The Gods Eye View By Barry Eisler

NSA director Theodore Anders has a simple goal: collect every phone call, email, and keystroke tapped on the Internet. He knows unlimited surveillance is the only way to keep America safe.

Evelyn Gallagher doesn’t care much about any of that. She just wants to keep her head down and manage the NSA’s camera network and facial recognition program so she can afford private school for her deaf son, Dash.

But when Evelyn discovers the existence of a program code-named God’s Eye and connects it with the mysterious deaths of a string of journalists and whistle-blowers, her doubts put her and Dash in the crosshairs of a pair of government assassins: Delgado, a sadistic bomb maker and hacker, and Manus, a damaged giant of a man who until now has cared for nothing beyond protecting the director.

Within an elaborate game of political blackmail, terrorist provocations, and White House scheming, a global war is being fought—a war between those desperate to keep the state’s darkest secrets and those intent on revealing them. A war that Evelyn will need all her espionage training and savvy to survive, because the director has the ultimate advantage: The God’s Eye View.

Barry Eisler ↠ 3 characters

Let me start off by saying I loved the high level concept behind this novel. The expected intrigue and implied machinations had me anticipating this read for months which made the eventual outcome all the more disappointing.

A book should be one of two things—hopefully both but at least one—entertaining or enlightening. Replete with overblown characterizations and long winded expositions, The God’s Eye View is a third e… excruciating. I expected far better from a New York Times bestselling author. It may be for some, but constant naval gazing is not for me.

The dreaded DNF at 18% resulting in 1 star. English An unforgettable stand alone political thriller by Barry Eisler, author of the very popular John Rain series, about the NSA's efforts to keep America safe vs. Americans right to privacy. NSA analyst Evelyn Gallagher observes a clandestine meeting in Turkey between an NSA operative and a journalist. She reports the meeting to the Director who scrambles for damage control against a potential whistle blower scandal and uses all means necessary to protect God's Eye, a highly secret program from becoming public. The cover-up spirals out of control and only Evelyn Gallagher, on the run with her deaf son Dash, can stop the Director.

This highly charged thriller is a step up from the author's John Rain series in it's original and quite timely plot. I highly recommend it. English I received a free copy of this novel from Thomas & Mercer Publishers and NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

3.5 Stars

I love political thrillers and the premise of The God's Eye View greatly interested me. In a post Edward Snowden era, the NSA Director has created the ultimate data, image, location, meta data Program - God's Eye View. He will do anything to protect the U.S. from another terrorist attack, even arranging suicides, accidents, and the murders of any and all so-called whistle-blowers. Even questioning these events can get a NSA employee killed. God's Eye is so compartmentalized, no one analyst knows what else is connected to God's Eye. And of course, the Director is using the program for his own personal use. Yes, the program the U.S. isn't supposed to have, let alone be using.

That is until, an analyst finishes the security protocols. You guessed it - she dies mysteriously. But she built in some backdoor access (probably for monitoring by her) and told her lover about it. Perkins meets with a reporter in Turkey. He thinks he's taken enough precautions to have been very discreet, but a young sharp analyst makes the connection between the two men. Shortly after their meeting and after Evie reports her findings to the Director, Perkins is killed in an automobile accident and the reporter is kidnapped by ISIS affiliated terrorists.

Evie has information that links the Director to these events, and puts herself in the cross-hair sights of the Director. He has 2 assassins completely loyal to him. One, is a sadist that enjoys killing while the other is deaf and a tortured past. Manus can relate to Evie and her deaf son and also finds her attractive. Can Evie survive with these two men breathing down her neck? Will the country survive the The God's Eye View?

This is my 1st novel written by Barry Eisler and I'll read him again despite a few minor problems with the novel. A Size D heroine that gets horny every time she sees or hears from Manus? The buxom, but brainy broad theme got slightly weird and old. Her character and a few others weren't quite as developed as I felt they should have been. Marvin Manus was a terrific character. And the ending fell flat and a little short in my opinion. I wanted more information about Evie, Dash, and Manus in the Epilogue. That is why I knocked a half star off on this novel. English A quality political thriller, with some violence but not too graphic. The NSA Director has developed a powerful program to spy on citizens, and is determined to insure that nobody jeopardizes it. Think of Samaritan for those of you who watch NBC's Person of Interest. He sends out his two enforcers after anyone threatening to disclose the existence of the program. His assistant begins to suspect duplicity, and one of the goons is sent to keep an eye on her, but becomes emotionally involved. A little cliche, but I liked that Eisler used hearing impairment as a theme, creating a bond between the characters and introducing some humanity in the novel. English Received from NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer in exchange for an honest review.

Barry Eisler does not disappoint in his latest book, The God's Eye View.

Evelyn Evie Gallagher is a computer analyst working for the NSA. While doing her job of monitoring cameras around the world and filtering images through a facial recognition system, she see something that she should not see. She begins to question deaths of journalists and her tie to them as well as the motives of the Director of the NSA. Once she questions the director, he then in turn, has her under surveillance.

