Palace of Treason: A Novel (2) (The Red Sparrow Trilogy)

by Jason Matthews

2016

Status

Available

Publication

Pocket Books (2016), Edition: 1st Printing, 608 pages

Description

"From the bestselling, Edgar Award-winning author of the "terrifically good" (The New York Times) Red Sparrow, a compulsively readable new novel about star-crossed Russian agent Dominika Egorova and CIA's Nate Nash in a desperate race to the finish. Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow. She despises the men she serves, the oligarchs, and crooks, and thugs of Putin's Russia. What no one knows is that Dominika is working for the CIA as Washington's most sensitive penetration of SVR and the Kremlin. As she expertly dodges exposure, Dominika deals with a murderously psychotic boss; survives an Iranian assassination attempt; escapes a counterintelligence ambush; rescues an arrested agent and exfiltrates him out of Russia; and has a chilling midnight conversation in her nightgown with President Putin. Complicating these risks is the fact that Dominika is in love with her CIA handler, Nate Nash, and their lust is as dangerous as committing espionage in Moscow. And when a mole in the SVR finds Dominika's name on a restricted list of sources, it is a virtual death sentence... Just as fast-paced, heart-pounding, and action-packed as Red Sparrow, Jason Matthews's second novel confirms he is "an insider's insider...and a masterful storyteller" (Vince Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author)"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member neddludd

I read this book quickly after reading the author's first, Red Sparrow. And I do not think that was wise. This work is a sequel--same characters, new adventures--and the versimilitude and attitude of the first, astonishing book, in the follow-up becomes utterly predictable. Although there are

baddies in Western intelligence, Matthews portrays the Russians as inheritors of the Nazi Award in State-Sponsored sadism and brutality. This could have been written in 1955 because it contains all the Cold War delineations of good and evil. There are a number of violent episodes, as if the author were chanelling Jack Reacher into wet work, and the chief villain is a sociopathic dwarf. There's a mole in the CIA and he is almost a carricature. In reality, moles can do their damage for a decade--as was true in the author's first novel. Here, as in Ludlum or the movies, the CIA uncovers the truth about the mole before he is able to do fatal damage to the CIA's peerless agent in the Kremlin. So what can take years here takes a few days. Just for fun, the CIA super-folk sabotage equipment bound for Iran's secret atomic program. Naturally, everything proceeds perfectly, and the Iranians suffer through an incident which causes a result sufficient to chasten the Iranian revolutionary zealots. Hooray for the West! Hooray for the CIA. Hooray for heores. Gordon Liddy or Howard Hunt might have written this sophomore slump. On the positive side, the author has that page-turning skill to keep readers hooked.

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LibraryThing member kapilgupta

Good spy novel and sequel to "Red Sparrow" - however, I felt the characters were too black/white: Russians were either good-natured (very few) or evil and/or corrupt (most of them). In contrast, American characters were either honest and good (most of them) or stupid/bumbling (very few; note: not

evil). In retrospect, this may have been a flaw in the first book too, and maybe I didn't pick it up.
That said, the book advances the development of the two main characters and sets up the third book well. It's entertaining and engrossing and again delves into the "tradecraft" of spying. I would recommend reading this book if you read the first book in the series (Red Sparrow) and liked it; if you haven't read that, you should definitely give "Red Sparrow" a try.

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LibraryThing member bobandkathy

This is one of the better spy genre that I've come across in recent years. Technology is not too unimaginable and the protagonists are not too much bigger than life. I'll be buying his other books.

LibraryThing member tandah

I enjoyed 'Red Sparrow' so much ... this was a bit of a let-down. Still enjoyable and a great page turner, but for me, sometimes a bit too much 'telling' by the author, and didn't have the wow of it's predecessor. Putin/Domi moments in last chapter were just annoying, and Nyet's instinct to throw

away all his training to 'rescue'/be with Domi (and put everything at risk) just makes me really angry. Having said that, as I said a page turner, and the denouement was excellent.

