Barry Eisler

From the author of Rain Fall comes a new thriller in the John Rain series. Original.

Graveyard of Memories

Stephanie 

This was my life. My reality. My sad, doomed destiny.

Being kind and friendly shouldn’t be that hard, and yet for some it seems to be too much to ask. 

I thought of an expression my father had once told me: Be good to people on your way up. You may meet them again on your way down.

I was too young to know that some memories don’t fade, or age, or die. That the weight of some of what we do accumulates, expands, coheres, solidifies. 

That’s something driving me NUTS in movies because it makes no sense. Of course we’d rather wait for our super strong and evil opponent to catch up, right? 😶

You don’t just do everything you possibly can to prevent a fight from being fair—preventing the fight from being fair is the entire point. Do you want the enemy to have as good a chance of killing you as you have of killing him? Or do you want to make sure he gets no chance at all? 

As far as I’m concerned, the people who think a fair fight is desirable can go ahead and die in one.

I would hypothesize that the most insane people are probably also the ones who are best at hiding it and adapt. 

He grunted. “Crazy people don’t always seem crazy.”

People talk about morality. Sometimes I think there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.

I might have been able to escape, but stun-and-run wasn’t yet part of my close-combat toolkit. My default was continuous offense.

It’s funny to consider how important things like that felt to me then. Proving people wrong. Fighting stupidity. Wanting formal recognition. 

It took me a long time to learn that proving people wrong is purposeless, fighting stupidity is futile, and formal recognition prevents people from underestimating you—and thereby from ceding to you surprise and other tactical advantages.

If you knew at the outset what you understood at the end, would you make the same choices, take the same risks, accept the same sacrifices?

Where do you start in a universe with a bunch of interconnected yet stand-alone-readable books? Decisions like this stress me out to the max because it feels like a „wrong answer only“-situation.

Since I often have a hard time with prequels and going back in time, I started as early as possible in the story - which is the background story of John Rain, one of the later MCs. Downside of that approach; in my opinion stories like these grip and impact you more, if you already know the characters a bit as it rewards you with missing pieces to their personality.

Did I enjoy it regardless? Yes. Because Berry Eisler is a fantastic storyteller. This man did his research and I was blown away by the depth of details and background knowledge that was woven into the story. The fact, that he even shared some of his sources and approaches at the end of the book fascinated me even more.

Rain is an interesting character and I enjoyed seeing him struggle, grow, learn from mistakes and reflect on the moral implications and limits of being a assassin. What didn’t quite add up for me was his age. Him being only 20 years old wasn’t really credible for me. But I‘m even more excited to meet an older Rain again in the next books.

Where do you start in a universe with a bunch of interconnected yet stand-alone-readable books? Decisions like this stress me out to the max because it feels like a „wrong answer only“-situation.

Since I often have a hard time with prequels and going back in time, I started as early as possible in the story - which is the background story of John Rain, one of the later MCs. Downside of that approach; in my opinion stories like these grip and impact you more, if you already know the characters a bit as it rewards you with missing pieces to their personality.

Did I enjoy it regardless? Yes. Because Berry Eisler is a fantastic storyteller. This man did his research and I was blown away by the depth of details and background knowledge that was woven into the story. The fact, that he even shared some of his sources and approaches at the end of the book fascinated me even more.

Rain is an interesting character and I enjoyed seeing him struggle, grow, learn from mistakes and reflect on the moral implications and limits of being a assassin. What didn’t quite add up for me was his age. Him being only 20 years old wasn’t really credible for me. But I‘m even more excited to meet an older Rain again in the next books.

Graveyard of Memories

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