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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
I reviewed it but my husband amazon account has been hooked up with my Goodreads and it messes up my Goodreads account. So that's that.
I am only giving this book 4 stars because of the difficulty level of keeping up with the Russian and military lingo, of which I am unfamiliar. That said, an intense plot and amazing characters. I'm ready for book 2!
You can read a book and not dislike it but still take forever to get through it. Words have weight, even if they're not terribly assembled, and the prose of Red Sparrow is dense.
Red Sparrow has two lead protagonists, and the Russian one is much more interesting than the American one; on the CIA side, the charmingly abrasive agent known as Gable would serve the novel much better than the sketchily outlined Nate.
Jason Matthews, a former CIA man himself, is not a natural writer. There's almost the suggestion, if you read between the lines, that American intelligence services aren't that much better than their Russian counterparts, but that would be treason. Stomp that thought down.
Incredibly episodic, with a muddled through line that isn't quite clear even on the last page, Red Sparrow is on the okay side of readable. It has a wild and irresponsible villainous Democrat who is never anything short of a caricature, it has a lot of "eroticism", it has an almost equal obsession with the detail of women's bodies and the finer points of dining. There's something about Black Sparrow, but not much. If there were half marks, this would be a two and a halfer rather than a three, but it's not worth condemning to the ignominy of a flat two.
And each chapter ends inexplicably with a recipe.
Red Sparrow has two lead protagonists, and the Russian one is much more interesting than the American one; on the CIA side, the charmingly abrasive agent known as Gable would serve the novel much better than the sketchily outlined Nate.
Jason Matthews, a former CIA man himself, is not a natural writer. There's almost the suggestion, if you read between the lines, that American intelligence services aren't that much better than their Russian counterparts, but that would be treason. Stomp that thought down.
Incredibly episodic, with a muddled through line that isn't quite clear even on the last page, Red Sparrow is on the okay side of readable. It has a wild and irresponsible villainous Democrat who is never anything short of a caricature, it has a lot of "eroticism", it has an almost equal obsession with the detail of women's bodies and the finer points of dining. There's something about Black Sparrow, but not much. If there were half marks, this would be a two and a halfer rather than a three, but it's not worth condemning to the ignominy of a flat two.
And each chapter ends inexplicably with a recipe.
Recipe for a Free Country
Mix one cup liberty with three teaspoons of justice. Add one informed electorate. Baste well with veto power. Stir in two cups of checks, sprinkle liberally with balances.
Awesome book. The film was enjoyable, but so glad I read the book second. The film is so reductive.
All hail the heir to the throne of Ludlum and le Carré!
What an ending! What an ending! Can't wait to start the second in the 3-book series.
I read and liked Jason Matthews' Red Sparrow, the first novel in a trilogy (and also a movie). It is a spy novel about Russia and the U.S., with all the intrigue, double-crossing, and violence you associate with the genre. A Russian woman, Dominika Egorova, is trained as a sparrow, or a sex spy, and her experiences lead to her being recruited by the CIA, specifically the agent Nate Nash (and then you get a romance there). She can actually see colors around people that indicate their mood, which is an intriguing addition to the narrative. There are American being paid by the Russians to spy as well.
The story moved along well, with plenty of twists and good descriptions of all the places they were. The odd thing about the novel is that there is mention of food in every chapter, then at the end is a short recipe for one of the dishes they ate. It was distracting to begin with, but then I got used to it and liked seeing what these dishes (many of them unfamiliar to me) were like. As you might expect from a spy novel written by a former CIA agent, the U.S. (and its spies) are all good and all the Russians (except those that spy for us) are bad. Indeed, one downside to the book is that the Russians come out much less nuanced.
The CIA itself gave it a favorable review, with this tidbit:
The amount of tradecraft, particularly surveillance and countersurveillance, will make the in-house reader wonder how he got all this past the Publications Review Board.
I enjoyed it enough that I plan to read the sequel.
From http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2019/01/jason-matthews-red-sparrow.html
The story moved along well, with plenty of twists and good descriptions of all the places they were. The odd thing about the novel is that there is mention of food in every chapter, then at the end is a short recipe for one of the dishes they ate. It was distracting to begin with, but then I got used to it and liked seeing what these dishes (many of them unfamiliar to me) were like. As you might expect from a spy novel written by a former CIA agent, the U.S. (and its spies) are all good and all the Russians (except those that spy for us) are bad. Indeed, one downside to the book is that the Russians come out much less nuanced.
The CIA itself gave it a favorable review, with this tidbit:
The amount of tradecraft, particularly surveillance and countersurveillance, will make the in-house reader wonder how he got all this past the Publications Review Board.
I enjoyed it enough that I plan to read the sequel.
From http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2019/01/jason-matthews-red-sparrow.html
You will love and hate this story. Yes, love AND hate.
I got tired of the recipes. Indeed, the book became boring. The beginning and ending made for fine drama but the author did not know what to do with the middle. And the recipes did not help. I don't come to thrillers for cookery lessons.