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judythereader's review against another edition
3.0
The Athena Project is a government program to recruit and train woman for Special Forces/Delta Force. This book focuses on one team of 4 operatives as they are lead to try to stop the use of a technological weapon left over from the Nazis. It's a roller coaster ride that visits 3 continents to tell its story.
It's a fun, exciting adventure and the team is made up of interesting women. The problem is that we learn as much or more about characters who are supporting in this book as we do about our heroines. This is a spin-off from the author's Steve Horvath series and we are referred back there quite often.
It's also sexist. Even with women kicking ass throughout the book, but author felt it necessary to write a completely unnecessary scene about women going into the jungle needing to use the last indoor plumbing while the men did all the heavy lifting. It was irritating.
On the other hand, the sub-plot about spies trying to turn each other with sex and conspiracy manipulations was an interesting view of that kind of espionage.
I honestly don't know if I'll read another, but it I actually enjoyed it while it was going on.
It's a fun, exciting adventure and the team is made up of interesting women. The problem is that we learn as much or more about characters who are supporting in this book as we do about our heroines. This is a spin-off from the author's Steve Horvath series and we are referred back there quite often.
It's also sexist. Even with women kicking ass throughout the book, but author felt it necessary to write a completely unnecessary scene about women going into the jungle needing to use the last indoor plumbing while the men did all the heavy lifting. It was irritating.
On the other hand, the sub-plot about spies trying to turn each other with sex and conspiracy manipulations was an interesting view of that kind of espionage.
I honestly don't know if I'll read another, but it I actually enjoyed it while it was going on.
catrev's review
4.0
The Athena Project by Brad Thor is a follow-up to his novel Foreign Influence which introduced readers to the women of the Athena Project. Four women: Gretchen Casey, Julie Ericsson, Meghan Rhodes, and Alex Cooper have been carefully chosen by the government to do jobs that most men could not. Each has specialized abilities, but all are strikingly beautiful, because their beauty is part of their formidable weaponry. When the women are ordered to capture an arms dealer in Venice, the case takes them into strange territory as forces from around the world fight to control a secret power once utilized by the Nazis and beyond most people's imagination. The women will be forced to work together as never before to stop the bad guys from using a monstrous device that would change the world. Thor's writing is action packed and highly suspenseful. Much of the book is building the plot and getting readers caught up on the past, but the book really takes off when Thor allows the women to take charge. Their banter elevates the book above standard American espionage/thriller/military fare. And the women are more than just the sex objects most authors relegate them to. Each woman has a unique personality and voice, and that should carry The Athena Project through several more books with these fascinating characters.
katrinaburch's review against another edition
4.0
I actually give it 4.5 stars. Just because the ending was rather... suddenly lame and just kind of ended. I enjoyed the book and I look forward to reading Brad Thor's other works. I did read this out of order so some of the character developments from some of Thor's other novels may have made more sense if I had read the others first but I was still able to understand and follow the story.
krisrid's review against another edition
4.0
If you like action/political/thriller stories AND you're always on the lookout for strong female characters this is a book for you!
The book is about a Delta special forces team who goes to the super dangerous places, and completes the impossible missions that nobody else can do . . . oh, and the team is ALL WOMEN!
The story is exciting and fast-paced, the locations and the activities the team pulls off are very clever and engaging, and while the four women's characters aren't fleshed out enough to really make them fully individual - they sort of come across as almost interchangeable - the author does include lots of the gallows humour that tends to go along with people doing the kind of ultra-dangerous missions these women do and that makes the story even more enjoyable.
The plot - which I won't spoil - is a combination of arms dealers, the U.S. government's bad behaviour secret actitivies, Nazis, and experimental technologies [oh, and we're told at the beginning of the book that all the technologies talked about in the story are real which gave the story and extra twist of interesting] combined with kick-ass, super-impressive chicks as secret agents. It's a fast, fun really exciting read, and I enjoyed it a lot!
The book is about a Delta special forces team who goes to the super dangerous places, and completes the impossible missions that nobody else can do . . . oh, and the team is ALL WOMEN!
The story is exciting and fast-paced, the locations and the activities the team pulls off are very clever and engaging, and while the four women's characters aren't fleshed out enough to really make them fully individual - they sort of come across as almost interchangeable - the author does include lots of the gallows humour that tends to go along with people doing the kind of ultra-dangerous missions these women do and that makes the story even more enjoyable.
The plot - which I won't spoil - is a combination of arms dealers, the U.S. government's bad behaviour secret actitivies, Nazis, and experimental technologies [oh, and we're told at the beginning of the book that all the technologies talked about in the story are real which gave the story and extra twist of interesting] combined with kick-ass, super-impressive chicks as secret agents. It's a fast, fun really exciting read, and I enjoyed it a lot!
dmantonya's review against another edition
5.0
This one was pretty good after awhile. At first it jumped around quite a bit and made you wonder how it would tie together. Finally a bit past halfway it began to tie all the loose ends together. It is about a counter terrorist group that is working on a WWII idea to send bombs thru cyberspace.
canada_matt's review
4.0
A very good read, but not excellent. I liked the intro of the femme fatale, but still yearn for the solo Harvath adventure. Part Charlie's Angels, part Scot Harvath, I think Thor could lay the groundwork for some future Athena novels, but I hope Scot does not take a back seat.
theangrylawngnome's review against another edition
2.0
Charlie's Angels meets Delta Force and blah, blah, blah. You know the drill in a a book like this: Men are REAL men, women are REAL women and drug overlords from the Balkans with excessive body hair, personal hygiene issues and sexist attitudes are REAL drug overlords from the Balkans with excessive body hair, personal hygiene issues and sexist attitudes.
