Book Review: The Athena Project

 

The Athena Project is a novel published in 2010 and written by Brad Thor. The novel is a spin-off to Thor's Scot Harvath series (which in 2010 included 9 novels). The main characters in this book were introduced in Thor's 2010 entry in the Harvath series, Foreign Influence. In this book, the members of the Athena team, Gretchen Casey, Julie Ericsson, Megan Rhodes, and Alex Cooper, are assigned a mission to hunt down an arms dealer responsible for providing explosives used in an attack in Rome that killed several Americans. They discover a larger plot involving a combination of old World War II-era technology and a modern-day threat.

The hardcover version of the book is just over 300 pages, which is just slightly shorter than most of Thor's novels in the Harvath series. Harvath does make a couple of appearances in the book, but he is not a major part of the overall plot. There are actually a couple of different storylines that run parallel to each other. The main one involves the Athena team members. The second one involves an undercover FBI agent who is in too deep with a Russian spy. Each of the storylines is tied to the overall plot of the book but mostly separate from each other. The book is a good action-suspense thriller. While I like most of the novels in the Harvath series more than this one, this is still an enjoyable read with a good story. It is definitely worth the time to read if you like Thor's other novels or just like the spy novel or action-thriller genres.