Red Sparrow: A Novel

This was my third attempt at this book. The story gets interesting at about halfway through and it’s a little hard to get over the hump to that point. The context is necessary just not as relevant yet.I like how this story subtly switches perspectives between the characters even during group interactions. I actually really enjoyed the humor. The pages where they are giving Nash shit for sleeping with Dominika the first time had my busting out loud in laughter. These glimmers of humor were nice among a relatively dark natured story.The romance was there but not the forefront of the story. Dominka felt slightly unrealistic as PTSD is a thing and she likely would have some kind of trauma response kicking in at times. You don’t really ‘train’ PTSD out of someone like it’s insinuating her training does. However, I liked her independence and the fact that you didn’t always have to like her or her decisions. Why did she agree to even help her uncle in the first place? She even said she could get another job. She already spoke multiple languages and would be primed to be a translator. Her special ability to see colors is a nice detail I wish they would have left in the film. Nate on the other hand feels very real. His motivations and personal conflicts feel relatable and understandable. It did sometimes feel like Nate was easier to write since Matthews was a man himself. Even the sex scenes felt somewhat written with a man’s perspective. Dominika is the only female recruit, only female in the room, etc. If you weren’t being told she was an impossibly beautiful woman at every opportunity, she could essentially have been a male character. The film made some key plot changes which helped really sell the female perspective a bit better.The recipes are a little interesting but their value cheapens a little as you go. You never get ingredient amounts so it’s not like you could actually use the recipes. The necessity to add a meal into each chapter actually feels natural most times, but did feel a little more forced once the action picked up around the end.It was a good cliff hanger ended. One that made me actually ask myself, “That’s it?”. Looking forward to reading the next one.

Who Is Spying On Whom?By Bob Gelms Jason Mathews has joined a very exclusive club of former real-live-in-the-flesh-honest-to-God spies who have come to write about espionage as fiction just like John le Carre, Ian Fleming and Graham Greene, to name a few you might have heard of. Mathews is an ex CIA spy of some 33 years and you can tell he’s experienced in real live spy craft just by reading a few pages of his first novel, Red Sparrow. I became totally convinced while reading the novel that real spies acted just like Mr. Mathews’ characters in the book. He’s very, very good. The book tells the story of the hauntingly beautiful Dominika Egorova. She starts out as the prima ballerina in a Russian dance company. Owing to an incident involving a jealous rival in the company, Dominika can no longer dance and she is set adrift until her beloved father passes away. It is then that her somewhat wicked uncle gets her involved with the Russian clandestine service. She is eventually enrolled in a school that teaches beautiful girls how to seduce vulnerable spies into becoming double agents for the Russians. The girls who graduate from this school are called Red Sparrows. The training is quite explicit. Since there is a Russian high up on the food chain who is spying for the Americans, Dominika is sent to Helsinki to seduce an American spy named Nathaniel Nash to see if she can find out who the double agent is. Nash is the double agent’s case officer. Not to be outdone, the Russians have a double agent high up on the political food chain in America spying for them. You almost need a scorecard to keep track on who is spying for whom. The plot becomes very involved but Mr. Mathews keeps the reader informed and abreast of the situation so it’s not hard to follow what’s happening. The book is filled with tradecraft, as they call it in the spy biz, and there were a few things that surprised me. The spy agencies on both sides eventually identify the spies who are working against them.There is an unwritten understanding that death will not be visited upon the opposition. But the spies still have to go to unbelievable lengths to lose the people following them. This can take up to 10 hours and is especially exhausting and exasperating when they often only get a few fleeting minutes with their contact. The spies on both sides are unusually good at their jobs. It is very much like a three-dimensional game of chess being played in the dark.I’m sure I wouldn’t want to be a spy but it sure is a lot of fun reading about them. You move to counter a move you think is three moves down the line happening in another part of the world. These spies need special brains to hold all the subplots apart in their minds. It’s thrilling. Dominika, in addition to being very beautiful, is exceptionally smart and good at reading people. She has a leg up on this facility of hers because she has synesthesia, a real neurological condition that manifests itself in a variety of ways almost always involving colors. She can see the color of the aura surrounding everyone around her. Different colors mean different things and she uses this ability to great effect. Even to the point of saving her life. She also has, and I’m struggling with how to put this without revealing too much, a physically violent temper. When she gets angry sometimes people get hurt…a lot! Vladimir Putin has been ruling Russia as president or prime minister for the last 16 years. It would seem he has a stranglehold, almost literally, on the office for as long as he wants it. Red Sparrow seems to indicate that modern Russia is not much of a communist state. It has, in fact, more in common with the czars in Russia’s past than with Lenin or Stalin. It is a modern version of an old fashion oligarchy with the rich ruling as they see fit and the Russian mobsters acting as their enforcement arm. It is in this milieu that the novel lives and breathes. Red Sparrow is the first installment of a series featuring the exploits of Dominika Egorova and Nate Nash. If you like novels of espionage don’t miss this one. It is a must read. The second installment, Palace of Treason, is a humdinger. I’ll write about that one in the next issue. Dasvidaniya!

