Three Assassins

A Novel

By: Kotaro Isaka

Narrated by: Adam Sims

Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

From the internationally bestselling author of Bullet Train comes the high-octane new thriller, set in Tokyo’s criminal underworld, that pits an ordinary man against a group of talented and very unusual assassins.

Suzuki is an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. To get answers and his revenge, Suzuki abandons his law-abiding lifestyle and takes a low-level job with a front company operated by the crime gang Maiden, who are responsible for his wife’s death. Before long, Suzuki finds himself caught up in a network of quirky and highly effective assassins.

The Cicada is a knife expert. The Pusher nudges people into oncoming traffic. The Whale whispers bleak aphorisms to his victims until they take their own lives.

Intense and electrifying, Three Assassins delivers a wild ride through the criminal underworld of Tokyo, populated by contract killers who are almost superhumanly good at their jobs.

©2022 Kotaro Isaka / CTB Inc. English translation rights arranged through CTB Inc. English translation by Sam Malissa © CTB Inc. 2022. Published in 2022 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS, New York. All rights reserved (P)2022 by Penguin Audio

A bit underwhelming

I recently watched bullet train, so I was excited to explore more of the world from that movie, and decided to look into three assassins. While it is foolish to expect any sort of action at all similar to the movie, I felt myself somewhat underwhelmed by the end of three assassins. I saw another review that mentioned the three main characters of the book are pretty unlikable and I’m sad to admit I felt similar by the end. I will say that the best parts of the book involve the whale. On a happier note, I will say that I was quite satisfied with the readers use of slightly different voices to differentiate characters. His vocal range was quite good.

Needed a better narrator.

Overall this book was pretty good. I read bullet train and it was so good that I had to read this one not realizing at the time that bullet train was technically the sequel to this one.

This story was not quite as good, in my opinion, as bullet train, but was still overall pretty enjoyable.

The big problem with this story was the narrator. aside from one or two characters almost everyone sounded like a nasal voiced, "trying way too hard to be hip and edgy", snotty punk. and it began to get very annoying. I suppose it is not the narrator's fault, it's just the voice he has. sadly the narrator for bullet train would have been a good choice here.

The voice issue aside though, like I said, the book was pretty good and I am looking forward to the third book in this series 'Grasshopper'.

A must listen if you liked bullet train!

Like bullet train, this one has many assassins with fun names and signature techniques. It was fast paced and kept me guessing. Would recommend!

Good Book

I enjoyed this book. I got it because I like Bullet Train. I wondered if this would be a huge step down, or feed to much off his previous story, but I was pleasantly surprised. The narrator was very good as well. I look forward to his next book.

Great Characters!

I read this after reading Bullet Train because I enjoyed it so much! This is technically a prequel but I recommend reading this after bullet train. This book had many of the things I enjoyed about BT, the interwoven story, interesting protagonists, it’s a good read.

Amazing

I have never loved reading or listening books as it’s always hard to find one I really like but after trying this because of bullet train I absolutely loved it.