Barry Eisler, A Graveyard of Memories

A Graveyard of Memories is a prequel to Barry Eisler's series featuring John Rain, a half-Japanese, half-American assassin. I've only read the first book in the series, some years ago, so I'm not familiar with the character's later development. But in this outing he's twenty years old and naive. He's bloodied his hands in Vietnam, so he's no stranger to killing, but we watch as he gets involved in a complex plot that forces him to translate the skills he honed in the jungle to an urban environment. Eisler spells out Rain's learning process as he goes. This may be a little heavy-handed, in that it's very noticeable that he's doing it, but I nonetheless do like being walked through Rain's thoughts and process. Somehow, Rain is both a vicious killer and a likable young man who's tender to a love interest, an unexpected combination, but it somehow works. One thing that I personally don't like is that the book is dotted with Japanese terminology. It's always explained, and I guess it serves to exoticize the setting, but mostly I find it an interruption, and I think a lot of it could be dispensed with. It's one thing to use a couple of terms that are repeated frequently enough that they can become part of the reader's vocabulary, but including too much unfamiliar terminology is alienating.