Book Review: Rain Fall

I just finished reading Rain Fall by Barry Eisler. Liked it. Had a real good plot, great characters, and it took place in the Far East, a locale I've always wanted to visit. Seemed like a bit of Clancy's Without Remorse, mixed with Shogun. Been a while since I've been pleasantly surprised by a book, this one succeeded.

This is Eisler's first book, of eight that he has published. Throughout the first half I kept thinking, as I do in many first timer's books, "heck, mine's as good as this." Couldn't say it about the second half. Eisler's third and fourth quarters were great and kept me turning the pages,...or kept me clicking the advanced button on the Kindle.

A couple of lines struck me,
The hero, John Rain (note the title), is remembering his time in the war and his friends that he lost,
"Memories, crowding me like a battalion of suddenly reanimated corpses."
Makes me think of zombies, so naturally I bookmarked it.

Rain is checking out the love interest, Midori:
"I was struck by her eyes. Unreadable, even looking right at me, but not distant, and not cold. Instead the seemed to radiate a controlled heat, something that touched you but that you couldn't touch back."

This was the opening of a chapter that I thought was well done:
"At first light the whole of Shibuya feels like a giant sleeping off a hangover. You can still sense the merriment, the heedless laughter of the night before, you can hear it echoed in the strange silences and deserted spaces of the area's twisting backstreets. The drunken voices of karaoke revelers, the unctuous pitches of the club touts, the secret whispers of lovers walking arm in arm, all are departed, but somehow, for just a few evanescent hours in the quiet of early morning, their shadows linger, like ghosts who refuse to believe that the night has ended, that there are no more parties to attend."

Another similar to the one above, this time middle of the chapter:
"There was nowhere, nowhere on the whole planet, that I would rather have been right then. The city around us was a living thing: the million lighters where its eyes; the laughter of lovers its voice; the expressways and factories its muscles and sinews. And I was there at its pulsing heart."

All told, a very good book and I look forward to reading number 2 from Eisler.