Let's start with the good. The Mercenary by Jeffrey Stern has some amazing story elements. It follows the friendship of the author and his friend, Aimal. Aimal is an Afghani who starts as Stern's driver in his war torn country but ultimately becomes entangled with some shady characters. When the book focuses on Aimal and his tribulations, it truly shines. Aimal is a layered character and his coming of age during the War on Terror raises some very complicated and fascinating questions.

However, I did not enjoy this book because of two major flaws. First, Stern's writing is overwrought and distracting. His sentence structure often seems like he's jamming multiple thoughts together. In the beginning, it seemed as if he tried to insert alliteration as often as possible for reasons I didn't understand. These curious choices happen multiple times on every page and it was truly difficult to pay attention to the plot.

Stern also makes himself part of this book. On the face of it, this is not a deal-breaker. There are a few instances where he highlights some aspects of Afghanistan that Aimal's story would not. However, Stern's story takes way too much time away from Aimal. In fact, the entire first portion of the book is dedicated to his point of view before going over the same time period from Aimal's point of view.

This book ended up being a huge disappointment because there is an amazing story at its center, but the missteps were too much to overcome. If Aimal was the star of the show and Stern wrote more clearly, then this book would have been a must read.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and PublicAffairs.)