Book Review: "Brilliance" by Marcus Sakey

My coworker Megan and I often talk about books, and she was telling me about this series that she had gotten for a really good deal for her Kindle. The more she talked about it the more I'm like yeaaaah, that sounds like a book I need to read. And my TBR grew three books that day.

So in the world of this book there are a small minority of people who are born with special abilities. Some of them are kind of the savant variety (I'm going to name a place and you will automatically know the address because you memorized the phone book) and some are more intuitive. Our main character, Nick, is able to really read people's body language and anticipate what they are going to do. Helpful in a fight, which he gets into a lot. So, since the government is always scared of what's different, all of these people with abilities are closely monitored and if you are "tier one" (especially gifted, or in the perspective of the government really potentially dangerous) you are placed into "academys" where you are basically brainwashed and then the government uses your unique ability to work for them. Everyone take a moment here to be shocked that that's how the government would work. No one shocked? Yeah, me either.

So Nick is an interesting main character because he is one of the gifted ones AND he works for one of the government organizations. He hunts down dangerous people who are affiliated with radical organizations and neutralizes them.
As is so often the case, not everything is as it seems and Nick finds himself seeing things from a different perspective and it's all manhunts and gun fights and all of the other things that come with a great thriller.

Two things that caught my interest in this book:

-After reading so many more YA geared dystopia/sci fi stuff this one has a couple decidedly more R rated moments. Which is not to say that there's like, big graphic sex scenes but it's written for a little older crowd and it's kinda nice. Someone gets thrown from a car and it's kinda badass.

-I want a WHOLE other book about a character named Samantha who is really only in one short piece of the book but I'm like THIS CHICK. I WANT MORE ABOUT THIS CHICK. She sounds like an interesting, sad lady.

So, since it's a trilogy I will be heading to the library to find the next installment! I give it a 3.5 of of 5. Excited to see what comes next!