Review: The Atlas Maneuver

The Atlas Maneuver by Steve Berry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not my favorite, but still a far better Atlas-titled book than any of Olivie Blake's BookTok overhype.

(There, I said it.)

Cotton Malone's back again, and this time, taking on a bizarre multipronged conspiracy to hack the world's economy with a combination of lost Japanese World War II gold and conning numerous countries around the world into adopting bitcoin as legal tender. Sure, this book already feels a bit dated since bitcoin was more of a household name in the last decade, and Berry's usually impeccable research falls flat a couple of times - like, why the hell is Malta the only EU nation listed among those in the plan for bitcoin adoption?

(And what is it with spy fictionists and their consistent misrepresenting of Malta as some sort of tax haven or otherwise economically libertarian microstate? Tess Gerritsen was a lot more accurate in The Spy Coast, but then there's Agents of SHIELD still making me laugh with how much their writers screwed up on the third episode of Season 1...)

Also, I imagine a lot of actual Armenians would want Berry's blood after he gave an Armenian villain character the name "Samvel Yerevan," like...does anyone in Armenia have the same surname as the name of their capital? Especially when it's so well known that most Armenian surnames end in "-ian," and "Yerevanian" is a perfectly accurate Armenian surname - just Google it, the first result is UCLA neurologist Alexan I. Yerevanian, M.D.

But while Berry's been phoning it in a lot in recent years, at least this book brings back Cassiopeia Vitt for her signature sexpionage, and he's definitely taught me more about bitcoin than any crypto bro ever could. While Berry himself says in his author's note that he likes bitcoin and thinks it's a marvel, he's also smart and pragmatic enough with this book to point out a serious flaw that makes it untenable as worldwide legal tender.

That, I think, is the reason I come back to Berry again and again even when I don't love his books every time. He's always smart enough to point out serious flaws in economics and politics alike, and I always sincerely hope his books never land in the hands of our enemies.

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