"Meh" is how I feel about this book. I was hoping to love it given the female delta team concept, but I found it predicable without enough character development for me to get into it anyway. I didn't like how all 4 girls were introduced in quick back-to-back descriptions instead of through the process of the plot--I instantly forgot which was which and it didn't seem to matter, really. This was my first Thor book and I may still try another. Some of the dialogue was clever and the questions posed by the advancement of super technologies is an interesting one to ponder. It’s hard to not like a book if you’re into four hot female ops agents who get the job done as well as Scott Harvath. In The Athena Project, Athena Team members -Gretchen Casey, Julie Ericsson, Megan Rhodes, and Alex Cooper - go after an arms dealer who is about to give weapons to someone that could destroy the world. Unlike other books by Brad Thor, The Athena Project has some science fiction added to this story as well. I thought it was neat when he mentioned the old Star Trek series and how they communicated by flip phones and ear pieces during their missions. The teleportation plot in the story made the Athena Project even more intriguing and fun for me to read. The suspense in the book moves along as the point of view shifts between characters from the Athena team to other characters in the book who are trying to gain access to weapons and blueprints to a secret tunnel that was once used by the Nazi’s. There is plenty of action as the Athena team fights to make sure that these weapons don’t end up in the wrong hands. While there were point of view shifts in the story, there was a subplot in the book as well. I know that Brad Thor has used subplots in other Scott Harvath novels but in this case, I thought that this subplot took away from the story. I would have liked to have read more about the Athena Team as well but between that and all the point of view shifts, that just seemed to make the story tougher to follow at times. The Athena Project was much shorter than Thor’s other books, barely over 300 pages. I guess that it’s not easy to go over 400 pages in every book that Thor has written but this made the plot and action seem too quick before it was over with. That, and Thor’s attempt at keeping the Athena Team under close guard of Scott Harvath, just seemed to bring the book down in this case for me. I usually enjoy Brad Thor books but I didn’t enjoy The Athena Project as much as his other books. I would like to see the Athena Team continue and I think that could be done if Thor were to separate them from Harvath and his characters entirely. Focusing that and making a better plot would help me in giving books like this a better rating than four stars.
What do You think about The Athena Project (2010)?
Not Brad's best, but a fun read nonetheless. A female Delta Force is a novel concept.
—Tani
This was a great book. I look forward to more in this series.
—denisi
Very enjoyable, quick read full of espionage and spice.
—Meg
