Namaste

by Sean Platt

Amit is a member of the order of shadow monks, his every waking moment is spent training his body and mind to the peak of human ability - and beyond. But the order is pacifist, a repository for deadly weapons with their safeties permanently set to "on." Until everything is taken from him, and Amit decides that turning the other cheek is no longer an option. Now, every ounce of his training will be put to the test. His epic quest for revenge will see wrongs righted - or see Amit forgotten in an unmarked grave. Namaste includes Prelude, as well as the rest of the adventure. Join Amit as he chases Nisha's killer from boss to boss, all the way to the last place he ever expected. He will fight, and die if he must. What will be, will be. It's a Zen thing. "Having read just about everything that these guys have written (separately and together), I absolutely loved it! Suspense, mystery, mysticism, monks, murder, love, fear, blood, revenge...just about anything you could imagine (all crammed into this one episode!). I'm still trying to wrap my brain around Amit. Do I love him? Do I hate him? Is he justified in his actions or a man gone over the edge? Knowing Sean and Johnny, no matter what I decide, they'll blow it out of the water! Can't wait to read more. Well done guys!" "Screw these guys. I have things to do but I decided to load this just to check out a serial on kindle and now I'm hooked. My dogs need to be fed, I need to change the oil in my car and I'm not sure where my infant son is. But I know where I'll be for the foreseeable sitting on my ass reading the sequels." "Sean Platt, Johnny Truant, and David Wright are masters of their craft. They excel at taking all that is good and fun from episodic t.v. and monthly comics and crafting well written stories. Namaste is no exception. A tale of love, loss, and vengeance with their special skewed vision. Like the Punisher main character Amit is almost instantly likable and even before you learn his reasoning you know that he is justified in his pursuit. Like all of the authors books I look forward to the continuing adventures of Amit." "In Namaste, Platt and Truant deftly sketch out the background, setting, and characters of their latest serial with minimal description and brief snatches of dialog, keeping the action at a fever pitch in a high-intensity Hong Kong cinema style thriller. Punctuated by scenes of graphic violence, the experiment in non-linear storytelling is effective for this short action-oriented installment. Over the course of a longer story, the back-and-forth narrative flow might grow tedious or confusing, but here the approach lends a filmic flair to the introduction of "a pacifist monk on a rampage." Fans of Chow Yun Fat or John Woo films looking for a literary equivalent should appreciate this latest Platt & Truant effort."

Genres: Thriller, Action, Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Adventure

310 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 7, 2013

About the author

Sean loves writing books, even more than reading them. He is co-founder of Collective Inkwell and Realm & Sands imprints, writes for children under the name Guy Incognito, and has more than his share of nose.

Together with co-authors David Wright and Johnny B. Truant, Sean has written the series Yesterdays Gone, WhiteSpace, ForNevermore, Available Darkness, Dark Crossings, Unicorn Western, The Beam, Namaste, Robot Proletariat, Cursed, Greens, Space Shuttle, and Everyone Gets Divorced. He also co-wrote the how-to indie book, Write. Publish. Repeat.

With Collective Inkwell
Yesterday's Gone: Post Apocalyptic - LOST by way of The Stand
WhiteSpace: Paranoid thriller on fictitious Hamilton Island
ForNevermore: YA horror that reads nothing like YA Horror
Available Darkness: A new breed of vampire thriller
Dark Crossings: Short stories, killer endings

With 47North
Z 2134: The Walking Dead meets The Hunger Games
Monstrous: Beauty and the Beast meets The Punisher

With Realm & Sands
Unicorn Western: The best story to ever come from a stupid idea
The Beam: Smart sci-fi to make you wonder exactly who we are
Namaste: A revenge thriller like nothing you've ever read
Robot Proletariat: The revolution starts here
Cursed: The old werewolf legend turned upside down
Greens: Retail noir comedy
Space Shuttle: Over the top comedy with all your favorite sci-fi characters
Everyone Gets Divorced: Like "Always Sunny" and "How I Met Your Mother" had a baby on your Kindle

Sean lives in Austin, TX with his wife, daughter, and son.
Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/seanplatt
 (say hi so he can follow you back!)

