Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I do not touch the thriller genre. The craziness wrought by Dan Brown really destroyed it for me. I do not know how I came to be reading I Am Pilgrim; probably it was one of the Kindle Daily Deals. From the outset the writing captivated me. I once read that we are not captivated by a book's subject matter; we are captivated by the way it is written. Terry Hayes is a masterful writer. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph exquisitely crafted. He could have been writing about ANYTHING and I would have been captivated. The story is complex and nuanced, shifting from first person to third, present to flashback; the plot is dangerously complex, but Hayes manages to pull all of the threads together into a beautifully woven, textured fabric (when was the last time you heard anyone describe a thriller like THAT). Some have criticized Hayes for this, no doubt longing for the point A-to-B plot, annoying sentence structure and over-the-top special effects that populate Dan Brown's novels and made reading them so tedious. Hayes's characters are well-defined and dimensional; even the antagonist, the Saracen, was so finely crafted that I found myself sympathizing, empathizing and hoping that he would realize his revenge. In other words, Hayes creates characters the reader can care about even if they are doing evil, hateful things. Far from being distracting (some readers and reviewers here clearly have short attention spans and a limited capacity for abstract thinking) the flashbacks and digressions greatly enriched the journey -- some of them would provide ample material for novels of their own!! I am looking forward to Hayes's next novel (do I really have to wait until 2018???) and, in the meantime, I heartily recommend this read. Even if you do not like the subject matter, even if you do not like the genre, you will be captivated by craftsmanship of a master wordsmith.