I Am The Mission by Allen Zadoff

I Am The Mission is the exciting second book in Allen Zadoff's teenage assassin series. Zach (formerly known as Boy in the first novel) is counselor in training (CIT) at a summer sports camp for boys in Vermont. While waiting for his next assignment in a hotel room his thoughts of what happened with Samara, the daughter of New York's mayor, in the last assignment overwhelm him. He breaks off communications with The Program and goes off the grid, taking a bus to Vermont and getting the CIT position.

However he is quickly tracked down by The Program and is captured by soldiers hired by Father.  Father tells Zach that The Program is concerned about his loyalty. He takes Zach on a helicopter ride where he is tested once again regarding his loyalties. Satisfied that he is faithful to the mission and The Program, they fly on to New Hampshire while Father tells Zach the background for his next mission which is to be a test of his loyalty.

Another operative in the Program has gone missing while on a mission. Father is certain that the operative is dead and the mission is lost. Zach is needed to go in and finish the job. Eugene Moore runs a military camp for teens in rural New Hampshire. The camp, called Camp Liberty is for the children of right-wingers. It is of concern to The Program, because their online activity indicates Moore's group is probing infrastructure in the Northeastern United States, including power plants and Department of Transportation computers. The Program is expecting something  big is coming and they want to stop Moore whose camp is located in a valley in the mountains north of Manchester, New Hampshire.

But first Zach is taken to a hospital for a check-up where he has blood tests, a PET/CT scan. Zach is approved for the mission but he notices that the scar from a previous wound was hurting him during the scan. He will discover the reason for this later on in the novel.

Both Mother and Father continue to brief him on his new mission. Zach is told that Moore has two children, Lee and Miranda. This time there will be no mark. Instead Zach, posing as Daniel, will attend a recruiting event run by Camp Liberty. Mother and Father believe that Zach's recent doubts will make him an easy pick for Moore at the recruitment. He is to get close to Moore at the recruitment and assassinate him. Under no circumstances is he to go into Camp Liberty which is under a total communications blackout due to high-tech electronic signal blocking. Entry to and from the camp is also strictly controlled.

Daniel is taken first to a safe house in suburban Manchester where he is prepped for the mission by Father who then drives him to the recruitment event. Lee Moore tells Daniel that he is one of a dozen other kids selected to meet Moore. Daniel is with Lee working his way up to Lee's father when suddenly his way is blocked by security. Lee tells him his father has changed his mind about seeing Daniel. At this time a woman tries to attack Eugene Moore but Daniel reacts quickly and saves Moore. This action allows Daniel to meet Eugene Moore but he is too protected for Daniel to act. He loses the mission as designed by The Program. However, when Lee offers him a tour of Camp Liberty, Daniel decides to disobey Father's instructions and to travel to the camp.

On the way to the camp, Daniel is separated from Lee, Miranda and the rest of the group and is taken the rest of the way by Francisco, a security advisor. Francisco tells Daniel that he doesn't believe who he says he is and he tries unsuccessfully to get Daniel to come clean about his identity. At Camp Liberty, Daniel learns that the permanent people play an online game designed by Lee, that tests their military skills.

Although he's locked into his room, Daniel easily escapes and decides to hike up the mountain to try to connect with Father or Mother, since his previous calls have gone unanswered. He discovers the camp has an invisible laser perimeter to monitor who comes and goes. Daniel easily gets past this and heads up into the forest but he runs into Miranda and Lee who have been following him. She guesses correctly that he is trying to get past the electronic jamming to make a phone call although she doesn't really know who Daniel is trying to call. She helps him travel to a spot to make the call but Daniel is unable to reach either Father or Mother. Daniel thinks it might be because of the technical interference, but he also considers the possibility that he has been cut off by The Program.

The evening of the next day sees Daniel along with Miranda and Lee sent out on a "Mission" or Hunt. This turns out to be a practice run involving poisoning the water supply for Manchester which they have to treat as a real op until they are told otherwise. Lee is angry that it is part of the game used to train Camp Liberty personnel while Miranda believes doing something like this is justified. Daniel comes to realize that Moore is serious about training young people to commit acts of terrorism against their own people.

Daniel leaves Camp Liberty and returns to the safe house, only to find that it is no longer a safe house. Instead he finds a couple living there and they are attacked by a freelance team that tries to kill Daniel. Unable to reach Father and needing more information, Daniel calls his friend Howard, a hacker who helped Zach on a previous mission sort fiction from truth and to find out about the SDHC card he found on the body of one of the freelance ops. While Zach returns to Camp Liberty, Howard will continue to research the SDHC card.

