Roland Fishman makes all his characters believable, individual, and empathic. You feel for them. Each character, good or bad, has a deep commitment to a purpose beyond individual interests, even in the case of Samudra, the Order’s adversary whose mission involves the loss of many innocent lives.
The action sequences are portrayed in granular detail. Time dilates and an event that may have been over in a flash allows the reader into the experience, marked, beat by beat, by the quick-thinking decisions of Carter and his cohorts, adding to the visceral nature and authenticity of a journey that grows incrementally more and more precarious and urgent.