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A review by brettt
The Athena Project by Brad Thor
2.0
First, a few bullet points:
1) Brad Thor deserves kudos for putting some ladies kicking tail into the driver's seat of an international intrigue action thriller. The Athena Project is also the name given to a special Delta Force unit comprised of four straight-shooting, no-nonsense red-blooded American women who use their own gifts and abilities to handle missions differently than a squad of male operatives would do -- and sometimes better.
2) Brad Thor deserves a solid gong for the way he writes his female characters. Take a paint-by-numbers late-run Charlie's Angels episode, mix it with either of the loud and empty movie versions of the same, and sauteé in the kind of conversations adolescent males wish girls had when they were alone with no men around and they were being badass, and you have the four operatives of Athena.
Here, the lethal ladies are on the trail of some recently rediscovered Nazi technology that's already fallen into the wrong hands, which are swiftly trying to get it up and running for their own nefarious purposes. On the way, they match up against a sleazy arms dealer, Czech thugs and an Eastern European criminal leader affiliated with a shadowy organization bent on world dominion. The story moves quickly enough and Thor has a gift for high-tension action scenes, but you almost have to recast the way he writes women characters as satirical in order to diminish the temptation to sail the book into an opposing wall. Which brings us to a final bullet point:
3) He's getting better, but every time I read Brad Thor I'm reminded of how much I'm going to miss Vince Flynn.
Original available here.
1) Brad Thor deserves kudos for putting some ladies kicking tail into the driver's seat of an international intrigue action thriller. The Athena Project is also the name given to a special Delta Force unit comprised of four straight-shooting, no-nonsense red-blooded American women who use their own gifts and abilities to handle missions differently than a squad of male operatives would do -- and sometimes better.
2) Brad Thor deserves a solid gong for the way he writes his female characters. Take a paint-by-numbers late-run Charlie's Angels episode, mix it with either of the loud and empty movie versions of the same, and sauteé in the kind of conversations adolescent males wish girls had when they were alone with no men around and they were being badass, and you have the four operatives of Athena.
Here, the lethal ladies are on the trail of some recently rediscovered Nazi technology that's already fallen into the wrong hands, which are swiftly trying to get it up and running for their own nefarious purposes. On the way, they match up against a sleazy arms dealer, Czech thugs and an Eastern European criminal leader affiliated with a shadowy organization bent on world dominion. The story moves quickly enough and Thor has a gift for high-tension action scenes, but you almost have to recast the way he writes women characters as satirical in order to diminish the temptation to sail the book into an opposing wall. Which brings us to a final bullet point:
3) He's getting better, but every time I read Brad Thor I'm reminded of how much I'm going to miss Vince Flynn.
Original available here.