I Am the Weapon by Allen Zadoff
Release Date: June 11, 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: Young Adult Thriller
ISBN: 978-0316199681
Source: NetGalley
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Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school, in a new town, under a new name, makes few friends and doesn’t stay long. Just long enough for someone in his new friend’s family to die — of “natural causes.” Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, and moves on to the next target.
When his own parents died of not-so-natural causes at the age of eleven, Boy Nobody found himself under the control of The Program, a shadowy government organization that uses brainwashed kids as counter-espionage operatives. But somewhere, deep inside Boy Nobody, is somebody: the boy he once was, the boy who wants normal things (like a real home, his parents back), a boy who wants out. And he just might want those things badly enough to sabotage The Program’s next mission.
You might know I Am the Weapon by Allen Zadoff as Boy Nobody. Both titles are awesome! Regardless of the title, it’s the same book and the book lived up to both names and the book was everything I expected it to be which made for one satisfying read. Its sequel, I Am the Mission released one week ago. Stay tuned for my review of the sequel which I will post next week. But first, I Am the Weapon.
We follow a teenage boy who takes on assignments to kill from the very organization that killed his parents. Kill or be killed. If you’re on board for a story like this, keep reading. The main alias used for the boy is Ben, so I’ll go with that. What I love about Ben and all of the characters in this book, major and minor, is that they’re all really fleshed out and have hearts. They have desires, strengths and weaknesses. And for Ben in particular, he’s a very smart kid, very precise, professional, and all of that jazz but at the end of the day he’s still a kid. He still has hormones. He’s still taken by the daughter of… his next target. Which creates some problems. Naturally.
I loved that the relationships Ben creates on his latest mission are genuine. They don’t seem like relationships that are created too fast and they don’t seem like unrealistic matters. Kids are lonely. And then you throw in the setting of a city. Then you throw in the daughter of a mayor and the security matters that this involves for his daughter’s everyday life. Which as time goes on in the novel, we find out is about to change. It’s clear that the mayor’s daughter has her guard up all of the time but like most people, when we find one person we think is worth tearing our walls down for, sometimes those walls come tumbling down. I didn’t see this relationship as insta-love moreso as I saw it insta-potential. And in the end insta-lock-it-down. I was okay with all of this. Why?
I love that Ben has a job to do for others, a job he never questions until he starts thinking about the job he has for himself which is to have a life of his own and be happy with, say, Sam, the mayor’s daughter. Essentially, he makes the majority of all of his decisions but when it comes down to it, he’s a puppet to the most important ones and he’s just now feeling the strings. The story really takes off when he starts to doubt what that’s all about.
I say that the story really takes off there but that’s the journey of self discovery that Ben is on. And it’s a typical journey for this kind of story but still worth your time. The action though starts at the very beginning and never slows. Ben is always on the lookout for danger and I don’t want to say always on edge but he certainly always has his guard up. And you feel it on every page and want to get through every page to find out what’s going to happen. We learn that he certainly has a reason to be the way he is. Everyone has secrets that help and hurt. Even Sam.
The short chapters also account for the fast pace which I loved. There’s never really a moment when you say to yourself, “I’ll just finish this chapter and put the book down for a little bit.” The chapters are so short and you’re anticipating the next move so I found myself starting to say the above but changed my tune to “This chapter is so short, I’ll just finish the next four.” That four turned into six turned into eight turned into me reaching the final chapter of the book.
So the verdict… I don’t know what is a better way to describe this book… it’s as entertaining as one of Tom Cruise’s less popular action films… or it’s like a really good action film that you only need to see once. With either description, you get what I’m trying to say here. Because this book was entertaining enough and it was such a quick read, I am going to dive into the sequel, so stay tuned for my thoughts on the sequel next week! And if you’re in the mood for an action packed YA novel, you might want to pick this up.
I Am the Weapon by Allen Zadoff is available today.