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LibraryThing member jmoncton

If you're looking for a fast-paced international spy thriller - this is it! The author is a former CIA operative so the details ring true. Very timely with appearances by Putin and issues over Iran's nuclear program. Brain candy at its best!

LibraryThing member Dream24

I received an ARC through Goodreads.
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Wow! This book is so intense and unexpectedly amazing! This is the first book in the series that I have read so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Now it took me a little while to get the swing of things, especially with the use of Russian and English

scattered throughout. But man, esponiage is so dangerous, mysterious and not at all what we expected (yo Hollywood).

This book was written by someone who has actual insight into espionage and what actually goes on behind the scenes of the intelligence agencies. It's quite neat to read a story like this told through someone with the author's knowledge and background.

So back to the story. I love how bad ass Dominka is and does whatever it takes to get the mission done, no matter the risks and time. Honestly, I was on the edge of my seat and eagerly gobbled up the book. There is a lot of politics and double handed deals, which are a good reflection of the real world.

Some of the secondary characters. Oh my, some are downright psychotic and scary, others are harder to perceive since they are quite complex and harder to read (like Putin in this story). I would never ever want to cross Colonel Zyuganov, he's one scary and bad ass guy.

And the ending. OMG! I'm like I have to know what happened!!!!

It was surprising to find the recipes at the end of each chapter but I liked it cause some of the food mentioned sounded quite good.

Now for the criticism... OK, I got lost when some of the more technical terms were tossed around and some scenes (especially scenes involving complicated operational terminology and specific intelligence) the author didn't put as much attention or detail in kind of irked me. It seemed a little off putting compared to all the detail and attention he had put into every other scene involving Nate and Dominika. Also, the intimate scenes felt like it was lacking something... like with all that passion between Nate and Dominika, their intimate scenes are like...that's it?! It just feels like a let down, at least on paper.

I cannot wait to read what happens next and I know it's near impossible for them to be together, but I so want it to happen.

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LibraryThing member gmmartz

Red Sparrow was a great debut for Jason Matthews, and Palace of Treason is even better. It's well-written, fast-paced, and the 'tradecraft' descriptions are fabulous. As a long-time spy novel aficionado, I've not been this excited about a new writer in the genre since I don't know when. Matthews is

excellent and I cannot wait for the next installment in his series.

Although there's an incredible amount of action in this story, the characters are so well developed that it's not challenging to keep up. The plot, which involves most of the players on the US side introduced in the Red Sparrow book and various Russian nasties (including Putin in a more-than-a-cameo role), is intricate, as are the numerous sub-plots, political, personal, and espionage-related, encountered along the way. The dialogue is crisp and believable, and the fast pace of the action was matched with excellent writing.

I'd give 'Palace of Treason' 6 stars if I could, and that's even with docking it one since I have a little issue with the whole 'aura' thing, which to me veers into gimmick territory. This is the rare novel that I didn't want to end, even though the conclusion was very satisfactory and believable.

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LibraryThing member flashflood42

See my review of Red Sparrow. This book is even better, even scarier for its implications for today (2016-17)'s situation with Russia and Putin. I urge you to read it.

LibraryThing member alohaboy

An excellent sequel to Red Sparrow that continues the story of the CIA inserting a newly recruited double agent into Russia's intelligence service and the CIA discovering that one of their intelligence officers is selling intelligence to Russia. The cat and mouse story includes a star crossed CIA

handler and his beautiful double agent, hateful and duplicitous intelligence agents in both the CIA and Russia, high government officials more interested in adding to their bank accounts than serving the citizenry, and intelligence agents fully committed to securing their country's safety than their own safety. The book is a real primer on how to recruit a double agent and how to ferret out one.

My only misgiving is that the book could have easily been pruned by 125 pages by a careful edit that eliminated all of the introspective redundancies that appeared throughout.

