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A review by batrock
Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews
3.0
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.