Theodore Anders, Director of the NSA has a mission to monitor communications around the world in order to keep America safe. In order to keep American safe, he often relies on a sadist bomb maker named Delgado and a Deaf Assassin named Manus. Anders is an example of how Absolute Power corrupts absolutely.

All of these Characters and more collide in The God's Eye View to weave a tale of intrigue, whistle blowing, suspense, romance, political scheming, danger, and excitement. While reading this book, I could not help but think of Eisler's other books; specifically the John Rain series. Once again, Eisler has been able to create an Assassin who is likable, damaged, and intriguing. This is where Eisler shines. Creating a Character that normally we would not feel for, and yet we do. He does this is such a smooth and wonderful fashion. Giving us a glimpse into his abusive childhood. Showing that although a ruthless killer, he can also be conflicted and compassionate.

Another thing Eisler is good at...taking a subject such as the NSA, political bureaucracy and making it fun to read. He doesn't dumb down anything. He is a very intelligent writer who is able to tell his political tale in a succinct manner.

I really enjoyed this book. I think it has something for everyone. It is wonderfully written with well thought out characters. The story was fantastic. Another fantastic book by Eisler. English

4 and half stars

This was a hard book to read, not because it's not well written - it really is very well done - but because of the subject matter and some characters. The plot, to me, is scarier than many horror books and movies out there.

Too much power concentrated at the hands of one single person who turns out to be a megalomaniac sociopath it's terrifying.

I had to read it in small doses, cringing at the insanity of one of the main characters, scared for others. They were all well written, real and scarily believable.
Not all characters are crazy sociopaths and psychopaths, but all of them are broken one way or another.

This book has some graphic violence and graphic sex scenes. If you're comfortable with those, you're good to go. If you're not, you get enough warning that let you skip these parts and not miss the great plot.

The main plot is solved in a way that makes sense, but the ending.... I won't spoil you.

This is a book worth reading but not for the faint of heart. There are enough twist, turns and surprises to make a fan of great thrillers very happy.

Maybe you'll finish this book a little bit paranoid, but that's not really a bad thing, right?

I'd like to thank Netgalley, Thomas & Mercer and author Barry Eisler for sending me an ARC of The God's Eye View in exchange for an honest review. English Hmm....what to say.... Do you like acronyms? Do you want to know more about how our government is spying on everyone, all the time? Do you like to read about computers? Do you like spy novels?

I kept wanting to stop reading this book, it just didn't hold my interest at all. I could hardly even remember the characters from one chapter to the next, they just weren't developed, they felt like sterotype charactuers, the brainy women with the big boobs, the self indulged god like dictator, the unattractive child-abused hit man, the wounded and scarred soldier saved by the dictator.

But the premise of the story was intriguing and I hadn't read a government spy type novel in a very long time and probably won't again anytime in the near future. The author has done a ton of reasearch and it shows, maybe it shows a lot. It could have used less details and more emotion and more character development. I did finish the book. In the back of the book is an enormous amount of reference material where you can read into depth about the subject of the government spying on us.

This book was given to me by netgalley for my honest opinion. English If The God’s Eye View had been released even three or four years earlier, it might have carried with it the weight of a technothriller fueled solely by paranoid delusion and conspiracy fluff. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the government’s mass surveillance of American citizens, though, this book reads frighteningly realistic. And although the titular NSA surveillance mechanism codenamed God’s Eye is supposedly a fictional product of Barry Eisler’s authorial creativity, reading this book might prompt more than a few raised eyebrows wondering, “Can they really do that? Are they doing that right now?!”

The God’s Eye View has a good amount of stuff happening all at once – there’s whistleblowers in danger, an NSA tech who asks one too many questions of her superior and finds herself marked for death, that superior being the crazed director of NSA who is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to secure power under the auspices of protecting the American people, and a couple freelance hitmen dealing out the hurt to whoever the director points the finger at.

One of these hitmen is Manus, a brilliantly drawn and conflicted killer (which, let’s face it, is practically an Eisler trademark at this point) who is hearing impaired. When tasked with monitoring Eve, the NSA tech who comes across video surveillance of a government whistle-blower leaking info to an Intercept reporter, his life becomes far more complicated with the discovery that Eve’s son is also deaf.

There’s a few things I expect in a Barry Eisler book – a sound display of spy trade craft, egregious government overreach, brutal violence, and an uncomfortable level of realism when it comes to depicting covert agencies gone berserk and the lengths the smart and skilled protagonists will go to in order to protect themselves. All of these elements are on display in The God’s Eye View, so count me as a happy camper.

If I have to provide a negative to the work, it comes in the novel’s opening chapters where so much of the dialogue feels like an exercise in blatant info-dumping and name-dropping to get readers caught up on the real-world events that have inspired this book. Granted, it’s all done in an effort to ground the book in a firmly recognizable landscape of modern post-Snowden America, and those who are a little less up on recent events might not be bothered. Those that have been following along with the Snowden leaks, Greenwald’s reporting, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation might get a little itchy for the action to start hitting. But when that action does hit? Man, oh, man. You’re in for some good stuff.

