Jason Matthews is something of a novelty in that he actually worked for the CIA for over 30 years before writing Red Sparrow and its two sequels. His experience creates a deeply authentic world within the novel, which follows the unbelievably beautiful and intelligent Domenika Egorova as she becomes a spy for the Russian Federation. Domenika is pure male fantasy: a classically trained ballerina, highly educated, she is sent to "Sparrow School" for instruction in sexpionage. As expected, the experience is pretty harrowing and degrading. For a bit of balance she also gets to go to the actual proper spy training academy.

I spent the first two-thirds of this book getting really pissed off at the way a white, male, middle-aged ex-spook created this paragon and exploited her. Then Matthews' story took off in a way that made me forget how annoyed I'd been and I just enjoyed the ride. After all, there are so many stories out there about impossibly beautiful, intelligent and resourceful men having ripping adventures and getting one up on the bad guys. About bloody time we got a fabulous female spy. Domenika is a critical thinker, brilliant in a crisis, has drive, ambition and a temper to boot. She's also crazy gorgeous. Who wouldn't want to be just like her? So read and enjoy, rest assured your feminist principles will only take a slight knock. ( )

There are some aspects of the novel I found almost too hard to believe: the existence of Sparrow School and Dominika's ability to sense the trustworthiness of people based on the color of an aura chief among them. But the novel does a good job with tradecraft. Many of the supporting characters (Benford, Gable, Korchnoi) I found more interesting than the main protagonists. The ending of the novel is thrilling. Just outstanding. Great stuff for spy novel fans. If you can get past the implausibilities, you've got yourself a fantastic spy novel read. Highly recommended for thriller fans. ( )

I've read worse books, however, the storyline was very 1-dimensional and there was very little character development. I found the book to be quite a chore to finish. ( )

Quality story.

Excellent writing and research, with superb characterisation throughout, clever descriptive intelligent storytelling from first to last page. A real page turner with an authentic feel unsurprising with the Author's background. A ballsy brave fearless heroine on a par with my all time favourite female character Lisbeth Salander.
Completely and utterly recommended. ( )

I don't read many spy thrillers, but I liked this a lot. The author is, apparently, a spy or former spy and the story details do seem realistic. The sex and fights only resemble reality in some vague way, but I suppose most real spys don't spend a lot of time banging each other. It has recipes in it [!], and I think they added an extra dimension. ( )