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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
My favorite part was the recipes between chapters. All females were walking body parts while the males were pulsing auras. Minus Putin, he was right up there with the women—shirtless, sweaty & fantastical. Dominika had to share every page she was on with her heaving chesticles. Three stars because I really want to taste Estonian beet salad.
Definitely recommend for those with patience
I LOVE history. There’s always something to be learned from things that happened in the past. I’ve never really showed any interest in the Cold War, but this was an enlightning read; and if you’re a Cold War fanatic, this may be the book for you. But I won’t say I wasn’t fascinated by the Red Army, or the KGB or the Gulag, etc. And this book makes you wonder if the Cold War really ever ended. Most people would, naturally, say yes, but I can guarantee that more than half of Russia and a select few in America would disagree with that statement. If you were to look deeply into Putin’s presidency, you’d find Soviet fraudulence and an excessive thirst for power.
It’s that fact that makes this book seem almost fast paced and true straight to the core. And Jason Matthews doesn’t make up the modern spy game that is played between the CIA and the SVR (Russian agency.) That’s one of the realest things in this novel. And Matthews knows his information, he actually lived this story. Matthews was a CIA operative for over thirty years, and was stationed in many cities overseas executing clandestine acts and recruiting agents.And if you try to tell me this isn’t a thriller, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. The whole story is thrilling. I could hardly put the book down most times because I was trying to keep up with the secrets and how things would play out for both the good and the bad of both sides, American and Russian. But I won’t lie, watching spy movies is much more fun than reading them, and I was beyond excited for this movie (which crushed my hopes. The movie was crap, sorry Jennifer Lawrence.) But I was told that the spy drama, The Americans, is really good, and could be considered doing Red Sparrow justice.
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I LOVE history. There’s always something to be learned from things that happened in the past. I’ve never really showed any interest in the Cold War, but this was an enlightning read; and if you’re a Cold War fanatic, this may be the book for you. But I won’t say I wasn’t fascinated by the Red Army, or the KGB or the Gulag, etc. And this book makes you wonder if the Cold War really ever ended. Most people would, naturally, say yes, but I can guarantee that more than half of Russia and a select few in America would disagree with that statement. If you were to look deeply into Putin’s presidency, you’d find Soviet fraudulence and an excessive thirst for power.
It’s that fact that makes this book seem almost fast paced and true straight to the core. And Jason Matthews doesn’t make up the modern spy game that is played between the CIA and the SVR (Russian agency.) That’s one of the realest things in this novel. And Matthews knows his information, he actually lived this story. Matthews was a CIA operative for over thirty years, and was stationed in many cities overseas executing clandestine acts and recruiting agents.And if you try to tell me this isn’t a thriller, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. The whole story is thrilling. I could hardly put the book down most times because I was trying to keep up with the secrets and how things would play out for both the good and the bad of both sides, American and Russian. But I won’t lie, watching spy movies is much more fun than reading them, and I was beyond excited for this movie (which crushed my hopes. The movie was crap, sorry Jennifer Lawrence.) But I was told that the spy drama, The Americans, is really good, and could be considered doing Red Sparrow justice.
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Not a bad book. Love the environment despite being a little unrealistic and sugarcoated in many ways. Really looking forward to see how JLaw will pull off this character.
This took me awhile to get through because a lot of the specifics on spy tradecraft and Russian protocols were so detailed (and I have little frame of reference). I think had I read it three years ago, I wouldn't have appreciated what Matthews is sharing here--a fictional, inside of view of spies in the CIA and Russia, and there is a lot here that explains current events with Russia. It builds the Russian worldview in detail. Were parts of it predictable? Well, yes. It's a spy novel. It's a trilogy. So you already know someone will die and someone will live for the next book. The recipes at the end of each chapter threw me at first, but by the end, it made perfect sense in how the mindset of a spy colors the world.