But thank god Team Barbie Doll (Diversity Edition™) is on watch to protect us all from the above, as well as some confused mess about "rediscovered" Nazi technology a mere 60+ years after the fact. Boy, those Nazis sure were busy, busy, busy inventing stuff, which we should all be thankful for, since it gives hack authors a way to pull stuff out of their rectum that might otherwise seriously plug them up.
PS: I wonder if the author of this masterpiece even knows the first thing about the Athena of mythology? Like the perpetual virginity thing, getting popped out of Zeus's head a fully grown adult fully clad in her armor and that where she gets a mention in anything I've read she comes across as rather sterile and flat. Oh. Maybe he does know at least that last bit.
PPS: Gotta with two stars. I finished the damn thing, and due to the obvious degeneration of my intellectual capacity and utter lack of taste kept reading even as I kept groaning.
But thank god Team Barbie Doll (Diversity Edition™) is on watch to protect us all from the above, as well as some confused mess about "rediscovered" Nazi technology a mere 60+ years after the fact. Boy, those Nazis sure were busy, busy, busy inventing stuff, which we should all be thankful for, since it gives hack authors a way to pull stuff out of their rectum that might otherwise seriously plug them up.
PS: I wonder if the author of this masterpiece even knows the first thing about the Athena of mythology? Like the perpetual virginity thing, getting popped out of Zeus's head a fully grown adult fully clad in her armor and that where she gets a mention in anything I've read she comes across as rather sterile and flat. Oh. Maybe he does know at least that last bit.
PPS: Gotta with two stars. I finished the damn thing, and due to the obvious degeneration of my intellectual capacity and utter lack of taste kept reading even as I kept groaning.
danperlman's review against another edition
3.0
A bit tame in comparison to the Scot Horvath line of books, it will be interesting to see where he takes this series. There's a bit of what seems to be "holding back", as if he doesn't think women can actually be as effective or as, well, brutal, as the men in his other books.
brettt's review against another edition
2.0
First, a few bullet points:
1) Brad Thor deserves kudos for putting some ladies kicking tail into the driver's seat of an international intrigue action thriller. The Athena Project is also the name given to a special Delta Force unit comprised of four straight-shooting, no-nonsense red-blooded American women who use their own gifts and abilities to handle missions differently than a squad of male operatives would do -- and sometimes better.
2) Brad Thor deserves a solid gong for the way he writes his female characters. Take a paint-by-numbers late-run Charlie's Angels episode, mix it with either of the loud and empty movie versions of the same, and sauteé in the kind of conversations adolescent males wish girls had when they were alone with no men around and they were being badass, and you have the four operatives of Athena.
Here, the lethal ladies are on the trail of some recently rediscovered Nazi technology that's already fallen into the wrong hands, which are swiftly trying to get it up and running for their own nefarious purposes. On the way, they match up against a sleazy arms dealer, Czech thugs and an Eastern European criminal leader affiliated with a shadowy organization bent on world dominion. The story moves quickly enough and Thor has a gift for high-tension action scenes, but you almost have to recast the way he writes women characters as satirical in order to diminish the temptation to sail the book into an opposing wall. Which brings us to a final bullet point:
3) He's getting better, but every time I read Brad Thor I'm reminded of how much I'm going to miss Vince Flynn.
Original available here.
1) Brad Thor deserves kudos for putting some ladies kicking tail into the driver's seat of an international intrigue action thriller. The Athena Project is also the name given to a special Delta Force unit comprised of four straight-shooting, no-nonsense red-blooded American women who use their own gifts and abilities to handle missions differently than a squad of male operatives would do -- and sometimes better.
2) Brad Thor deserves a solid gong for the way he writes his female characters. Take a paint-by-numbers late-run Charlie's Angels episode, mix it with either of the loud and empty movie versions of the same, and sauteé in the kind of conversations adolescent males wish girls had when they were alone with no men around and they were being badass, and you have the four operatives of Athena.
Here, the lethal ladies are on the trail of some recently rediscovered Nazi technology that's already fallen into the wrong hands, which are swiftly trying to get it up and running for their own nefarious purposes. On the way, they match up against a sleazy arms dealer, Czech thugs and an Eastern European criminal leader affiliated with a shadowy organization bent on world dominion. The story moves quickly enough and Thor has a gift for high-tension action scenes, but you almost have to recast the way he writes women characters as satirical in order to diminish the temptation to sail the book into an opposing wall. Which brings us to a final bullet point:
3) He's getting better, but every time I read Brad Thor I'm reminded of how much I'm going to miss Vince Flynn.
Original available here.
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