I would like to come here and unreserved rec this one because it was fun and quick and had an interesting premise. But I can't because the female characters were uniformly awful, existing solely to be victims and love interests, and often both at the same time. The protagonist seemed to be to be somewhat unevenly characterized as well. And the climax, while interesting and with enough tension to work as a climax, still didn't quite because the poker game motif, while introduced at the beginning, was mentioned (I believe) only once throughout the rest of the book. So there were certainly parts I enjoyed, and it was a quick and well-paced read, but overall I'm left with a bit of a bad taste.
