I'm revisiting this series after reading the last one (book #2 in the series was Path of the Assassin) in August 2019. I thought the first two were okay, but I like the premise for this one and I've been trying to get back into traditionally published thrillers, rather than self-published thrillers just to do a little compare and contrast since I've read so many of the latter in recent years.

This book was originally published in 2004 and it honestly kinda shows. While the political/espionage narrative was pretty compelling, the book felt incredibly dated in terms of its pretty generic action sequences and the fairly sexist writing. This book fails the Bechdel Test (which is Alison Bechdel's litmus test for the representation of women in media with the very low bar of requiring at least two female characters, who talk to one another, about something other than a man) and the scenes that do have women in them involve repeated comments by the male characters (and the author's narrative voice) about how attractive they are.

Other than being a little outdated (which I don't hold against it because it was written almost twenty years ago), and a little long (it definitely didn't need to be 550+ pages with needless subplots and conversations), it was a perfectly serviceable read. My only other complaint was in the pacing. The book description says:



Harvath didn't "team with beautiful Russian Intelligence agent Alexandra Ivanova" or "embark on an adrenaline-fueled search that spans the world" until well after 65% into the book. There were some action sequences earlier on, but it felt like the author was taking his sweet time with the exposition and story setup rather than just getting into the story.

I think Brad Thor's an okay writer who is pretty good and plotting which, honestly, is about all you need for a leisure read in this genre. The pacing could have been tighter, but I'll probably still check out another of his books in the near future. Hopefully some of his more recent books in the series are a little less... dated.

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Created Apr 06, 2024 at 12:11pm • Submit your own review...