The Lost Identity Casualties by Kim Ekemar, is a page-turning psychological thriller. Written for the most part in first person narration, it grabs the readers attention from the first page.
The main character is Matthias Callaghan, who awakes to find himself in a terrible physical state, complete with amnesia. He has been brutally attacked and mutilated but unfortunately is unable to remember why.
As he recovers his memory, and his physical health improves, he becomes determined to seek revenge on those responsible for his shocking plight. And seek revenge he does, in some shocking and clever ways.
In the Preface of this first book in the series, the author alludes to the face transplant, and loss of identity Mathias has suffered as a result. The shocking reality of how this situation came about filters back to Matthias, and he begins to plot his revenge, and a pathway to recover some semblance of a normal life.
The plot has incredible twists and turns, and while the reader may recognize some stereotyped bad guys, nothing is boring or dull at all about this novel. It can be quite gruesome in some descriptions.
As we follow Matthias Callaghan into his world of revenge, his multi-faceted personality development continues, and this reader was happy she’d never had reason to cross someone like this protagonist.
What I didn’t like about this book: The main character, Matthias Callaghan certainly had every good reason to exact revenge, and most of the people he went after no deserved it without a doubt. But not all of them. I did find him a little difficult to connect with as a character with his eye-for-an-eye, cold-hearted revenge mindset. This might be necessary when dealing with the criminal element, but I felt the author might have considered giving him a little more empathy or compassion when it came to people in his personal life.
I’m not going to deduct any stars from my rating of this book because of my personal beliefs about revenge – which is based on the ancient quote by Confucius; “Before embarking on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
I found the end of this book quite satisfying. It could easily stand alone, and yet, the author leaves us with an intriguing hook, that left this reader/reviewer quite curious about the next book.
I recommend this book for anyone who likes to read a complex, fast paced, page-turner with plenty of action.
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