The God’s Eye View is a great thriller filled with well-realized characters and a frenetic pace. It also gives an uncomfortably realistic, and frighteningly prescient, view of the NSA’s capabilities and the loss of privacy threatening every American. Highly recommended.

[I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review.] English Fuck you Barry Eisler.

I don't expect an NSA novel to be realistic or even-handed, though it would be nice to see someone write one that is remotely plausible. (Hmm....) When you read a novel about the NSA, you should generally treat it with the same skepticism you would treat a novel about secret vampire societies or time traveling Highlanders. So I was expecting a stupid thriller where the NSA has magical see-anything-anywhere-anytime technology and Edward Snowden and Chelsea née Bradley Manning would be praised as whistleblowers, but The God's Eye View is even more egregious than Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. It pisses me off that people will read crap written by hack authors and think it reflects reality. I see a lot of reviews of this book praising it as scarily realistic and praising the author for doing his research.

Bullshit. I guess I should have been warned when the opening quotes were from Julian Assange, and then the Stasi. Barry Eisler, it quickly becomes apparent, has drunk the conspiracy Koolaid.

In his author's bio, Eisler says that he worked for three years in a covert position with the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Wow, that sounds impressive, doesn't it?

It's unlikely he actually did anything that people usually think of as spy stuff, but working for the DO means he probably had a cover assignment, meaning he worked somewhere pretending to be something other than a CIA employee. I'm sure it was interesting, but it doesn't mean he was anything more than a low-level GS employee, and he also did it over 20 years ago. So he is not an expert insider writing about shit he actually knows. Keep in mind also that the CIA and NSA are completely different agencies with different missions.

This became evident as his novel departed further and further from reality. So fine, he wrote a sensational technothriller. In his version of reality, the NSA not only can but does casually spy on anyone anywhere. I realize that many people actually believe that the NSA is reading Americans' emails and listening to their phone calls, despite the fact that even in the volumes of data released by Edward Snowden and other so-called whistleblowers, no evidence of doing this has ever been found. The NSA's mission is very strictly defined and regulated, and there are very strict rules it must follow when it comes to surveillance of US citizens. The NSA cannot simply decide to spy on someone inside the United States because terrorism. To do so requires going to court to get a FISA warrant, and it requires a ton of paperwork and very high-level authorizations - it is absolutely not something an ordinary NSA employee can do, and even the Director of the NSA cannot authorize it on a whim.

That's just what They want you to believe!

Sure, you can choose to believe that it's all lies, all the investigations and audits and Congressional hearings have been cover-ups (according to Eisler, the media is just a lapdog for the NSA), every single NSA employee casually disregards their Constitutional oath and breaks the law daily and this doesn't bother anyone working there. In which case, nothing anyone tells you will convince you differently.

In The God's Eye View, NSA employees use the tools of counter-terrorism surveillance to check up on people they meet on Match.com and spy on anyone anywhere in realtime. And the Director of the NSA is a power-hungry psychopath who runs the NSA as his personal fiefdom. He keeps a rapist serial killer and a deaf brute hitman on retainer. In Barry Eisler's world, the NSA casually assassinates journalists, political activists, politicians, and its own employees, as well as setting off bombs in Washington D.C. to scare people so that the NSA can be given more power to fight terrorism. About the only thing the NSA doesn't do in this book is actually monitor other countries or do counter-terrorism. The NSA, in Eisler's world, is indistinguishable from the KGB or the Stasi. It doesn't actually perform its function, merely acts as the private army of its power-crazed Director.

The plot is basically Oliver Stone's Snowden mixed with a Tom Clancy novel. An NSA employee (the DIRNSA's personal assistant) who helped create the God's Eye program that allows the NSA to track anyone anywhere, begins to suffers a crisis of conscience when she suspects the DIRNSA is having people killed for knowing too much. Of course suffering a crisis of conscience means she now knows too much, so when the DIRNSA suspects her loyalty has become shaky, she is next to be disposed of. He summons his pet dog, a deaf brute with an angsty abusive backstory, to follow her around, and when he is convinced that she is indeed a liability, he summons his other personal assassin, the sadistic rapist-serial killer whom he allows to run amok in the US as long as he's available to kill people for the NSA, to do away with his own employee.

Oh, but wait! The poor personal assistant has a deaf son! And the deaf brute, when he meets her and his son, is touched! Also literally, since she is inexplicably and immediately attracted to a guy described as some sort of misshapen hulking monster, so they fuck in a couple of very purple sex scenes and this results in the deaf guy becoming a good guy and trying to save her from the other assassin and the evil DIRNSA.

As a thriller, this book would rate 2 stars for a quick and entertaining if silly plot and mediocre writing. But for writing crappy, poorly researched garbage, Eisler gets 1 star and a fuck you. English Read this book because it’s wildly entertaining. Respect it because it paints a portrait of America that is more timely, terrifying, and relevant than anything gracing the bestseller lists. This is fiction that thrills, makes you think, and makes you consider the surveillance state that is fast becoming our daily lives. What more can a novel aspire to do? The God’s Eye View is one of the most important books that will be published this year. English