"Red Sparrow" is the first book written by ex-Central Intelligence Agency operative, Jason Matthews who, I am told, is married to someone who is also an ex-operative. It is the first of a trilogy featuring the beautiful Russian ex-ballerina and spy, Dominika Egorov, detailing her relationship with American operative, Nathaniel Nash or "Nate". The book was made into a film of the same name released in 2018, it starred Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton however this review concerns the kindle edition of the book.'Red Sparrow' by Jason Matthews (2013)"Red Sparrow" is a classic spy yarn with authentic seeming tradecraft set against a continuation of the cold war which has continued, "business as usual" into the Putin era based, presumably, on the author's experience as a CIA operative. It is his attention to detail, his quirky use of language (including Russian) that raises this book above the bar. With a scope ranging across Russia, Sweden and the US, the book has a lot of fast paced action, from characters on foot trying to avoid roving patrols to car tails and chases. The book started slowly, quite difficult to get into, with the author's style hard to adapt to but, by a third of the way in, I was very glad I stuck it out.Although I was able to guess some of upcoming twists, I was generally only able to do so close to when they happened and, in general, the suspense in the book was good. There was a significant amount of violence in the book most notably when a particular Russian assassin is involved. The romance between the two lead characters, Egorov and Nash, was well handled.Nate Nash is a young, keen CIA operative working out of the US embassy in Moscow. He is idealistic, ambitious, calm in a crisis and fluent in Russian. He handles the Russian double agent, MARBLE, an asset who is high in the Russian Foreign Services, trying to keep him secret as he supplies information to the CIA. Nash's story starts in Moscow where we meet Nate and MARBLE. The Russians are aware that they have a mole but have yet to identify them so they set a trap is set from which Nash and MARBLE narrowly escape but Nash gets identified as a foreign agent. As a consequence Nash is posted to a remote CIA office in Helsinki where he meets his new no-nonsense boss, Forsyth, and his quick-witted and sarcastic colleague, Gable. It is in Helsinki, that Nash meets Egorov, someone they hope to make their asset and to whom they give the code name DIVA.Egorov, a beautiful ex-ballerina with a tragic background, is a synesthete; she sees the moods of others as coloured auras. Vibrant, sultry and independent by nature she is forced into a world where she becomes hard, unflinching and increasingly alone. Egorov is angry, resentful and conflicted; she still loves her country but feels exploited when "Uncle Vanya" enrols her in the Russian Foreign Services. Vanya gets her sent to "Sparrow School" where she is trained in the arts of seduction and blackmail but, "graduating" early, she is given her first mission, to unmask MARBLE. Sent to Helsinki, Egorov makes an unwilling spy but her synaesthesia is her big advantage. In Helsinki she meets Nate Nash and the two engage in a cat and mouse game with each trying to make the other an asset, both competing with each other to find their respective moles, but the ultimately the two realise that what they really want is each other and they fall into an affair. The affair is brutally ended and the lovers are parted.I enjoyed reading "Red Sparrow". It's a well plotted espionage thriller even if it's somewhat black and white, the US side mainly featuring flawed good guys, the Russian side featuring flawed baddies that seem almost set up to counterpoint the Americans.That I liked the book is fairly clear since I've already purchased the sequels, "Palace of Treason" and "The Kremlin's Candidate".

