THE EMPATH

When the president of the United States announces that he has a brain tumor, a veteran with supernatural abilities makes it his mission to help him recover in Agliolo’s thriller.

Jason Marino, an honorably discharged Navy lieutenant–turned–day trader, is an empath who can not only experience others’ pain, but also use this connection to help them recover from injury or illness. His life “is centered around the ‘pull’ ”—an inexplicable urge that directs him to people who need his help. His ability to heal others doesn’t come without consequences, though; he’s chosen to keep it a secret in order to protect himself and his loved ones, but his secrecy eventually ruined his marriage and rendered him something of a loner. His best friend, Ted, introduces him to a woman named Sarah, and she and Jason experience an immediate romantic connection. Eventually, Sarah tells Jason, Ted, and Ted’s wife, Leslie, that she’s precognitive, which allows her to have accurate dreams of the future. Her abilities bring her and Jason closer, so when he sets out to heal the president from his stage 3 tumor, he asks her to come along. What they both don’t realize is that this is just the first step of a mission to save the world from a catastrophic threat. Over the course of this paranormal thriller, Agliolo immerses readers in the action by often employing very short snippets of dialogue, which allows the reader to feel each moment’s urgency. However, there are other times when the author overdramatizes the action and loads it with excessive detail, as when a submarine ensign tries to explain the next steps of a mission: “The capacitance accelerometer senses changes between microstructures…the accelerometer will translate that capacitance to voltage for interpretation….” Moments such as these can make one’s attention wander, and they make it easy to miss important story elements.

A sometimes-compelling tale of superpowered operatives that occasionally gets lost in technical jargon.