September 15, 2013

“The Fellowship” by William Tyree – War in the Shadows

The Fellowship by William Tyree (Book cover)
It’s a black day in Washington D.C. as an American senator was brutally dispatched in a way that took much more effort than is necessary to kill a person. 

At the same time, the British are mourning the victim of a very similar murder, a senior member of British Parliament. On the surface, nothing seems to link these two crimes apart from the fact that both of those men were in politics and were dispatched in the same way.

The Fellowship by William Tyree truly starts to pick up once a peculiar intelligence officer, Blake Carver, sets out to hunt for the killers. During his worldwide trek in search of the assailants, Carver stumbles into an ancient order thought lost centuries ago, and discovers that underneath the world we see as safe and stable rages a war threatening to consume everything.

For a thriller, The Fellowship accomplishes quite well what it set out to do: Tyree is very skilled at grabbing your attention and feeding you the right facts to maintain your interest. He doesn't introduce senseless plot twists out of nowhere, nor does he give outright answers to questions. Rather, in order to understand the complete picture, the reader must also put in a bit of effort and connect the dots; this helps you to become involved in the intrigue, further grabbing your attention.

To be frank, I didn’t exactly like the whole “ancient order” angle for at this point, it does feel overused and recycled to say the least. Nevertheless, Tyree salvaged himself in my eyes with the amount of thought and development he put into the order itself. He manages to make into something interesting and actually makes the concept feel a bit fresh.

I particularly enjoyed the variety in the settings as Blake Carver travers pretty much all over the world, including South African and Rome when tracking down the crime’s perpetrators. The scenery is described in gorgeous detail and actually makes you want to run to the airport and visit all of those places for yourself. The characters also weren't bad, and though some of them were cardboard cutouts most had a certain amount of depth to them.

The Fellowship by William Tyree (Book cover)
All in all, if you enjoy reading thrillers which provide meaning beyond the action and require you to exercise your brain matter a bit, then The Fellowship is one work of writing you are guaranteed to enjoy. 


William Tyree (Author)

William Tyree



William Tyree is an American writer raised in Arizona who has the distinction of having taught at both the Northern Arizona University as well as Tokyo's Asia University.

His work as a consultant in relation to technology for various federal agencies eventually inspired him to write his first novel, Line of Succession, which was a bestselling thriller, alongside The Fellowship which also earned him a whole lot of praise.



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