At the start of what promises to be an exciting new series, Melsa M Manton presents us with Leyla Stone, the pseudonym of an operative for Sedition, a shadowy organization in Washington, D. C. While we are presented with some backstory, both of Sedition and the other shadowy organizations in the story, quite a bit is left unsaid.

For the most part, this isn’t a problem. Every now and then, I would find myself with questions, but I rarely found the plot falling apart around me. If anything, the questions I had were ones that came up later in the book and the sort I would expect to see answered in future books in the series, like “who is this person” and “wow, what does this mean.” The action helped a lot with this. The book is one that I would describe as genuinely rip-roaring. The few times the action slows down, the protagonist’s mind keeps racing with implications and possibilities, which fascinated me. I found it very hard to stop reading.

I also sometimes found it hard to keep up with the plot. It’s a fast-paced book, which works very well for its genre and for the story, but we, like Leyla, are tossed into a collection of betrayals and confusion and sometimes are left as in the dark as she is. This makes for an exciting narrative, but it also means that the book is most easily read in one sitting. I had to read the book in chunks, and at times I couldn’t recall salient details and had to double back to answer questions I should have already known.

For those who are more familiar with the genre and better at picking up those little, important details, this may not be a concern. For those who are not usually interested in thrillers but want to give this one a try, just keep your eyes open! There are many mysteries (not all of which will be solved yet). If the rest of the series lives up to the beginning, it will be a very rewarding journey.

I would recommend the Gemination series to fans of thrillers who are interested in a science fiction element added to the story. The thriller aspect is definitely the stronger part throughout, but as the book goes on, more and more speculative elements are added. There’s no telling where the series will end up, but I’m eager to see what comes next.