Thank you to Net Galley and Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press for providing an advanced digital copy of this novel about a young pre-teen refugee as he struggles to cross several borders in his flight from Syria. His goal is to reach Germany and trade the knowledge he has stolen from terrorists to pay for the safe passage of his family. The terrorists are in pursuit with a goal of killing him before he can reach safety as are various spy agencies who get wind he may have valuable information they can use in their fight against terrorism. The tale alternates between the point of view of the young boy, Naji and Paul Samson, who has been contracted by a conglomerate of spy agencies and is pursuing the boy in an attempt to reach and rescue him.

Naji is portrayed as a brilliant, precocious young boy who is a combination of self taught whiz kid, devoted son and petty thief who can move through a crowd with lightning speed to elude capture. His struggle is complicated because he is a minor trying to travel unaccompanied and without the proper paperwork, which leaves him at risk from both the terrorists and officials from the countries through which he must travel. If the terrorists find him, they will kill him, if the officials find him, they will send him back to a youth detention center. Samson is a former spy who left the agency and whose specialty is now finding people for a fee, a quintessential “good guy” trying to reach Naji before the cruelest of men, head of a terrorist organization which has held Naji in the past, can find him and the secrets Naji has carried out with him.

Samson’s pursuit is complicated by the fact Naji is unaware of his presence and the fact he is trying to help. In addition, through a series of misadventures and narrow escapes Naji constantly changes his direction of travel, leaving Samson to try and guess at his location, all while trying to find a way to contact the boy. Along the way he gets assistance from a child psychologist who volunteered at one of the refugee camps, a billionaire who previously hired Samson to find his sister who had been kidnapped by terrorists, and some locals who are pulled in to serve as support. There are also other spies and organizations who may want to help Naji, as well as Naji’s sister who provides a link to his family. The mix of people is complicated and their roles unexpectedly shift from time to time, which adds to the difficulty of Samson’s job.

The story is a compelling one, and has the potential to become a taut adventure as Naji seeks to elude those who would harm him. However, because the book relies more on telling the tale rather than helping the reader feel and experience the action, the tension never quite grows as expected, making it easy to interrupt reading throughout the novel. Overall, it remains an interesting story, but not the edge of your seat read you might expect from the subject matter.

I was worried we would get lost in a refugee debate and yet this story of Naji and the technological and physical race makes great reading.. Luc SAMSON (great name choice) an ex-refugee in his own right, outrace evil to find the young survivor who may be nearing the end of all his good breaks. Are English writers capturing our reading lives? Lee Child and now Porter; I'm just saying this reads like a story instead of a 'serial' piece, sit back and enjoy my friends!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher. For letting me review this book.
This book sheds light on the immigrant crisis .
It is a fast paced thriller

The best aspect of Firefly by Porter is the harrowing description of refugees escaping from the. Middle East and their experiences as migrants attempting to enter Europe. That said, as a 13 year old, Firefly’s intelligence and resourcefulness is incredible and that is one of the flaws in the book. It is simply not to be believed, unless one can imagine him as a superhero from Marvel. In addition, Samson, the MI6 contractor hired to find him to retrieve information that Firefly has recorded on his cell phone concerning terror activities has a pretty flat character as a gambler on horse racing. The book is too long and the too numerous misses where Samson just fails to encounter Firefly are exasperating to the reader. I received this book from Netgalley.

I'm a fan of Henry Porter and this book looks like it might have been a great one, but I was forced to give up halfway through. The .pdf provided by the publisher through NetGalley was such a mess and reading it became such an unpleasant experience that I simple refused to go on. Random line breaks, paragraphing frequently missing altogether, time breaks running together, and other grotesque formatting errors made the narrative all but incomprehensible. Circulating such a carelessly generated ARC is a gesture of disrespect by the publisher to both readers and the author. This publisher should be ashamed of how little effort it put out to support this writer, but sadly it probably doesn't much care. There's always another writer and another book, isn't there?

I found the novel to be incredibly boring. I liked the author's previous novel, but this one was just not interesting.

Heartbreaking, thrilling, maddening, exciting. Firefly gave me so much emotion and held my attention with every page. It's very rare these days that I finish a book in one sitting but I couldn't put this book down. There were a few pacing issues in my opinion, but not too often.

An action story that moves at a good pace. Good story line that flows. And keeps you interested. If you like this genre you will like this book.

Porter has constructed an imaginative and entertaining thriller in the genre of LeCarre. Well constructed and worth the read.

Shedding some light on the immigration crisis from the middle East, this story centers around a young boy with ISIS secrets and the secret agent tasked with finding him before the bad guys do. There wasn't much to the writing on an emotional level but my interest was maintained without it.

Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley