Melvin Karew

It was an enigma for me but one that I liked!!

Miriam Websters's definition for enigma: someone or something that is difficult to understand or explain

Which may make the following statement a little easier to understand; I really enjoyed this novel even though I found myself lost much of the time! The full definition for enigma pertained to this entire book for me. I don't know, maybe reading the 1st book in this series may have been helpful. Enigma's definition pertaining to "someone difficult to understand" may stem from author Melvin Karew's use of 177 characters! Although there was a character index it grew tiresome to keep flipping to & from it. While a good number of the characters are just referred to there are plenty of active ones. Those active are primarily split into groups and most of these groups are the good guys with one end mission objective (take out the bad guy) but each group has sub-missions or quests to fulfill before the overall mission can be. That's where the enigma's definition of "difficult to understand" came in, these sub-missions in some cases either started without a clear understanding (maybe reading book 1 would've made it clear) or the jumping back and forth between the groups during their quests facing obstacles that took them off course made it hard to keep track of who was to initially fulfill what. Lastly dealing with the definition of an enigma in the form of something hard to explain; obvious to me at least, primarily this review, and how to now explain how I was finally able to just enjoy the book. There were some very interesting characters, some great dynamics between characters and loads of nonstop action and/or intriguing events. I stopped looking at the character index, often it just muddled things up more by stating their relationship to another little mentioned character or region. I also gave up trying to remember a character or groups initial mission or puzzle piece that was to lead to putting the full puzzle together. I just enjoyed the engaging travails each group faced along the way and the introduction of exciting new aspects of how they overcame their travails.

I've never used the word, enigma, so many times but that's what kept popping in my head and this has been the most unusual review for me but I had to go with what was flowing through my mind. The rating to give was just as unusual for me to decide upon. After the first 17 pages (ebook) feeling lost with the onslaught of characters I stopped to count how many had already been introduced, by my count 42, and had a dreadful feeling for the rest of the book. But I honestly ended up enjoying the book very much but how do I gauge the measures I took to do so??… (mais)