First off, I enjoyed the book. This is the second book in the "Firewall Spies" series and I did read the first book in the series, and I recommend that you read that one too before reading "Agent of Influence." This second book is clearly a continuation in the series, so in order to enjoy it, you'll want to start from the beginning. Characters from the first book are involved in this second book and some of the elements of the plot in this second book were established from the first book. Ok, enough about that. You get my point.
The book doesn't have a lot of plot twists as you go from chapter to chapter. It's not a tense, nail-biter type of story for the most part. Rather, the story moves at a steady pace for about 80-85% of the way through and then really picks up for the last 15-20%. It's that last 15-20% that is a good pay-off and really has me wanting to already get to the third book in the series, but as others have pointed out, that won't be until 2023.
Couple of other points that I want to make have to do with the plot itself and, since this a book that involves the CIA and references to the American military, the technical jargon and weaponry involved. Let me start with the plot.
Without giving too much away, I thought this was an interesting treatment in how governments are pursuing artificial intelligence and, although fictional, how far they are willing to go to prevent exploitation of the development of it or the industrial espionage that they will go through to acquire it. Again, the book is a work of fiction, so who knows how far the United States, Israel, and Russia are willing to go, but it made for an entertaining story line. It's all about suspension-of-disbelief.
Also, "Agent of Influence" doesn't center around one bad-ass character, who was the cliché former Navy SEAL, but now he's this CIA dude who's almost larger than life in terms of strength and shooting abilities with whatever bad-ass automatic weapon with the token suppressor and scope attached to it, etc. You'll get exposure to a cadre of characters. No one is explored in-depth where we are reading all of their internal thoughts and then we get flashbacks to points in their past so we can understand why they do what they do. Nor are there any sex-scenes, gratuitous or not. I personally liked that the authors made those decisions because it kept the focus on the plot and didn't get us side-tracked with clichés that would have bogged down the pace. The plot alone was more than enough to hold my interest the whole way through.
The second point that I wanted to call out was whether this was book was a realistic portrayl of the CIA or the military or the Russian government and their capabilities. As I already mentioned, there are references to the American military in the book, locations of bases, and particular weaponry and/or airplanes used by the United States Air Force. I couldn't tell you with any certainty how well researched the book was, but it was believable enough to me that I didn't have any problems where something was so glaringly wrong in description that I couldn't take the book seriously any further. As an example, the Osprey aircraft is used in the book. The authors don't go into any details about it, its fuel capacity, how much load it can transport, and so on. But did I really need all of that data to know that hey, they're using an Osprey to transport individuals?
One thing that I didn't like about the book was how frequently scenes took place in a conference room. I mean, yes, I get it: when you are talking about people working in teams as would be the case with the FBI and CIA, you'll probably have them meeting in a conference room to give status updates, but damn, a couple of scenes like that is fine. After that, I wished the authors could have explored other ways to communicate the same information without need for a straight-up conference room meeting.
The book seems to have been very recently written because although I read it in April 2022, it contained references to the last days of the United States's withdrawal from Afghanistan in late summer 2021. I'm sure that the plot of the book was thought out well before then, but it was interesting to be reading a book with that detail having been included from less than a year earlier at the time of me writing this review. Also, the Russians play heavily into the book's plot. Given that I read this book AFTER the Russians' invasion of Ukraine started, it was kind of interesting to see how the authors were describing the Russians to be versus what is getting presented in various media outlets.
Anyway, I recommend the book and am looking forward to the next installment.
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Agent of Influence: The Firewall Spies, Book 2
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Top reviews from other countries
Colin McLarty
A great book. Deep involvement, fast paced, moving, with unforeseen twists and turns.
Reviewed in Canada on March 10, 2022