Buy a Bullet
Ratings15
Average rating3.5
Buy a Bullet is a quick and entertaining glimpse into the Orphan X universe. In this short story, Evan Smoak rescues a woman from her abusive Silicon Valley millionaire boyfriend. The setup is classic: a over-the-top antagonist paired with a flawless, justice-driven hero archetype. While the antagonist's one-dimensionality might make you roll your eyes, it also sets the stage for Evan's ruthlessly satisfying takedown. The story feels like a distilled revenge fantasy—simple, absurd, and undeniably fun. If you enjoy action sequences where justice is swift and decisive, this delivers exactly that.
At just a few pages long, Buy a Bullet doesn't have enough meat so rating 3-stars, but it's still an entertaining diversion for fans of the series. Think of it as a quick dose of Orphan X's signature style: efficient, sharp, and to the point. Pure popcorn.
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Evan Smoak is “Orphan X” and he is a very dangerous man.
In this short story, he plays knight errant in rescuing Leanne Lattimore from Silicon Valley tech billionaire Steve Radack. Radack is a sadist. Leanne desperately needs rescuing and Smoak is the man to do it.
The story focuses like a laser and moves like a wire-guided missile, as Evan intuits Leanne's need for rescue, scopes out the enemy, and moves into action. He has some “very particular skills” that are honed to the maximum. He knows weapons, close combat fighting and computer hacking. He has no apparent flaws and operates below the radar.
This story delivers on what it promises. It is action adventure, with a fair amount of wish-fulfillment. I was intrigued by the mysterious back story and not particularly interested in the loving descriptions of weaponry and tech, but, obviously, that is bread and butter for those who like action adventure stories of this kind. This is an easy and entertaining read.
Nice little prequel to book 2 (which comes out in a couple of weeks). Probably not the author's best writing, but I still wished it was longer. Evan Smoak was very much in character, though I didn't like the constant references to him as “the watcher”. Still, I'm looking forward to more of the Nowhere Man.