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Alex Mason #1

ODIN: Alex Mason, Book 1

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ODIN is about as secret as a government agency can get....

Multiple-time USA Today and Amazon five-million-copy best-selling authors David Archer and Blake Banner have combined forces to create one hell of a thriller series!

Nobody has ever heard of ODIN.

ODIN is about as secret as a government agency can get.

Because within ODIN there is General Operations, which speaks for itself; ODIN 5i, which deals with intelligence gathering; and then there is ODIN 1i, which deals in operations so sensitive not even the CIA can touch them. All three are run with an iron first by The Chief, a giant with a gigantic IQ. His top agent is Alex Mason, hard and cool - he's a law unto himself.

But when an ODIN 5i agent based at the US Embassy in Manila goes missing and his encrypted laptop disappears with him, the whole ODIN structure is put in peril. Then the agents he was managing start to disappear one by one, and things start to look ugly.

So Alex Mason is sent to Manila, and what he finds there is the growing shadow of Chinese imperialism threatening not only America’s presence in the Pacific, but the security of the whole Western world....

This is a job for ODIN 1i...and for Alex Mason.

Audible Audio

First published September 21, 2021

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About the author

Blake Banner

176 books407 followers
USA TODAY and Amazon #1 bestselling author of the OMEGA and DEAD COLD MYSTERY series. Learn more about Blake Banner at his website: www.blakebanner.com

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5 stars
6,044 (41%)
4 stars
5,445 (37%)
3 stars
2,255 (15%)
2 stars
487 (3%)
1 star
173 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 365 reviews
25 reviews12 followers
June 11, 2022
Made it through this, which was a miracle and the only reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one. Overall, I'm kinda stunned by the positive reviews from other readers.

Even though this is evidently some kind of 007 knockoff, I still found it unnecessarily sexist and disturbingly racist in its descriptions of southeast Asia and the people living there.
Profile Image for Sean Peters  (A Good Thriller).
845 reviews123 followers
October 5, 2021
Nobody has ever heard of ODIN.

ODIN is about as secret as a government agency can get.

Because within ODIN there is General Operations, which speaks for itself; ODIN 5i, which deals with intelligence gathering, and then there is ODIN 1i which deals in operations so sensitive not even the CIA can touch them. All three are run with an iron first by The Chief, a giant with a gigantic IQ. His top agent is Alex Mason, hard and cool – he's a law unto himself.

But when an ODIN agent based at the US Embassy in Manila, goes missing, and his encrypted laptop disappears with him, the whole ODIN structure is put in peril. Then the agents he was managing start to disappear one by one, and things start to look ugly.

So Alex Mason is sent to Manila, and what he finds there is the growing shadow of Chinese imperialism threatening not only America’s presence in the Pacific, but the security of the whole Western World…

This is a job for ODIN

And for Alex Mason.

Always difficult with two authors, they have to get their own styles and bring them together, sometimes it does not work, and sometimes it's great.

These was a struggle to start with, quite slow, lots of "talking" and not enough action, slow and heavy.

But what saved this book is the last few chapters where the action and pace was good, with two great characters in Alex Mason and Gallin. The tension built well, the pace was good, and at last it was exciting, took a while.

Also I know it's the first in a series and you have to get used to the new characters, so I have ordered the second book, always willing to give an authors a second chance, this case authors.

Three Stars.
Profile Image for ChrisQ.
202 reviews11 followers
December 28, 2022
Goodness no. This was not for me. Too much stereotyping of the Asian culture. Too much chest thumping - I am a man's man. A woman in the story even gives a big speech about it. I could barely get through this. And it was boring at the beginning? Nope.

Next!
134 reviews37 followers
May 12, 2022
Competent Thriller

I enjoyed reading and listening to Alex Mason's first outing, but I cannot honestly say that I couldn't put it down. I am sufficiently interested that I will no doubt read the next in the series - but it will not be first in my list. I am a great fan of Blake Banner's "Dead cold" series, but this book lacked the sparkling dialogue and the chemistry between Stone and Dehan. There may be the beginnings of a partnership between Mason and a Mossad agent - not sure if she will be a recurring character - but the chemistry isn't there yet.
So - a competent thriller but a long way to go to compete with the likes of Orphan X or John Rain in the "I must read it as soon as it comes out. " stakes.
Profile Image for Renée Gendron.
Author 27 books89 followers
Read
August 28, 2023
This is the first book of a series, and it reminded me of the series The Man from U.N.C.LE. I found the premise interesting. The writing varies from first person limited to third person omnipotent which I found a little jarring. For an international thriller, the pace and tension was very slow at times.