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LibraryThing member ericlee

This, the second of the Red Sparrow books, continues where the previous one left off, and offers more of the same. It's written by a former CIA officer, so much of it has the ring of truth -- though obviously much of it is made-up nonsense as well. It's hard to tell sometimes which is which.

Violent, sexy, and profoundly hostile to Vladimir Putin, what's not to like? I look forward to reading the third and final volume in the trilogy.

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LibraryThing member KarenHerndon

Second book in Sparrow triology and just as much fun as first book.

LibraryThing member breic

I liked the first book in the series. This one I found hard to get into. But once I allowed myself to buy into the story, it flew along. (With a little editing it could still have flown faster.) I think it lacks the verisimilitude of the first book, and the sex scenes—even one involving Dominika

and President Putin—are a bit much.

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LibraryThing member tmph

These first two of the trilogy really aren't bad books, but the cliched, chauvinistic stuff is really, really dated. However, the plots are extremely complicated with added complications, so I get pretty well stuck half way in wholly interested to see how it all turns out. They do get pretty

engrossing and fast-paced. And, a tremendous amount of tradecraft.

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LibraryThing member maneekuhi

It has been about eight years since Jason Matthews “The Red Sparrow” (RS) was published with some fanfare. I read it early on and liked it, but not enough to rush out and buy the second book of the trilogy when it was introduced. During the pandemic year three events related to RS occurred and

as a result I decided to read #2, “Palace of Treason” (PT). First I finally began to notice trailers and ads for the movie version of RS, starring Jennifer Lawrence. Very appealing, glossy, eye-catching. The, Matthews passed away as the result of illness. The obits were very complimentary of his writing career and dwelt considerably on his years as a CIA agent; I had under-rated him. I decided to watch the movie RS and liked it, particularly the scenery, the leading actress, and the plot. While it occasionally fell back and relied a bit too much on the current popular millisecond action scenes, it did so with a frequency barely tolerable to a 70+ year old. I did not care at all for the casting of the leading man who all too often appeared to be coming off a week-end drinking binge, but it not deter me from my decision.

PT is too long, by at least 150 pages. But there is a lot of good spy stuff here. Matthews has clearly injected the basic plot with a lot of genuine CIA action, particularly training to recognize tailing by a team of 20+ agents. Some of it is predictable, and there seems to be too many missions that get fouled up at a critical moment. The basic storyline is that he is an agent for the CIA and she is an agent for the Russians. He “turns” her, or does he? She comes under suspicion by Putin and other Ruskie bad guys, but manages to convince the “red (pun) team” that she is loyal to Mother Russia….more than once. It’s interesting to me that the author manages to weave this basic plot through more than one book, though it really started to feel a tad old by the end of PT. And the author did seem to have painted himself into a corner 100 pages or so from the end of PT such that there was only one possible climax.

This is a 3 ½, not a 4 star. And Matthews was a good solid spy fiction writer, not quite a Deighton, LeCarre, or Littell but close. Will I read #3, “The Kremlin Candidate”? I don’t know.

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LibraryThing member TobinElliott

Matthews gives us more great characters, fills in more on the existing ones, kills a bunch, and serves it all up with more recipes.

This is quickly becoming my favourite spy series ever. The writing is tight, the characterizations are good, the action is fantastic, and the spy work seems

authentic.

Oh, and he gave Putin a tiny dick.

I mean, what more can you ask for?

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LibraryThing member thewanderingjew

The Palace of Treason, Jason Matthews-author; Jeremy Bobb- narrator

The Palace of Treason is the second book in a series of three that the author has written about espionage, the type of espionage that could very well be taking place today, in the real world, since the United States and Russia are

actively engaged in spying on each other all of the time.

Dominika Egorova has risen up the ranks in the Russian Intelligence Service. Her life and limb have often been threatened, but even as others are gravely injured and die, she seems miraculously to survive each time. She rises to fight for what she believes in for another day. Trained as a Sparrow, she uses her feminine wiles to get information from susceptible dupes.