Zach returns to the mission but during a drill when he manages to make it to Moore's war room, Francisco confronts him and asks him to go out on hike to fix a relay station. It is during this hike that Francisco reveals his identity to Zach and tells him more about The Program. Zach has to make a choice between believing what he's been told by The Program and completing his mission or believing what Francisco has told him.

Discussion

I Am The Mission bumps up the intensity, the action and the excitement a few notches compared to the first novel, I Am The Weapon - previously titled, Boy Nobody. Zach, as Daniel Martin is still a strong, efficient assassin, as he calculates angles, evaluates each situation and strategizes over his opponents. His unemotional narrative is what makes this book so engaging.

I Am The Mission has a unique storyline, is well paced with a solid cast of characters. Zach is a fascinating character because he's complex, he's conflicted and the reader gets to experience both of these attributes through Zach's narration. He was brought into The Program when he was twelve after being told both his parents were dead. He's athletically gifted and highly intelligent. He's been expertly trained to not question his orders - as are many soldiers, to not show remorse and to be fully committed to his missions.  Or is he?  

Zach is beginning to question what he's been told, partly because he is maturing into adulthood and partly because of what he has learned during the last mission and during this one, especially from Francisco. What he learned from the previous mission has caused him to have doubts which Zach believes can be dealt with by simply continuing to work. At the crux of his doubts however, is what happened to his father and how Zach came to be recruited into The Program. He has bits and pieces of memories but nothing is certain and he knows he needs to find out more. In addition he now must face Francisco's revelations which he eventually learns are true. Complicating matters further are Howard's discoveries about the SDHC card which reveal new information about Zach's father. How he was treated by The Program have made him realize at the end of his mission that he can now trust no one except maybe Howard.

"The Program is back, our protocols are in place, and the elements have been arranged for my safe egress.
It's as if the last four days never happened.....
Part of me wants to accept this. I was used and I survived. This was my mission. It was more complex than the ones that preceded it, but so be it. Everything is back to normal now.
But another part of me knows this is a lie. I trusted these people once.
Never again."

Howard is a truly delightful character, a foil to the highly trained, fearless Zach. They have an unlikely friendship despite the fact that Zach works for the government and Howard, as a hacker, is anti-establishment. Although Howard possesses considerable electronic intelligence, he's very much an innocent teenage boy, who dreams of the kind of things that Zach does. He's brave and loyal - two traits Zach desperately needs in his life.

The novel explores the theme of identity especially with Zach struggling to maintain his identity as a teenage assassin while mourning the loss of a "normal" life as a teenager which he seems to be doing more in the second novel.  There is also the issue of a government recruiting and training young people to become deadly weapons and then abandoned to their fate should things not work out according to plan. Readers may struggle with the idea that Zach is so young; if he were slightly older, perhaps in his early twenties, the story would be more plausible. He's composed and analytical beyond  his years and in the novel,  he goes three days without sleep and is still able to function - something most teens would not be able to accomplish. Still, this teenage James Bond is exciting, complex and engaging.

There is some minor sexuality in the novel and of course a great deal of violence with numerous murders, making this a novel for teens 14 years and older. Nevertheless, with so few really good novels geared towards the male teenage reader, this age group will enjoy the James Bond-esque action of the Unknown Assassin series.

Book Details:
I Am The Mission by Allen Zadoff
New York: Little, Brown and Company   2014
421 pp.

Erased by Jennifer Rush

Erased picks up where Altered left off  with Anna, Sam, Cas and Nick now living in a house near Millerton, Michigan. Anna O'Brien is certain her sister Dani is dead, but is unsure about whether the Branch killed their parents and this is something she needs to find out. After a grocery trip, Nick decides he needs some space and disappears for several days, likely to spend some time with the cashier at the grocery store.

When Nick returns two days later, he tells everyone that the girl he spent time with told him that someone came into the grocery store asking about Anna. Shocked, Anna needs to know if this woman is her sister Dani, whom she was told was dead. Anna, accompanied by Sam, returns to the store and manages to talk the cashier into letting them watch the security video. They confirm that it was Anna's sister, Dani, who came to the store, but also learn that Dani has been taken again by the Branch who were waiting for her in a nearby alley.