The writing was clear and engaging and didn't big down the action.

It was okay. I'm not sure I'll get the second book.
Profile Image for Jerry Summers.
874 reviews3 followers
August 27, 2023
Another acronym agency spy that thinks he is Bond. US-China controversy about Belts-Bridges-Bits-Bytes. Set in the Philippines. Solid read.
74 reviews
May 25, 2024
Instant insomnia, you will be up late.

I did not want to put the book down. I found that the story kept my head in the game.
156 reviews7 followers
October 29, 2025
Action packed and fast paced. A good story to get lost in.
Profile Image for Tim Blackburn.
521 reviews7 followers
October 8, 2023
Locale and action good - plot and dialog not very good. Not a fan.
Profile Image for Dan Danz.
9 reviews
February 5, 2023
I found it hard to read this book. I admit, I don't have the luxury of reading the entire book at one time. Thus, I found it VERY hard to pick up where I left off (always at a chapter boundary). The issue is with the author/editor style of not re-establishing who is speaking at the beginning of a chapter. That means backtracking (which is annoying) or continuing in the new chapter, hoping to get a clue about who's talking. Also annoying is switching from 3rd person style to 1st person style.

This book also features touristy descriptions of the Phillipines -- replete with 2-4 word, long Filipino names for the cities, suburbs, streeats, and sections of towns that are gratuitous additions that add to the word count but are not necessary to understanding the story.

Finally, I suspect that the author thought that the Russian word for the number one: один (одна for feminine / одно for neuter) would be appropriate as the transliteration of один to English ODIN for the first book of a series. But it's a stretch to then find a suitable four-word agency name based on the letters O,D,I,and N. The full name in the book is very tame and I think unsuitable given the clanestine activities of its employees. The agency charter is never really spelled out, and the reader is left to conjure the purpose of this agency. Similarly, Russia is not a factor in this first book (China is frequently mentioned), so why start with один? Why not use number one in Chinese? Perhaps Wikipedia has the answer: " The number 1 (幺 pinyin: yī; Cantonese Yale: yāt) is neither auspicious nor inauspicious".
274 reviews6 followers
December 24, 2022
Took a while...

I didn't find this book to be particularly engaging until about 3/4 of the way through, when things did get exciting. Before that the story felt rather listless, with various characters getting introduced and some getting murdered here and there. I didn't feel connected to the characters, and many of them were awful people, killing without remorse, even enjoying it. And the story made the Philippines seem like a horrible place to be, particularly Manila. And China came across as a horrible, sneaky, villainous entity.

Eventually a few likable characters emerged - and some of them even survived all the killing. The good guys' struggle for survival - and to solve the mystery behind all the killings - finally made things interesting.

I also had issues with the editing, particularly the misuse of commas in groups of adjectives. The authors (editors?) seemed to find it necessary to separate all adjectives with commas, whether or not commas were appropriate. Distracting!

I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could. Until that last 20%, I was going to give it 3 stars, but the excitment at the end earned the book that final star.
Profile Image for Christian.
754 reviews
April 3, 2025
I don’t mind a bit of mindless fun in my reading, but I insist on fun.
This novel wasn’t having enough wit to be a satire on Bond, nor good enough to be a parody. About as blunt as Austin Powers and I do hate those movies.

Let’s start with our jain gero Alex Mason, a n agent of ODIN who goes on a field mission with a badge identifying him as such. But he dons an evening suit and orders a Vesper Martini, not stirred of course. We later learns he is driving a Aston Martin DBS.
About the same time he meets his Partner a Captain Gallen of Mossad, equally open in her approach, and going even more full macho than Mason.

I might give the next two novels a shot, because I bought them as a set from the bargain bin, which seems to have been a fair price.
1,477 reviews25 followers
September 28, 2021
ODIN. David Archer. Blake Banner

Odin, a clandestine organization. Assassin's. Alex Mason is partnered with an Mossad operative, Captain Alina Gallin with very similar credentials. They are extremely skilled, deadly and a very good match working together. They are on assignment in the Philippines. China has developed a virus that can compromise the world banking system without anyone's knowledge. The Chinese control the Philippines by intimidation or any other means necessary to accomplish their goals. This is an extremely fast paced action thriller and an immensely enjoyable read!! My highest recommendation!!
Profile Image for Craig.
199 reviews2 followers
June 13, 2023
Espionage isn't all Action

