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anthers 's review for:
Red Sparrow
by Jason Matthews
There were two things that stood out to me immediately about the novel Red Sparrow. The first is that Nathaniel Nash is clearly meant to be the author's own dashing self-insert. The second is that the main character Dominika Egorova is probably the closest thing to the old joke about men writing women as 'breasting boobily down the stairs' as I've ever seen written in an actual book.
Aside from that, there were several other reasons I found myself contemplating putting the book down. For one, the supporting characters were much more engaging than the two leads were. If there was a book about Korchnoi and his exploits as a long-lived mole in Russian intelligence, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. Dominika, in all her breasted boobiness, is a woman whose character is entirely written around her sex appeal. And the frequent sex scenes are weird. Did her sexual awakening where she masturbated with a precious heirloom hairbrush really need to be included? She's also a synesthete that can read people's emotions, which is somehow both over-utilized and under-explored in the novel.
There was also a scene with some out-of the blue transphobia that was incredibly jarring. Towards the end of the book Nate gets in an altercation with a female Russian mole who has been stealing state secrets about submarine manufacture. For no reason except to make her more monstrous, the book fixates on her being hypermasculine and having a 'bulge' in her spandex workout gear and being near impossible to defeat. It had no purpose in the story other than that one fight and was never brought up again.
This is a particularly egregious example, but it highlights something that Jason Matthews does a lot. All of the good characters are conventionally attractive, or if not conventionally attractive they exude personality and charm. This extends to the good Russians, and is used to contrast Dominika from her non-traitor peers in the Russian intelligence service. The evil characters, however, are flagged by being unattractive. This could be through exploiting disability as ugliness (Matorin's 'poached egg' blind eye, another character's apparent dwarfism) or through the use of Dominika's synesthesia. Either way it's cheap writing. I'm not a child and I don't need Disney-style villain coding to make it clear who the bad guys are.
What I did enjoy and what kept me from giving up on Red Sparrow all together was the detailed spycraft and the tense pacing of the action. I didn't care all that much about Nate or Dominika, but I wanted to figure out what happened next in the book. It's a good thing, too, or I would have tossed it much earlier.
All in all, I managed to finish it, and I consider that a victory. 2.5/3 stars, rounded up.
Aside from that, there were several other reasons I found myself contemplating putting the book down. For one, the supporting characters were much more engaging than the two leads were. If there was a book about Korchnoi and his exploits as a long-lived mole in Russian intelligence, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. Dominika, in all her breasted boobiness, is a woman whose character is entirely written around her sex appeal. And the frequent sex scenes are weird. Did her sexual awakening where she masturbated with a precious heirloom hairbrush really need to be included? She's also a synesthete that can read people's emotions, which is somehow both over-utilized and under-explored in the novel.
There was also a scene with some out-of the blue transphobia that was incredibly jarring. Towards the end of the book Nate gets in an altercation with a female Russian mole who has been stealing state secrets about submarine manufacture. For no reason except to make her more monstrous, the book fixates on her being hypermasculine and having a 'bulge' in her spandex workout gear and being near impossible to defeat. It had no purpose in the story other than that one fight and was never brought up again.
This is a particularly egregious example, but it highlights something that Jason Matthews does a lot. All of the good characters are conventionally attractive, or if not conventionally attractive they exude personality and charm. This extends to the good Russians, and is used to contrast Dominika from her non-traitor peers in the Russian intelligence service. The evil characters, however, are flagged by being unattractive. This could be through exploiting disability as ugliness (Matorin's 'poached egg' blind eye, another character's apparent dwarfism) or through the use of Dominika's synesthesia. Either way it's cheap writing. I'm not a child and I don't need Disney-style villain coding to make it clear who the bad guys are.
What I did enjoy and what kept me from giving up on Red Sparrow all together was the detailed spycraft and the tense pacing of the action. I didn't care all that much about Nate or Dominika, but I wanted to figure out what happened next in the book. It's a good thing, too, or I would have tossed it much earlier.
All in all, I managed to finish it, and I consider that a victory. 2.5/3 stars, rounded up.