The group decides to abandon their house and using a prepaid cell phone, Anna contacts Trev, the other member of their lab group who lived with them in the farmhouse and who was a double agent. Trev had given Anna a flash drive containing a file with a phone contact which Anna now makes us of. Trev tells Anna to meet him in Hart, Michigan where he will provide information on Dani's whereabouts. At the meeting Trev leads Anna and the boys to believe that Dani is being held at another Branch lab known as Delta.

Nick, Anna, Cas and Sam break into Delta lab and after a deadly battle with Branch agents, rescue Dani and liberate three boys, Greg, Jimmy and Matt. Dani and Anna reconnect but Anna feels suspicious of Dani. Since Dani was one of the first candidates in the Branch's genetic alteration program, along with Sam, Nick and Cas, they do not know if she was turned into an assassin as well. Not only that but Dani seems surprisingly ambivalent about Anna being with Sam, her boyfriend before she disappeared.

They flee to a motel where the new boys and Dani are checked for tracking devices. They decide to send the new boys on their own way but when Dani says something, it triggers them into attacking Sam, Nick and Cas. Dani tries to convince Anna to flee with her but she insists on helping her friends fight. They manage to disable Jimmy and Matt, and with the odds against him, Greg flees. Dani believes they were brainwashed and programmed into attacking.

The group of friends find an empty house to regroup and determine their next course of action. Concerned that Cas and Sam may have also been reprogrammed with the new alteration, they decide to separate into two groups; Nick and Anna and Cas, Sam and Dani. Anna learns that Dani has seen their Uncle William, who may be their only surviving relative. Dani tells her that Uncle William has been tracking the Branch for years and is trying to bring them down. She also tells Anna that he knows what happened that night five years ago when their parents died because he was there. Based on this, Anna tells Dani to contact William and arrange a meeting.

The two groups go their separate ways but Anna is not happy being paired with Nick as their relationship is strained at the best of times.  Anna decides that she wants to return to Port Cadia to locate her Uncle William. Although Nick is not pleased with this he agrees to accompany her. On the way to Port Cadia however, Nick and Anna have yet another encounter with Branch agents who attempt to capture them. Barely escaping the agents, Nick and Anna continue on their way to Port Cadia. Anna is determined to find out about her family, and how and why she ended up in the Branch. But can they trust Uncle William, after everyone they know seems to be entangled in the Branch.

Erased is certainly filled with numerous action scenes and plenty of violence, to the point that it almost seems overdone. For example, picking up a railway tie with one hand and hitting someone over the head with it is no small feat, especially for a woman who's been shot in the leg. There are many plot twists throughout the novel to move the storyline along and which work to hold the reader's interest. Woven into the action is the romance between Sam and Anna, but also a hint of a possible relationship between Anna and Nick too. Almost all of Anna's flashback memories involve Nick and although in the present he seems angry and distant, Anna senses that Nick cares for her.


The most dominant theme is this novel is that of identity as Anna and the four boys are all struggling to regain their identities, to remember who they were and to escape from the hold the Branch has on them.

There will be a third novel in the Altered series despite the fact that Rush seems to have wrapped up the situation with the Branch quite neatly. However, Riley, the agent who was second in command has not been accounted for and perhaps he will play a big part in the third novel.

Book Details:
Erased by Jennifer Rush
New York: Little, Brown and Company   2014
275 pp.

Boy Nobody - I Am The Weapon by Allen Zadoff

"My life is one continual assignment. I move from world to world as I've been trained to do, leaving nothing but bodies behind me. With each assignment comes new challenges, new complications, new excitement."

Taken from his family at twelve, "Boy Nobody" is trained to become an efficient killing machine, sent in to take out specific targets. The usual method of operation sees him befriend the mark, usually the child of his intended target, which allows him access to the family. Once in the family, he kills the target which is the parent of the child. Efficient and deadly.

Zadoff starts this thriller off with Boy completing his recent "assignment", the killing of a Chinese CEO of a high-tech firm. Boy is friends with Jack Wu and on a visit to his home, while alone with Jack's father, he stabs him in the forearm with a pen. This pen is really a syringe that injects Mr. Wu with a powerful drug that stops his heart in seconds. And then he waits while the police and EMS arrive and simply walks away and onto his next assignment.

