Book Review -- I Am Pilgrim by Terry Haynes

I Am Pilgrim: A Thriller by Terry Hayes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Where do I start? This book blew me away. In fact it just torpedoed me out of my slow, mundane and painfully normal existence. Terry Haynes is a screenwriter so the inspiration for the layout of the book is definitely inspired from his screenwriting background. What can I say about this book that has not been said before? It was rated as the Thriller you should not miss for 2014.

Shamefully I missed it, but I am glad I made up for that by reading this sooner than later. The Pilgrim is the story of investigation. It is the story of what happens when you put into mind to chase a ghost and you do chase that ghost successfully. I Am Pilgrim is the story of succeeding when there are no odds in your favor, when you know the last dice has been rolled and you have lost.

Simply put Pilgrim is an audacious read. Once you finish reading the book, it will take you at least an hour to come down to the mundane. The book starts slow with seeming very loose threads, a perfect murder in NY city, a disturbing revelation in the Afghan mountains and a seemingly bizarre death in Turkey.  All unconnected and in no way linked to each other --- or that is what you feel.

Each of this separate incidents are just pieces of a bigger jigsaw puzzle. One that needs to be put together fast, but nobody knows if they have all the pieces of the puzzle. The Pilgrim asks a lot of questions, uncomfortable questions: does a single life outweigh multiple lives? Who decides right and wrong? Hate or Love which is more powerful?

It may look like I am rambling in this post, but the Pilgrim is essentially the story of one person the "Rider Of the Blue" who strives to find the balance between the right and wrong, going till the edge of his sanity but not snapping. In short the Pilgrim is a must read.

There are some drawbacks in the plot as well known well by my Book Pal Freda, which has lead to me to dock half a star, but it is the perfect debut. Good Reads does not let me give .5 stars.. So in a spirit of generosity I rounded it up to 5 instead of rounding it down to 4. A rare few books deserve this honor. I would still ask my friends to read this book, coz this is a book on which hours and hours of discussion can be had. It is a sure shot…