Reviews

[Joe Barlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant are back with yet another terrific tale from their gloriously twisted minds.

In "Namaste," we meet lovable Asian monk Amit, on a revenge quest against those who killed Nisha, his beloved. Armed only with his bare hands, a few sets of luxurious blue robes, and a lifetime of training in both marital arts and deep philosophy, Amit must exact his revenge against those who have wronged him.

Namaste can best be summed up in seven simple words:

What If Young Mr. Miyagi Went 'Nanners?

This book would make a terrific film, in the style of Tarantino's Kill Bill. The writing is kinetic, the action is beautifully described, and Amit's fortune cookie-like wisdom is eminently quotable.

With plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and a mystery at the center that's both thoughtful and satisfying, "Namaste" is highly recommended.

Platt & Truant have recently announced plans for a sequel. Can I pre-order yet?

[Les · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn’t work for me the way that other Truant/Pratt joints have. It starts off interestingly using a non-linear device which gets dropped a third of the way into the story. In the end the book felt overly long and padded out. Sorry, guys, this one wasn’t for me.

[Cindy Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was good. I usually don't know what's coming next. I did on this one...except I did think Woo would give a better explanation of his reasons. He was kind of a jerk.

[Thiago d'Evecque · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uma história legal sobre vingança com um monge treinado para ser uma máquina de matar quase invencível. Ele praticamente esquiva de balas. O livro é bem violento e tem muitas cenas pesadas, sangrentas, com torturas e mortes. O que não curti muito foi a narrativa. Teve exposições e monólogos internos demais pra poder explicar o treinamento e o modo de pensar do protagonista.

3.5

[Blaine Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the Prelude last Summer, when Realm and Sands was putting out shorter works to gauge interest going forward (and then ignored what folks said and wrote everything anyway.) After reading the prelude, I said, "I don't know if the story-telling method and chronology would work for me in a larger context, but it served really well to introduce the character and his motivations to set the series up. Note that this book is very violent, but at least not in a cringe-worthy way."

The prelude makes up the first 7 chapters, and the rest of the story delivered on what the prelude promised. Thankfully, the "memento-style" story telling ended after that first 7 chapters, because I don't think it could have continued, but the transition for the bulk of the novel (which is told in "real time" interspersed every few chapters with flashbacks that give you the necessary context into Amit's life) was quite smooth and definitely helped set the tone even after the shift.

The rest of the novel delivered on the promise of the prelude, and although the violence did escalate and in a few spots get a bit more gory and cringe-worthy it wasn't even close to bad enough for me to put down the book. The flashbacks and the clues that Amit finds as he works his way through the organization of criminals to find who gave the order for Nisha's death provide plenty of information to predict the ending, but also provide for multiple possibilities so you that you want to continue reading to see what actually happened. (I don't want to give spoilers, but my prevalent theory about who ordered Nisha's death and what was happening behind the scenes turned out to be wrong; it was the second person I thought likely to have ordered it that actually did.)

[Brian Switzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Namaste' is a story that comes at the reader from several different directions. As told by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, two of the finest authors in the indie space today, Namaste is a revenge fantasy thriller with philosophical underpinnings. The book looks at topics like 'does the end justify the means', 'can you do right by doing wrong', life, death, the afterlife, and the cosmic karma shuffle.

Amit is a monk in the order of the Sri. The Sri drill endlessly, spending nearly every moment conditioning their bodies to beyond what is known to be physically possible. They can control their breathing, speed up and slow down the function of their organs, kill with a finger and turn a doorknob with their toes, amongst many other things. They are pacifists, however, and learn these things only bring themselves to a higher plane.

Until the day a young woman that Amit is close to is killed. That sets him off on a trail of revenge that is violent and bloody. (Platt and Truant warn that this book has more blood and guts than their other work). The closer Amit gets to the person who ordered the killing, the more it appears the only person it could be is another Sri monk.

