Red Sparrow: A Novel Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CX6YUQ4 | Format: PDF
Red Sparrow: A Novel Description
The start of a major career! A gripping, highly commercial espionage thriller written with the delicious insider detail and up-to-the-minute insight only known to a veteran CIA spook.
In today's Russia, dominated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, state intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a "Sparrow" - a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the CIA's most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers, trained in their respective spy schools, collide in a charged atmosphere of tradecraft, deception, and inevitably, a forbidden spiral of carnal attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America's valuable mole in Moscow.
Seeking revenge against her soulless masters, Dominika begins a fatal double life, recruited by the CIA to ferret out a high-level traitor in Washington - hunt down a Russian illegal buried deep in the U.S. military and, against all odds, to return to Moscow as the new-generation penetration of Putin's intelligence service. Dominika and Nathaniel's impossible love affair and twisted spy game come to a deadly conclusion in the shocking climax of this electrifying, up-to-the minute spy thriller.
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- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 17 hours and 55 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: June 4, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CX6YUQ4
I received an ARC of this book from Net Galley and the publisher in return for an honest review, which follows.
I am an avid reader of thrillers and am particularly a fan of espionage thrillers. So, I figured that Red Sparrow would be "right up my alley." However, the book's slow pace during the first hundred pages kept me undecided as to whether I was liking it or not. This is because it took me awhile to get used to the fact that Red Sparrow wasn't going to be a book filled with lots of physical action -- e.g., fist fights, gun fights, killings, dramatic car chases, etc.-- that I've come to expect from books of this type.
Soon after, however, I realized that Red Sparrow is an espionage thriller that is several notches above the typical book in this genre. It is filled with many fully dimensional, credible characters and location descriptions that make you feel that you are there experiencing all of the deceptions, schemes, and double crosses involving the various CIA and Russian intelligence agents and politicians --some of whom are moles for both sides. Further, it becomes quickly obvious that first-time author and former CIA operative, Jason Matthews, really knows his subject matter, as Red Sparrow is filled with an abundance of information about the inner workings within both the U.S. and Russian intelligence organizations that is not only interesting, it serves to create an atmosphere that keeps the reader shaking his/her head in wonder.
This book will hold you in its grip. Jason Matthews rivals the masters of the genre, I cannot remember ever being so riveted by the characters in a spy story as they get pulled deeper into a terrifying series of concentric events.
The twists leading up to the most magnificent turn, which is a pivotal yet deceptively simple idea that unfolds throughout the third act, are elegantly choreographed, yet while reading I wasn't thinking about technical or structural expertise, just totally immersed in the story, which deftly shifts back and forth between the humanity of the characters, the incessant tradecraft and counterespionage, and the intense and shocking violence inherent in the most crucial of conspiracies, with huge stakes and an ever-expanding web of motivated operatives.
It's all there, travel to dozens of exotic locations around the world, taste the food, see the sights, witness the exchange of violence and deception between intelligence services, and get completely wrapped up in the astounding love story embedded in the midst of ruthless treachery and radical choices that leave the participants in the spy game a dwindling set of unpalatable options.
Hero and heroine are put to the test time and again, it was all I could do not to read the whole book in one sitting, I finished the final eighty pages at eight in the morning and can't wait for time to pass so I can read it again.
The women in this story erupt from the pages in fully-realized passionate motivation to take charge of engineering intricate plots, there is often a freakish, scary, next-level psychopathic killer waiting around the corner, unpredictable and plausible in the extreme.
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