Shibumi

This book had some promise and started out strong, but in the end I just wanted to poke my eyes out.  It starts out very interesting because the main character is this mysterious man who becomes an assassin. He's orphaned at a young age, lives on the mean streets of China, speaks about six languages, and then ends up living with a type of Sensei in Japan who teaches him about life and so on. That part was interesting and was the focus of the first half of the book. The American government is trying to figure out who may be helping a terrorist group and this lead them to the assassin.

Then the story just falls apart.  The next part of the book is about the assassin and his friend going spelunking. SPELUNKING! I'm dead serious. I am not a huge spy/assassin novel reader, but is this a normal part of this genre? I was bored out of my mind during this portion of the book and fell asleep many times. Finally I just decided to skim that part because it was like watching paint dry. Every crevice of the cave and every piece of equipment was described. I had zero interest in that. Then the story just goes on with this cat and mouse game, but I was no longer interested. The cave expedition ruined the book for me. I skimmed portions of it towards the end and then just gave up. If you try to tackle this book you can probably stop about halfway through and be satisfied with it.