Her handler and sometimes lover is Nate Nash who works for the American Intelligence Service known as the CIA. The agents in the service are dedicated to keeping Captain Egorova alive, for Diva is a double agent, also working for the CIA. Even as she rose to the rank of Captain, in Russia, obtaining her own division to run, and becoming a valuable asset to Putin, she continued to pass information in and out of Russia. The CIA is determined to protect her, as they protect the life of each agent they use in their efforts to keep America safe. The agent’s life is sacrosanct to them.

Dominika uncovers information that is extremely valuable to the security of the United States. Using a system that enables the safe transfer of secrets in and out of Russia, she is able to warn them of upcoming dangers. She learns that Iran, with Russia’s help, is secretly planning to develop weapons grade uranium in a facility hidden from the UN watchdogs. Using the skills she learned in Sparrow school, she develops a relationship with Yevgeny, the man who is the right hand of her archenemy, Zugurov, her irrational and vicious boss who is bent on eliminating her from the picture since she presents a severe danger to his dreams of success. She keeps besting him at his own game, and thus, she has caught the eye of Putin. Zugurov's right hand man, Yevgeny, whispers secrets to her during their lovemaking, sessions, secrets that Zugurov keeps from her to prevent her from achieving further success in the spy game. Through Yevgeny, she learns that there is a mole in the CIA, a mole named Triton, a traitor who intends to reveal her identity along with other valuable government documents.

There is a great deal of action and intrigue as the story travels through parts of the United States, Russia and Europe. There are spies everywhere, but the Russian spies, in particular, seem to be particularly brutal, defying age old unwritten rules that were supposed to keep them from deliberately harming diplomats. They engage in extremely violent methods to root out information from the foreign agents, methods of torture that sicken those that have to witness and/or carry them out for the monsters that order them to do so.

The first book was a bit better than this one. It seemed to proceed more smoothly. Additionally, it didn’t contain as many unnecessary prurient references, even with the chapters about the training at Sparrow school. The recipes continue and they break up the tension that the story creates. The narrator does an admirable job interpreting each character and they are easily discernible throughout the novel.

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LibraryThing member mountie9

The Good Stuff

Author obviously knows his stuff, you can really tell he lived some of this life. Very authentic
Dominka is a hugely intriguing and likeable character - quite the feisty little thing (she kinda overshadows Nate)
One of my favorite thing about this series is the secondary characters

Edge of your seat action throughout most of the story
Enjoy the recipes, but kinda wish they were written out in full, I NEED to make them
My love for Marty Gable has no ends, he is utterly delightful and gets some of the best lines
Does a fabulous job of setting the mood of a scene
Interesting historical information about Russia and the United States and their various intelligence offices
I eagerly await the next installment of this smart and sexy spy saga - and now off to the store to find some ingredients
Did I mention how much I love Gable
Great realistic relationships between many of the characters
Excels at dialogue between major characters
Villains are so despicable, you are on the edge of your seat waiting for them to get their just desserts
I would love to sit down with Mr. Matthews to listen to him tell tales of some of the real life stories that inspired his fiction

The Not So Good Stuff

Ummm when did I miss that Dominika's mother died. Could be me, I was moving while I was reading this, so it could have been something I missed.
A wee bit repetitive at times and tad sexist at times (which doesn't fit with the main female character)
I feel very hungry after each and every chapter

Favorite Quotes/Passages

"Gable put the photo down "Handsome looking bunch. You're adopted then, or what, forceps delivery?"

"And after five meetings, despite the grandmotherly exterior the imaginative Angevine saw the ancient Soviet venom or show trial and gulag, of politburo and mass graves in birch forests."

"..and his Athens DCOS Marty Gable has asked him to reserve some time for a protracted counseling session when Nate returned to Station to discuss his lack of professionalism, his disregarding instructions, and, in Gable's words, his being 'a dumbassador from the Republic of stupid."

4 Dewey's

I received this from Simon and Schuster in exchange for an honest review

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LibraryThing member trek520

Huge misstep in the plot. unfortunate.

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