Dumb and disappointing
For anyone who read Devil's Guard and is hoping to find something similar, this book is another world, with none of the subtlety and detail and surprise that was in Devil's Guard. This book reads like a cheap novel, shallow, violent, and the hero is a Muslim fighting the Russians, his motivation revenge, but I put the book in the recycling bin about two thirds through. I have read Devil's Guard about four times, in English and in French, over thirty years, and was hoping for more of the same insight and texture of experience, but this is flat and dull.