Boy is part of something called The Program. He was taken from his family when he was twelve by an older boy named Mike and given the option of either dying like his father and mother, or being part of The Program. He asked to be killed but instead was trained into a operative of The Program. The Program is about finding and removing enemies of the United States. Boy was trained by The Program who gave him a "Father" and a "Mother". His "Father" coordinated his life and his "Mother" appeared often to check up on him. Boy did all of his high school in two years plus he completed special training in weapons and tactics, psychology and strategy. His "Mother" oversees each assignment and is in charge while his "Father" sends him the next assignment. Everything - clothing, fake ID, where he will live, money is pre-arranged for the next assignment and any contact with Father and Mother is encoded.

Boy soon learns that his next assignment is to kill the Mayor of New York, Jonathan Goldberg. This assignment however is unusual for a number of reasons. First he must complete his assignment within five days. Boy is disturbed because he has never been given so little time to enter and integrate before completing an assignment. His mark is Samara (Sam) Goldberg, the mayor's daughter. Boy doesn't like to deal with girls whom he finds complicated and who bring emotion into play.

He is inserted into a famous (unnamed) private school, which Sam attends, on the Upper West Side. Boy immediately attracts the attention of Sam who invites him to a party she is having at her father's apartment where she lives. Her mother was killed in an accident several years ago while visiting her home country of Israel. During the party, Boy manages to wander into the mayor's private area providing him with the perfect opportunity to fulfill his mission. However, Boy is caught off guard by the mayor's personable character and the resemblance to his father which brings back memories of his childhood. Because of this, Boy does not take the opportunity to kill Goldberg.

From the beginning there are complications leading Boy to begin questioning his mission. He suspects he is being followed, which is soon confirmed and results in a deadly confrontation. It also becomes evident that some of the people around Sam are not whom they seem either. Boy begins to have strong feelings for Sam and they become romantically involved, just when the parameters of the mission begin to change. And Boy is left struggling whom to trust, his "Mother" or Sam and her father?

Discussion  

There's no doubt Zadoff has written a chilling novel about a boy turned into an special operative who takes out American enemies and traitors. He's a sixteen year old killing machine who assassinates without conscience. Boy is trained to not to ask questions and not to think about the effect the murder has on the family of the target. There's no way to describe the sanitized murder at the end of the book except as brutal, despite Boy assuring his "target" that dying won't hurt. It's a tragic end that seems wrong on so many levels.

It's evident that Boy is extremely intelligent. He completed all of his high schooling by the age of sixteen. Mature beyond his years, Boy is situationally aware, calculating and emotionally distant. Despite being pulled from society and subjected to rigorous training, Boy is extremely socially intelligent, something that is perhaps incongruous with his past.

But Boy, who finally has a name at the end of the novel, is changing. He has been challenged from his first encounter with Sam to consider who he is. "Do you ever wonder where you belong?" she says. "Like maybe life made a mistake and put you someplace you weren't supposed to be?"   She also questions what he believes in.  "...'You're the boy who doesn't believe in anything. We're different that way. I not only believe, I'm willing to back it up with action.' "

When the mission changes, Boy is conflicted as to what to do and about what he has been told. For the first time, he seeks to find out and he chooses Howard, the techie weirdo from school to help him. He's not so willing to simply accept what "Mother" tells him. He needs proof and Howard helps him get that proof.

Also for the first time after a mission, Boy feels intense grief - "a deep chasm of grief" as he describes it, which he finds unbearable and buries deep within himself. And while he originally thought he was one of a few operatives, he's now beginning to suspect that there are many others just like him who maybe have different jobs within The Program. Armed with a new piece of information about his family from what was supposed to be a deadly encounter with Mike, and with Howard secretly working with him, Boy intends to find out.

Zadoff has done a very good job of creating his characters - they are both realistic and multi-dimensional. Sam is a complex character - as Boy predicted- whose suffering after her mother's death was largely ignored by her father. Sam's father never allowed her the time or space to grieve, resulting in Sam's alienation from her father and resulting in her being able to be recruited by her Israeli soldier and lover, Gideon, into a terrorist cell.

Howard, the techie geek/weirdo is a brilliantly crafted character who is very disturbing. The classic bullied boy, intelligent and different, who can't seem to find his niche in society, pushed further into its fringes.

Boy Nobody contains several murders, a great deal of physical violence and some sexual content  but none are described in detail or graphically. Readers will be left with a ton of questions which leaves this novel leading nicely into a second book.

Update: Please note that the author has retitled this first novel to I Am The Weapon, the first in The Unknown Assassin series.

Book Details:
Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff
New York: Little, Brown and Company     2013
337 pp.