Some reviewers seem to think life is like a 30-minute television show, where all the world's problems are solved (to their satisfaction) before the commercial break. It's not. A lot of espionage is like police investigations, slow, plodding, piecing together the clues until you know who did what, to whom, why, and how. Only then can a spy take the appropriate action(s) - don't want to assassinate the wrong person, it might ruin his/her whole day - and the paperwork would just be awful. So for those who complain about a slow start, compare it to America's DOJ and their abysmally slow "investigations" of people they like.
43 reviews2 followers
June 21, 2024
Tight storyline with character development

Even minor characters seem to be people. Alex Mason is not a perfect "James Bond", but rather ordinary, smart in some ways, but not as sharp as Gallin. The story moves well, with few stopovers in distraction. It is extremely readable and hard to put down. The reader seems to move along with the story, encountering few external "deus ex machina" disclosures or leaps. You feel like you are on the journey to discovery with him. This is a good start to, hopefully, an enjoyable series of books.
101 reviews1 follower
January 5, 2025
Everyone’s last name seemed to start with an H. At one point a character named Hanson was brought up and I’m pretty sure they meant another character. I don’t remember a Hanson even being in other parts of the book. I almost DNF. I have no idea how this book has so many decent ratings, it’s almost unbelievable to the point where I wonder if they are fake. There are two authors on this book and I’m surprised there were so many mistakes as well.
8 reviews
June 8, 2023
Mediocre at best. The characters were not well written and the dialogue was abysmal. In a couple of places, the authors couldn't even keep the name of one of the characters consistent, in the same paragraph! Only finished because I was hate reading the last two thirds of the book and wanted to see if it got better. Spoiler alert; it didn't.
7 reviews1 follower
September 27, 2021
Compliments to Ian Fleming

Really! Aston Martin, martini’s, licence to kill, beautiful agents, a US version of M. Even the plot didn’t really gather any momentum, I kept waiting for something unpredictable to happen but it never did.
43 reviews1 follower
September 22, 2021
not by Blake banner

Book does not compare with any of banner’s books - meandering, tedious, wordy, and unexciting. Stay with COBRA (Harry Bauer) and forget ODIN.
1 review
June 5, 2022
Boring

More than half of book is description of everything, food, wine, trees, buildings to the point of nausea, could barely get through it😮‍💨
1 review
July 19, 2022
Just couldn't get into this book. Stopped reading in the middle of it. I haven't done that in 20 years
Profile Image for Amy.
292 reviews4 followers
August 16, 2022
Too many Bond copies. Silly.
Profile Image for Joe.
13 reviews2 followers
January 27, 2023
I have read some dumb, lazy books before, but Odin (Alex Mason #1: Hopefully the Last) is easily the dumbest, laziest book I've ever read. It's also vaguely racist and casually misogynistic. But mostly it's just breathtakingly dumb. And lazy.

To wit: the authors use the word “Avenue” 40 times. This is because most of the story (if that’s the word for it) takes place in and around Manila. Rather than cluttering up the novel with useless features like character development, clear plot point linkages, or thrilling action, Messrs. Archer and Banner simply list the streets the characters are transiting on their way to their next tedious and nonsensical mission objective. Forty times.

In this same vein, the authors use the phrase “as the crow flies” three times to give the reader a (totally pointless) idea of how far away one character/plot-stop is from another. Three times might not sound like a lot, but the book is only 260 pages long. Trust me, that’s too many times.

Odin’s most howlingly bad crutch is as follows, though: David Archer and Blake Banner use the word “scruffy” 13 times. Yes, that is way too many times to use any adjective, let alone a weird one like scruffy. But here’s the kicker… it is used exclusively to describe one young British woman who has a pivotal role in the caper (such as it is). It is used by the authors to describe this poor woman, of course, but in a truly confounding turn, the word scruffy is also used by numerous characters, independently, to describe her. ‘Hello, sir, I’m looking for a young British woman who may have been in your Bodega yesterday, kinda scruffy,’ followed by a different, unrelated character on the other side of town saying something like ‘We need to use the City’s CCTV footage to find a scruffy young British woman, somewhere near the bus station!’ What. The. Heck.

I would say the book ends with a ridiculously tidy deus ex machina, but that would be an insult to all gods and machines who have come before us. Do not read this book, unless you just awoke from a coma (congrats!) and your doctor has assigned you a rigorous eye rolling regimen to rebuild your extraocular musculature.