Никога не съм си падал по шпионски романи и филми - тия тайнствени преследвания из разни улички, размяна на пароли посред нощ, промъквания за секретни документи и играта на котка и мишка на дребно, върху която обаче са заложени съдбините на света (ама всъщност не са) винаги ми е била доста досадна. Джейсън Матюс е пенсиониран агент от ЦРУ и може би това е вълшебната съставка, която прави Червената лястовица доста интересна - дотолкова, че да грабне вниманието ми и да не го остави до края.
Книгата позволява да хвърлим един поглед във вътрешността на вечната шпионска игра, да се запознаем с някои от използваните методи и тактики, да видим една страна от отношенията на САЩ и Русия.
Авторът явно познава добре руският шпионски жаргон, но познанията му по разговорен руски очевидно не са на ниво, така че постоянните му вметки на руски думи в текста доста често не са на място, личи си, че е взел английски речеви конструкции и ги е превел с речник, докато руснак би използвал идиом или друга дума.
Като цяло, авторът е на същото мнение като Гари Каспаров относно Русия на Путин - че СССР не е преставала да съществува, просто е променила формата си, че Студената война никога не е преставала, просто е станала по-хибридна и че методите и тактиките на тайните служби на Русия за подриване на другите държави и за държане в подчинение на собственото й население не се различават от тия от преди 1989г.
Книгата позволява да хвърлим един поглед във вътрешността на вечната шпионска игра, да се запознаем с някои от използваните методи и тактики, да видим една страна от отношенията на САЩ и Русия.
Авторът явно познава добре руският шпионски жаргон, но познанията му по разговорен руски очевидно не са на ниво, така че постоянните му вметки на руски думи в текста доста често не са на място, личи си, че е взел английски речеви конструкции и ги е превел с речник, докато руснак би използвал идиом или друга дума.
Като цяло, авторът е на същото мнение като Гари Каспаров относно Русия на Путин - че СССР не е преставала да съществува, просто е променила формата си, че Студената война никога не е преставала, просто е станала по-хибридна и че методите и тактиките на тайните служби на Русия за подриване на другите държави и за държане в подчинение на собственото й население не се различават от тия от преди 1989г.
I’m giving this a 3.5, although I’ve chosen to round down instead of rounding up. I just couldn’t give this a 4. I did enjoy this book, especially learning about the tradecraft of the spy game. I also enjoyed that it was set post-Cold War, instead of returning to the paranoia of the 80s as they did in The Americans television show. It was bogged down little bit too much in some of the politics of both sides and also in the romance part of the story, which appeals to a more mass market audience than me.
I read this book after hearing all the brouhaha about the movie version and Jennifer Lawrence blahblahblah. I enjoyed the espionage passages, clearly the author knows a lot about his subject and details surveillance/countersurveillance/ tradecraft in a very entertaining way. But just when he gets going, he throws in a Harlequin romance sex scene that's just mind-bogglingly BAD. Like embarrassingly bad. The typical bad-ass, gorgeous heroine-spy goddess-with-a-heart-of-gold-who-can-withstand-torture-no-man-can-endure is just meh- a cardboard cutout in the shape of Jennifer Lawrence. Silly. Likewise, the Senator Beeyatch without an ounce of sense, who slept and clawed her way to the top...ugh. Another case of a book ruined by the inability of men to write a reasonably realistic female character who is...wait-for-it..multifaceted..maybe smart but not Snow White or the Evil Stepmother. There were times I really enjoyed this book, thought it on par with an old Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum novel, but then we'd slide back into Harlequin territory (both of those authors had the same tendency with female characters, but at least those interludes were blessedly brief and not the focus of the book). I'll recommend this book to my husband with the caveat that when Nate and Dominika start thinking about each other, he can skip a few pages and save himself a few brain cells. Overall, if I could strip (haha) the sex scenes out of the book, I'd give it four stars, ignoring the flat female characters in the setting of a pretty decent espionage thriller.
I enjoyed the overall plot of the book, but I found that it drug a bit in various places. I will look forward to reading the next in the series, hopeful that it will move at a better pace for me now that I am familiar with the characters and the author’s way of telling the story.