A review by scottwoods
Satori by Don Winslow

1.0

A life-long fan of Shibumi, I found I could not finish this handed-over prequel. Winslow succeeds in creating a textbook example of the kind of book Shibumi, in its sly way, railed against. That it uses Trevanian's singular character to do so just felt like a slap in the face. The rhythm is dismal, the action completely predictable, and there is no attempt whatsoever to capture the music of the source material. I know Winslow set out to not write like Trevanian, but there is "not writing like the original" and then there is "writing so differently from the original that it doesn't feel like it's in the same universe."