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peter__b 's review for:
Red Sparrow
by Jason Matthews
I'll admit, I mostly picked this up because of the movie based on this book that was due to come out soon and I like comparing the two. I haven't seen the movie yet, so while this book was mostly a snoozefest, I can see the potential with the movie adaptation. There are some interesting ideas here, but the author was somehow too preoccupied with writing a spy thriller to actually develop any of them. That's the biggest shame here since there were a handful of scenes that got me excited and are the only reason this 1.5 book gets the rounding up treatment.
In terms of characters, there were two protagonists who were set up quite well and got a fair amount of development. I even liked them for the most part and thought that the scenes with either or both of them were the most interesting. However, there are quite a few secondary characters in this book as well and they were significantly less interesting. Still, we got to see their viewpoints as well for some reason which really slowed the pacing down. I'm not sure why the author was so scared of having some mystery in a spy thriller.
I'm also using the term 'thriller' very loosely here since after a while this becomes such a stock standard progression of events that nothing is a surprise anymore. From a story perspective, this was some very ordinary storytelling and I really hope the movie doesn't follow the book's example. We also need to talk about the 'recipes' at the end of each chapter. Why? There was absolutely no reason for them and they weren't even useful since they didn't have measurements. Speaking of useless things, the female protagonist has a form of synesthesia which while interesting, turns out to be a complete red herring while being technically magical in a setting that's supposed to be modern-day Earth, complete with a cringe-worthy Putin.
Dammit, I think I talked myself into changing my mind on that rounding situation. The more I think about this book, the more I dislike it. And that reminds me, there's probably more time spent on fruitless 'surveillance' and 'tradecraft' than there is on interactions with our two protagonists. Then you also have the issues of poor writing, lack of suspense, pointless scenes, excruciating repetition of aura colours and the dullending second half. Yea, I talked myself into it; it has to be a 1 star. Shockingly, I won't be recommending this book to anyone. Rather go watch the movie and hope to be entertained by some good acting and fun action scenes.
In terms of characters, there were two protagonists who were set up quite well and got a fair amount of development. I even liked them for the most part and thought that the scenes with either or both of them were the most interesting. However, there are quite a few secondary characters in this book as well and they were significantly less interesting. Still, we got to see their viewpoints as well for some reason which really slowed the pacing down. I'm not sure why the author was so scared of having some mystery in a spy thriller.
I'm also using the term 'thriller' very loosely here since after a while this becomes such a stock standard progression of events that nothing is a surprise anymore. From a story perspective, this was some very ordinary storytelling and I really hope the movie doesn't follow the book's example. We also need to talk about the 'recipes' at the end of each chapter. Why? There was absolutely no reason for them and they weren't even useful since they didn't have measurements. Speaking of useless things, the female protagonist has a form of synesthesia which while interesting, turns out to be a complete red herring while being technically magical in a setting that's supposed to be modern-day Earth, complete with a cringe-worthy Putin.
Dammit, I think I talked myself into changing my mind on that rounding situation. The more I think about this book, the more I dislike it. And that reminds me, there's probably more time spent on fruitless 'surveillance' and 'tradecraft' than there is on interactions with our two protagonists. Then you also have the issues of poor writing, lack of suspense, pointless scenes, excruciating repetition of aura colours and the dull