The Athena Protocol
The Athena Protocol series, Book 1
Shamim Sarif
HarperTeen
Fiction,YA Action/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: With a pop star mother and an unknown father, Jessie Archer was never going to have a normal life... but she never could've predicted just how unusual it would turn out to be. After an early graduation from traditional schooling, she was first recruited by a program training operatives for covert agencies, until she was invited to join a special project her now-retired mother helped found. The Athena Protocol is an off-the-books, technically extralegal organization dedicated to exacting justice for those that the world governments seem unwilling or unable to help, most notably women and girls left to the mercy of traffickers and terrorists. Jessie's prodigal tech skills make her a top agent of the small team - until one mission pushes her too far, and she finds herself breaking the Protocol's strict "no kill" rule. The bullet that ended a monstrous man's life also effectively ends her days as an Athena Protocol agent, just before they're due to take down a major international trafficker operating out of Belgrade.
Jessie fumes. She knows it was wrong (at least on some level) to have pulled the trigger, but the team needs her help if they're to have any hope of taking down their latest target. Using some back door code she left behind in the Protocol servers, she starts doing some independent research... and stumbles onto a much bigger, much darker plot. Worse, these new revelations mean the team may be in more danger than they realize. She may no longer be an Athena agent, but Jessie's not about to see friends and family walk into a trap, nor is she about to let another monster get away with destroying untold lives. She hops a plane to Belgrade, intent on conducting her own mission... but, while worrying about the danger to her ex-teammates, she forgot to worry enough about the danger to herself...
REVIEW: The Athena Protocol is exactly what it promises to be: a girl-oriented action tale of spies and secret missions and taking down bad guys with deception, stealth, and cool James Bondian gadgetry. Like the rest of the Protocol, adults and fellow teen/young adult agents alike, Jessie came to the agency with both talent and baggage, and work in the field tends to magnify both... especially when so much of their work starts to feel like slapping duct tape over cracks in a vast dam, the growing weight and pressure of the monstrosities committed against women and girls growing ever larger daily and the effects of their efforts seeming to grow less and less significant in a world that just plain does not seem to care - a world that too often rewards the monsters with yet more power and chances to abuse and kill. Jessie reaches this breaking point on the opening mission, but its only after she gets booted from the Protocol - by her own mother, even, one of the triad of founders - that she understands just how much her work does indeed matter, and how much it meant to her in particular. She does not, to her credit, immediately go full-on rogue; she keeps trying to work with the system that no longer wants to work with her, and only ends up going solo when she has no other alternative. Even through her investigation in Belgrade, she crosses paths with her former coworkers and can't help inserting herself to help. Along the way, she works through some personal issues about her job and her complicated history with her mother, even as she finds herself confronting some significant complications in the form of the attractive daughter of her mark, who may or may not be an innocent bystander in the man's myriad crimes. Things twist and turn through the streets of Belgrade, the digital footprints of money laundering across national borders, even through conflicted encounters with the Protocol's members, with plenty of action and a heroine who isn't beyond some missteps and mistakes but who never comes across as gullible or bumbling to further the plot. Actually, refreshingly, nobody is reduced to that level; they're all competent, strong people doing the best with the information they have. Even when the leadership ejects Jessie from the Protocol, it's an entirely understandable decision from their point of view, as even Jessie admits to herself once she calms down... and the leadership, to their credit, does actually listen to her when she brings them sufficient evidence for what she uncovers in her independent investigations. It wraps up with some nice twists and a decently satisfactory resolution that isn't without some tears and guilt and heartbreak, setting up the next book in the series. I enjoyed it. It's the kind of story that would make a solid TV or film adaptation, actually.
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