This book would be more aptly titled "Red Herring".Factually inaccurate on so many levels, without any sign of coherent writing flow.pg15...."and Vanya went back to Yasneneco first as Third Deputy Director, then second, until last year, when he moved into the First Deputy Director's office, across the carpeted hallway from the Director's office..."...what...? If this was an isolated paragraph I'd be happy enough. But the whole book seems to be written in this lumpy and confused narrative, who's meaning and context can only be fully absorbed after 3 or 4 readings of the same paragraph. I paid for entertainment. I got the exact opposite. Chore-some at best.I managed just 25 pages of this drivel, before throwing it in the garden. Sorely disappointed.How this could even be considered on the same comparison scale to a Le Carre is beyond belief.

These 3 excellent and engrossing books are based on the premiss that Putin is a socipathic, kleptomaniac, murderous tyrant. Frankly, until 24th February 2022, a lot of people 'in the know' would have dismissed that premiss as a bit over the top. Not any more they wouldn't.Well, it seems that Matthews and I guess much of the operational part of the CIA knew this all along, and nobody was really listening.Other reviewers have complained about the level of detail in which the stories quite often get bogged down, but then spying is all about picking out details that don't quite fit - my feeling was that it is worth bearing with the author. He does dialogue, tension, scene setting and much else really well, he has a deep knowledge of and love for Russian culture, customs and character.The recipes at the end of many of the chapters are a nice touch, but he doesn't seem to have heard of the adage that 'less is more'. In my view it would have been stronger if he had confined himself to the Russian recipes which, it has to be said, are dlights of brevity and conciseness.

Red Sparrow is an imperfect thriller, but nevertheless worth reading.The basic premise is that two agents embark on their careers - Nate Nash is a young CIA agent, posted to Moscow and desperate to make an impact - and Dominika Egorova, enveigled into becoming a honey-trap agent by her wicked uncle in the Russian SVR. Inevitably the two hit it off.The story is a constant flow of agents and double agents, rooting out moles and trying to use counter-espionage to double-down on double-crossing deals. It’s quite a slow moving novel which allows plenty of space for conveying the day-to-day life in modern Russia, in intelligence jobs and in embassies around the world. It also gives adequate space to ensure the complexities of the various plots and schemes are fully understood - there’s none of the last-minute breathlessness that blight so many thrillers and leave readers wondering what happened.But there are flaws too. The slow pacing does include quite a bit of repetition. Characters are re-introduced (right down to appearances) every time they pop up in another point of view. There’s also quite a degree of salaciousness. Yes, Dominika attended Sparrow School to learn how to seduce foreign agents, but there’s a fine line between authenticity and pornography. Similarly, some of the violence feels overdone. These aspects are likely to appeal to teenage male readers but may irritate other readers.And then there’s Dominika’s synaesthesia. She can see the colour of people’s auras which gives her a special insight into their mood/character. I never quite bought this - and given that people’s auras never seem to change colour, it may be a useful tool for baselining a relationship but doesn’t seem to offer much for telling how someone is behaving in a specific situation. Ah well, it’s a bit of fun.Then there are the recipes at the end of each chapter. The idea is that a food mentioned in the chapter has its recipes included in a text box before the next chapter. At first this is endearing, but after a while it feels distracting - plus there’s a suspicion that some of the foods are only mentioned in the text because of the need to have a recipe.Overall, though, the drama outweighs the negatives and the story is worth reading. I like the idea of a modern Russian secret service trying to recreate the empire of the Soviet era or, perhaps even, the czarist era. The ending manages to be both reassuringly predictable but also shocking.Good holiday reading - especially while touring through the Stans.I will persevere with the other novels in the trilogy.

So good! The best book I've read in a long time.I was captivated and enthralled by this book, and impressed by the author's evident, in-depth knowledge of the intelligence services and their methods. The product description on Amazon summarises just how great this book is, so I do not need to add to this other than to mention the wonderfully descriptive, original metaphors that had me reading many of them more than once, just to savour them.I have learned only recently that this book will soon be released as a film. I think the plot and the action should translate very well, and Jennifer Lawrence is ideally suited to the role of Dominika. However, I doubt that cinematography and acting skills can entirely replace the eloquence of the book. Nevertheless, I look forward to seeing the film.I have already added the next book in the Red Sparrow trilogy to my Kindle.