons I love the genre.

The action is written with good attention to detail, dedication to passable realism, and confidently excites. The quiet moments are genuinely poignant, and bring weight to the dangerous encounters.

Comfortable and adventurous, firm and supple, Redemption is a great book, and I am glad to say my pessimism was ill-founded.  It reminds me of a Jack and Coke, uniting extremes into a familiar and welcoming flavor that anyone can enjoy.  It accomplishes its objective, it doesn't waste your time, and you'll be back for more.

An instant classic.

1 person found this helpful

WOW

This book was absolutely fantastic. If you like action and a glimpse into the life of a CIA operatives this is for you. Stop reading this review and listen to this book.

1 person found this helpful

Couldn’t finish

I hate leaving reviews like this, but this book is painful. Nothing about the story is followable. From the start, it’s awful. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything else to say. I tried to stay with it, but only lasted 4 hours. Maybe someone else will have better luck.

1 person found this helpful

Boilerplate Clancy

Mostly forgettable characters not worth continuing and ending didn't really grip me. I found it a bland spy thriller CIA plot and kind of glazed over at the big bad reveal at the end. I don't see why I would want to continue in this universe.

Well done first outing..

Great book, well done first book. A little over detailed in places but I'm sure with time this author will shine even more.