My review of the Puppeteer by Ian Miller.
Intense, riveting, thrilling, suspense — this novel is all those and one fascinating, complex mystery as well! Brilliantly conceived and superbly written, this novel will keep you guessing, figuring, wondering, and reading until the surprising ending. Ian combines tight action sequences with both suspense and an shroud of mystery.
The author’s book description is dead on: “When resource shortages, debt and terrorism threaten to bring anarchy to the world, one man sent on a mission to thwart hi-tech terrorism must find whoever is manipulating both terrorists and anti-terrorist forces to bring down governance. When he unravels the plot, his sense of honor is severely tested, but only unimpeachable honor can succeed.”
In my opinion, this is an understatement! When one looks at our own world situation today — with corrupt officials, with a global economy going bust propped up by newly printed money without any backing, with countries, states, and large cities spending far beyond their incomes, with greedy corporations looking only for profits, with barely one percent of the population holding nearly all the wealth and the rest struggling to get by, where the corporations and wealthy fund so many politicians, where global warming and dependency on fossil fuels never see workable, effective solutions — you can see how easily our world could become that in Ian’s novel. I was immediately stricken with just how his vision of a possible future could become our reality!
I began by saying this novel is a fascinating, complex mystery. It is that and more. I like a good mystery, but this one kept me contemplating guessing, and figuring chapter after chapter, as more clues were revealed — very well done! Careful, once you start reading this one, you are not going to want to stop until the end, so don’t start reading it at bedtime.
Ian’s writing is excellent. He’s found a perfect balance between action, suspense, mystery, and character development. I couldn’t help but notice that he’s from one of those “down under” countries, and I did have to look up a couple of words and learned that a “ute” is their word for a pick-up truck. While the action takes place in various countries around the world, a key location is the island group Les Îles Kerguelen, which I promptly had to look up on Google maps. So yes, I picked up a bit of geography as well as some unfamiliar words, all to the author’s credit, challenging me. Well done, Ian.
Ian left me with a heavy question to ponder: is this evil terrorist really a terrorist? The only criticism I have of the novel is its ending. I’m not sure that that outcome could really happen and that it would solve the societal problems, but that’s my opinion. What’s yours?
In short, I give Puppeteer, by Ian Miller a five-star rating and look forward to reading the sequels. He’s earned the rating!
