4 out of 4 stars
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The Excoms by Brett Battles is the first book in a spinoff series from his award-winning Jonathan Quinn thrillers. The thriller begins with a one-off secret meeting of eight unnamed participants in an ancient fortress in Croatia. The plot soon thickens as we learn that the organization has an undercover agent transmitting the highly confidential information of the committee’s plans to Mr. Avanti. The latter is masterminding an immediate disruption for any plans this committee gets off the ground.
The plot unravels with Ananke a professional assassin duped into an assassination of a political candidate in Manila. The occupations of the three other participants of the secret meeting are revealed consecutively along with short and poignant biographical details. Their biographies have a similar thread, which explains their current job designations. Persons known to them have marked four of the five agents for death.
Time literally stands still for each of them as they faced excommunications from their group. Soon enough, the race against time resumes and the ticking clock gives the team seventy-two hours to accomplish an impossible feat which will give each a ticket out of his or her current dilemma. The author tells the narrative from multiple shifting viewpoints including those of the five protagonists Ananke, Rosario, Dylan, Liesel, and Ricky. The narrative is an action-packed one and all the protagonists are credibly developed. The plot is tense from start to finish, and all the protagonists have aliases.
I liked the intricacies of the plot with the multiple narratives happening concurrently. The rapid shifts in location from Croatia, Manila, Shanghai, and Atlanta, for example, created an additional excitement in the subplots. Additionally, I liked that the team of fearless hunters opted to employ themselves in a noble enterprise. One of the most frightening persons, in this thriller, is the unsuspecting figure of the older woman. Whenever the latter appears someone is sure to collapse. My favorite character in the novel is Ricky as he is a high-spirited, humorous, and unpredictable person.
I rate The Excoms by Brett Battles as a 4 out of 4 stars. The author produces an edge-of-your-seat thriller without horrifying the reader with a lot of blood and gore or the use of obscene language. There is nothing I disliked about this novel. The book reads like an exceptionally well-edited text. The editor did a commendable job in ensuring there are no grammatical or spelling errors. Readers who enjoy reading suspense, adventure or thrillers will enjoy this compelling narrative.
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The Excoms
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