One of the authors' strengths is character building and they do an outstanding job with Amit. By book's end, he seems like an old friend who's beliefs and quirks you have known about for years. Namaste also shows an impressive knowledge of Eastern Philosophy- I don't know if one of the authors is steeped in the discipline or if all came from research, but the book, especially the latter half, could almost be a resource on the subject.

Namaste jumps out hard and fast, makes the reader think before it's all said and done, and entertains the entire way. What more could you ask from a novel?

[Edmund de Wight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I pounded through this book in one afternoon. It's not because it was short, or simple but because it was just so fun to read.
If you ever watched the old TV show Kung Fu with David Carradine, you have an idea of the feel of this book.
Amit is a monk from an order referred to as shadow monks. He has perfect control of his body and has mastered fighting arts that make him more than a match for anyone on Earth.
He has issues from being taken in as a child when his parents were murdered. His anger makes him less skilled than he should be but his teacher keeps helping him try to use the anger to become an even greater warrior rather than try to remove the anger as the abbot would prefer.
When a woman seeks sanctuary at the monastery he falls in love with her and she is soon brutally murdered by hired goons. Amit embraces the way of anger and red vengeance to follow the trail through the ranks of the mob bosses to find the ultimate architect of her death.
It's a wild ride circling the globe with action that brings memories of the old Destroyer novels to mind.
I LOVED IT.
I hope to see more adventures but will be satisfied with this if it is all that is written. God, what an action movie this would make. READ IT!

[Russell Schirtzinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novella is a story of revenge, cold occasionally gory revenge. Amit is a monk who leaves the shelter of his monastery on a world spanning quest to avenge his murdered love. Along the way he must question the teachings of his elders, his own morals, and his relationship with the universe.

This was a truly great story with but a couple of things that broke suspension of disbelief for me, a few moments that reminded me I was reading a work of fiction and jarred me out of the flow of the tale in progress.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Absolutely LOVED This Story!

Okay, so I'm a HUGE fan of Sean and Johnny's work, but for some reason Namaste wasn't on my radar of "Need to reads." Even so, I had some traveling to do and figured I'd give Namaste a shot during the flight, if it grabbed me I'd keep reading. Holy crap, it grabbed me alright...by the throat!

This was the perfect book to get lost in. Actually it was more like being pulled behind a speeding truck on a skateboard, there was no way I was letting go until the last page.

This story was brutal, cunning, thoughtful, and 100% AWESOME!

[Richard Knobloch · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of an unstoppable Kung-fu monk bent on avenging a lost love. Truly, I was surprised that I did like this story as much as I did. I must say that Namaste is worth picking up., but then I may be biased, because I too am a shadow monk

[John McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am writing a book with coincidently similar themes. This book was enjoyable and I thank the authors for their good work. The charactetrs were belevable

It calls for more about Amik and the Sri. The reincarnation tool is important to me. What do monks do for fun? J M

[Richard Givan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reminds me of the old tv show Kung Fu, with moments of intense action (more graphic here, for sure) amid stretches of Eastern philosophy. I thought the plot could have been more fleshed out, but it was consistently entertaining.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complex and philosophical.

Yet for all it's Japanese trappings, the philosophy espoused is Nietzschean. An odd dissonance and I remain unsure whether this is a fatal flaw or the books completion. I think the confusion itself makes the book worth reading.

[Sandeep · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bollywood movie plot

This book felt like the plot of a Bollywood masala movie. All that was missing was some song and dance. Not that it was not enjoyable, I liked it, but not a lot.

[Veronica Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of suspense...well written.

[Dale Heiken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it in one night

The story had a lot of twist that I never seen coming, this book would make a good series (lots of different ways to take these characters).

[Gen Giggles · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was interesting. But too many little inconsistancies and unexplained bits took away from the story.

[David Blaylock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick and enjoyable read.