Three Assassins

A Novel

By: Kotaro Isaka

Narrated by: Adam Sims

From the internationally bestselling author of Bullet Train comes the high-octane new thriller, set in Tokyo’s criminal underworld, that pits an ordinary man against a group of talented and very unusual assassins.

Suzuki is an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. To get answers and his revenge, Suzuki abandons his law-abiding lifestyle and takes a low-level job with a front company operated by the crime gang Maiden, who are responsible for his wife’s death. Before long, Suzuki finds himself caught up in a network of quirky and highly effective assassins.

The Cicada is a knife expert. The Pusher nudges people into oncoming traffic. The Whale whispers bleak aphorisms to his victims until they take their own lives.

Intense and electrifying, Three Assassins delivers a wild ride through the criminal underworld of Tokyo, populated by contract killers who are almost superhumanly good at their jobs.

©2022 Kotaro Isaka / CTB Inc. English translation rights arranged through CTB Inc. English translation by Sam Malissa © CTB Inc. 2022. Published in 2022 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS, New York. All rights reserved (P)2022 by Penguin Audio

A bit underwhelming

I recently watched bullet train, so I was excited to explore more of the world from that movie, and decided to look into three assassins. While it is foolish to expect any sort of action at all similar to the movie, I felt myself somewhat underwhelmed by the end of three assassins. I saw another review that mentioned the three main characters of the book are pretty unlikable and I’m sad to admit I felt similar by the end. I will say that the best parts of the book involve the whale. On a happier note, I will say that I was quite satisfied with the readers use of slightly different voices to differentiate characters. His vocal range was quite good.

A must listen if you liked bullet train!

Like bullet train, this one has many assassins with fun names and signature techniques. It was fast paced and kept me guessing. Would recommend!

Good Book

I enjoyed this book. I got it because I like Bullet Train. I wondered if this would be a huge step down, or feed to much off his previous story, but I was pleasantly surprised. The narrator was very good as well. I look forward to his next book.

The narration and the voice acting are amazing.

Like the title says, great work all around on the narration and voice acting. I especially like the voice of character called The Whale. Besides the audiobook technical stuff, the story is really good too. This is actually the prequel to Bullet Train. It’s the first part of a trilogy.
I listen to audiobooks while I follow along with the text. It’s something I do in order to finish more books because my eyes get tired. I know what you’re thinking, “Aww your eyes get tired poor baby?” Fine I’m a baby, I don’t care, I enjoy it. You probably smoke cigarettes and drink whisky and gamble. Man, listen to me be so judgy. What’s become of me? I’d kill for a smoke right now and a glass of whisky and some cards. But my account is low on funds and I cannot afford to lose money playing poker. But what if I win? I’m off to the casino. To heck with it.
Back to my review real quick before I go. Like I said, the narration and the voice acting is very nice. I enjoyed the voice acting which is usually not the case when it comes to audiobooks.
My only qualm is Suzuki’s storyline. I have to admit I don’t understand what pop fiction writers are thinking or smoking sometimes. But there’s an entire chapter where Suzuki plays soccer. And this is ridiculous as it is but it becomes even more absurd because he plays soccer with a kid, whose parents he just met, because he spontaneously showed up at that door, pretending to be a tutor. This whole part of the book is like a knot in a little girls otherwise straight brushed hair. It needs to be cut out cause there isn’t any brushing it out, that’s for sure. Mr Isaka shows plenty of promise as a writer but man he apparently doesn’t have a lot of common sense. I’m flabbergasted at how ridiculous Suzuki’s storyline is. This is especially problematic because Suzuki is the main character of the book. I just don’t understand. When you state your complaint about the unrealistic storyline for Suzuki, and you give up all notions of realism, and just decide to go along with it anyway, well, like Maximus, Isaka asks: Are you not entertained?
This whole thing ultimately is a brilliant imagining.

Needed a better narrator.

Overall this book was pretty good. I read bullet train and it was so good that I had to read this one not realizing at the time that bullet train was technically the sequel to this one.

This story was not quite as good, in my opinion, as bullet train, but was still overall pretty enjoyable.

The big problem with this story was the narrator. aside from one or two characters almost everyone sounded like a nasal voiced, "trying way too hard to be hip and edgy", snotty punk. and it began to get very annoying. I suppose it is not the narrator's fault, it's just the voice he has. sadly the narrator for bullet train would have been a good choice here.

The voice issue aside though, like I said, the book was pretty good and I am looking forward to the third book in this series 'Grasshopper'.

Lacks a point

The concept of this story is actually cool despite my overall negative feedback. I couldn’t help but he bored through most of it. A majority of the story is describing these assassins life but they have very little interaction with each other. The voice acting was painful to the ears. The dialogue in my opinion doesn’t match the tone they used.

It sucks because the concept of this story is cool. We have imaginary literary devices ghosts and interesting characters. But the story lacked incredibly for me.

Spoiler***
Suzuki is made out to he the main character. The story begins and ends with him but I can’t help but wonder what was the point of him in the story. Or the point of the story. The people Suzuki wanted dead, died without his involvement at all. The only way for the story to be fixed if if Suzuki was an assassin all along. Or someone working with black and yellow and the pusher without anyone knowing. But instead we get a bland character who everything just works out for.

Amazing

I have never loved reading or listening books as it’s always hard to find one I really like but after trying this because of bullet train I absolutely loved it.

Great Characters!

I read this after reading Bullet Train because I enjoyed it so much! This is technically a prequel but I recommend reading this after bullet train. This book had many of the things I enjoyed about BT, the interwoven story, interesting protagonists, it’s a good read.

the beginning had potential

I loved the movie Bullet Train so I decided 2 read the 1st book n the series. I was a little disappointed. The beginning had the potential to be great, but as the story progressed it just petered out and became uninteresting