This book was, for me, the starting point from which Tom Clancy began his decline as a writer. It was also the last Clancy book I actually paid money for (I got a couple later ones as gifts, and checked out the rest from the library).
My biggest complaint is that this is where his hero, Jack Ryan, makes his transition from resourceful and brave CIA operative to superhuman Saviour of the World. In short, he goes from being a genuinely credible character to one that belongs in a comic book. Don't believe me? Just look at all the world crises he single handedly solves in this (and later) books. For starters, he magically cooks up a plan that will permanently bring peace and stability to the Middle East, a task that has, to date, eluded countless diplomats and any number of US presidents and Israeli Prime Ministers. But not Jack Ryan, nosiree Bob, with a few phone calls and some help from the Vatican, he gets everything solved over there, and that's just in the first quarter of the book! He still has some 600+ pages to Save the World from nuclear holocaust, which of course he proceeds to do despite a terrorist atomic attack on the Super Bowl, a president who doesn't trust him, a National Security Advisor who hates his guts and plots his downfall, a wife who's starting to suspect him of cheating, and, on a personal level, a bit too much reliance on the bottle to deal with stress.
OK, to be fair, a certain simplicity in terms of plot and character development is pretty much a Clancy forte, and he does at least provide us with a highly entertaining page-turner. And my objection to this book would have been lessened had he not followed it up by promoting Ryan on to ever bigger and more important jobs, culminating with his getting the world's top job (the presidency) a couple books later. Ryan is at his best solving more manageable problems, as he did in "Red October" or "Cardinal of the Kremlin", but he is far less interesting as a world power broker who seems to be able to solve any crisis, no matter how terrifying, with nearly as much ease as Superman leaping a tall building. The "problems" that Jack encounters are all solved in a fairly simplistic fashion, his personal driver (John Clark) saves his marriage by giving his wife the truth about the alleged affair, she then goes on the publicly humiliate the National Security Advisor who'd promoted the cheating rumors, and Jack eases off on the sauce just in time to intervene in a potential nuclear crisis by personally making contact with the Soviet leader and defusing tensions that had been built up by the incompetent president who's been giving way too much credence to the aforementioned National Security Advisor, a woman way out of her depth. And, as if that weren't enough, noble Jack intervenes when the president prepares to launch a nuclear attack to avenge the Super Bowl bombing.
To "sum" it up, this book delivers the goods in terms of entertainment value, but does little else. And Clancy's books from here on merely continue that pattern. What made his earlier books work was that he seemed to genuinely take his plots and characters seriously, whether it was the machinations of mad Irish terrorists, the efforts of a revered Soviet sub captain to defect with the latest, most potent missile boat, or a rather convoluted war in Latin America against the drug barons. He made the people and the situations seem alive and real. But from this point on, he chose to indulge in ever more grandiose tales that are the literary equivalent to big budget action and special effects laden Hollywood blockbusters.
This book was, for me, the starting point from which Tom Clancy began his decline as a writer. It was also the last Clancy book I actually paid money for (I got a couple later ones as gifts, and checked out the rest from the library). My biggest complaint is that this is where his hero, Jack Ryan, makes his transition from resourceful and brave CIA operative to superhuman Saviour of the World. In short, he goes from being a genuinely credible character to one that belongs in a comic book. Don't believe me? Just look at all the world crises he single handedly solves in this (and later) books. For starters, he magically cooks up a plan that will permanently bring peace and stability to the Middle East, a task that has, to date, eluded countless diplomats and any number of US presidents and Israeli Prime Ministers. But not Jack Ryan, nosiree Bob, with a few phone calls and some help from the Vatican, he gets everything solved over there, and that's just in the first quarter of the book! He still has some 600+ pages to Save the World from nuclear holocaust, which of course he proceeds to do despite a terrorist atomic attack on the Super Bowl, a president who doesn't trust him, a National Security Advisor who hates his guts and plots his downfall, a wife who's starting to suspect him of cheating, and, on a personal level, a bit too much reliance on the bottle to deal with stress. OK, to be fair, a certain simplicity in terms of plot and character development is pretty much a Clancy forte, and he does at least provide us with a highly entertaining page-turner. And my objection to this book would have been lessened had he not followed it up by promoting Ryan on to ever bigger and more important jobs, culminating with his getting the world's top job (the presidency) a couple books later. Ryan is at his best solving more manageable problems, as he did in "Red October" or "Cardinal of the Kremlin", but he is far less interesting as a world power broker who seems to be able to solve any crisis, no matter how terrifying, with nearly as much ease as Superman leaping a tall building. The "problems" that Jack encounters are all solved in a fairly simplistic fashion, his personal driver (John Clark) saves his marriage by giving his wife the truth about the alleged affair, she then goes on the publicly humiliate the National Security Advisor who'd promoted the cheating rumors, and Jack eases off on the sauce just in time to intervene in a potential nuclear crisis by personally making contact with the Soviet leader and defusing tensions that had been built up by the incompetent president who's been giving way too much credence to the aforementioned National Security Advisor, a woman way out of her depth. And, as if that weren't enough, noble Jack intervenes when the president prepares to launch a nuclear attack to avenge the Super Bowl bombing. To "sum" it up, this book delivers the goods in terms of entertainment value, but does little else. And Clancy's books from here on merely continue that pattern. What made his earlier books work was that he seemed to genuinely take his plots and characters seriously, whether it was the machinations of mad Irish terrorists, the efforts of a revered Soviet sub captain to defect with the latest, most potent missile boat, or a rather convoluted war in Latin America against the drug barons. He made the people and the situations seem alive and real. But from this point on, he chose to indulge in ever more grandiose tales that are the literary equivalent to big budget action and special effects laden Hollywood blockbusters.