PS I asked chatGPT to write a short story about two spies with the same names as Odin’s taking down a Chinese plot in Manila. It responded in 20 seconds with a more plausible and interesting story arc.
12 reviews
May 1, 2026
Boring copycat of old movies! Where are the positive reviews coming from ? This book is very racist and the condescending manner Asian culture is described is incredible.

This book is as impossible a thriller as Queen Elizabeth II was a joker. Devoid of common sense right from the beginning, a series of laughable blunders.

a. Who in the world wears a Panama hat to escape attention/as disguise in the Philippines ?! This is not how people out there dress up during sweltering hot weather. NO one. Bingo! spy spotted ! Book loses.

b. The author makes people wearing bermuda shorts and T-shirts a deprecation of the poor. Hello ? Even Asian billionnaires wear bermuda shorts and T-shirts in the summer to the malls or did the author decide to see poor areas only and omitted the ubiquitous malls ?

c. The book mentions the University of the Philippines as a possible employer for embedded foreign spies ?! whoaaaa.... Just how many foreign professors are there in a very nationalistic, progressive, pro-Filipino university anyway ? Dont they all look like Filipinos out there speaking English with a Tagalog intonation ? Thats the real University of the Philippines. While experts on their field and graduates of the top universities of the U.S. and U.K., they return to the state university and would rather carry their Filipino intonation than change it to American slang. That by itself is a distinguishing mark.

d. So the book now alleges American, Chinese, and Mossad spies are in the Philippines. And theyre not exposed by their lack of fluency and foreign pronounciation of the national language - Filipino ? This book is a joke. A foreign professor looks for an honorary title in a university whose professors might have finished postgrad in the same foreign university? Dream on..

E. So now foreigners can just kill in Manila and the police wont be tipped? The Manila military and police that can find terrorists?! Sounds like the authors were copying movies in Netflix.

This book attempts to thrill, but full of laughable text - try common sense next time if you want to be spies. Next!
8 reviews
December 15, 2022
I kind of stumbled into this series because of David Archer's awesome series about Noah Wolf. I can tell you that this series just gets better and better the longer you stay with it. Was ODIN slow? A bit, but in order to get characters established and become attached to, it's a necessary aspect of any great series. I have read through this series so fast that I find myself feeling the same way I did about Reacher, Dirk Pitt and many others.... not wanting to wait until the next in the series comes out! I haven't started Dead Man Talking and I've already pro ordered All the King's Men!! Blake Banner and David Archer have come together to create one awesome hero! Nero assigns Mason cases that up until now were only handled by James Bond or the IMF! HIs travels will take you all over the world to find and save his allies and get to the truth. Their series often includes bits of today's hot topics as well with a bit of humour injected into the plot so as to find yourself laughing out loud. Want to know more about the book? Read it- as I don't want to give away any spoilers for Odin (Alex Mason #1) by David Archer those that are thinking about jumping in!!
Profile Image for Chance.
1,128 reviews20 followers
June 15, 2023
I’ve only listened to the audiobook release of this book but I can tell I’ll like it if a when I decide to read the e-book format. The story is set in a high spy raft world instead of the MC being from a real world spy agency or special forces group we get an enternaly new spy agency working above but with the western powers to keep the peace in the world.

The plot isnkt a world ender or big villain plan it’s a real setting of how new ideas and information or the future of intelligence groups has the protagonist Mason try’s to save people and stop foreign forces from getting a new gen tool to effect global markets.

Has I finished the story I felt the female lead was rushed up till the end I felt it was organic, but felt was to messy an just played into the fan service of the MC badass getting the hot girl in the end. Also I don’t if you’ve seen the new Amazon prime show Citadel because I feel like someone there stole a lot of the plot ideas for characters from your books.
3 reviews
February 16, 2023
First you need to find an editor. Errors are rampant. Gillin has two different pistols (mistakenly) on the same page in the middle of a fire fight. Manila has more than plantains, rubber trees and palms. Tropical islands are lush with vegetation if one is able to conger up an image of reality. Obviously the author has never been to Manila. The authors view of the Phillipines is really very narrow, both for the people and the environment. I am sure that there are items of clothing in addition to Bermuda shorts and flip-flops. The bad guy Chew seems to have an extensive expense account but only one blue suit.
I would have been able to list the innumerable errors but the Kindle does not permit a written review. I am guessing that the publisher does not really want feedback. In order to write this review, I had to expend tremendous effort and time to find this site.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 365 reviews