I normally stick to fantasy and sci-fi when I am reading with a peppering of dystopian future tales as my preferred reading because that is quite simply, what I enjoy. As far as I know I have never read a Tom Clancy book although I am very aware of who he is because basically everything he writes ends up being popular and a lot of them end up being films.
- The Hunt for Red October
- Patriot Games
- Clear and Present Danger
- The Sum of all Fears
These are all movies that did really well and Tom Clancy is the writer behind all of them. So I figured I would dive in and see what it is about his books that convinces the movie industry to gamble on him and chose one I had never heard of called "Red Storm Rising."
I went in with an open mind and the book starts out in an absolutely fantastic way. The frenetic way that the first chapter just totally pulls you into the action is truly a masterclass in writing and at that point I was feeling like I was in for a real treat and was actually thinking "oh wow, where have you been all my life!"
Unfortunately the next 100 pages or so kind of showed me what Clancy is all about and while a lot of people probably enjoy this sort of thing, to me it seems too in-depth and I really started to wonder when he was going to friggin get on with it.
This book, as you will discover very early on and therefore I don't feel as though I am spoiling anything, is about the Soviet Union deciding that they need to invade Europe and have a very good plan for doing so and also a preemptive strike method for how they can keep the USA out of it by way of forming a blockade in the Atlantic that will prevent them from reinforcing Europe for a long enough period of time that ensures their victory because the UN and Europe just generally speaking, doesn't have much in the way of defenses, just a bunch of treaties with the true bad boy juggernaut that is the United States.
I think that at a certain time that this notion probably wasn't too far off the mark. It may even be true today. I don't want to get into the politics of present day though, this is obviously a work of fiction.
A friend of mine has a physical copy of this here in Vietnam, I told him I am not interested.. He said he has never even opened it
The thing that turns me off about this book, and from what I have been told it is an aspect of all of his books, is that he dives seriously deep into technical aspects of the military and various vehicles, vessels, and aircraft, that might be very interesting to some people but to me it was just thousands of extra words getting in the way of the story actually happening.
I only made it about 30% of the way through the very very long book and decided and realized that I was scanning most of the pages and that this wasn't for me. I was reading it not because I was excited about what was going to happen next, I was treating it like a mountain-climb, where the only objective was to get through it and not necessarily enjoy it along the way.
This is part of why I avoided reading in my youth, it was something that I (and probably you) was forced to do in school and I never enjoyed it because it felt like a chore. Tom Clancy to me, feels like a chore. Plus there are always a ton of characters and unless I am truly interested I don't remember 2 dozen characters. I feel like this book needs to be read with one of those police tack-boards with pictures and little pieces of string connecting everyone if you are going to have any idea what the fuck he is talking about especially if you take a bit of time between reading sessions.
So while parts of it were interesting and according to more veteran Tom Clancy readers, very accurate as far as military and technical aspects are concerned (dude does his research), I found myself just not staying very interested and wasn't really even reading most of it after 30% of the book and I decided to bail.
Clancy books are notoriously long as well and I just didn't have it in me. Maybe it has the most amazing ending ever. I don't know. I'll read the wiki and spoil it for myself because I am not going to finish this. The original version of this book was nearly 750 pages and I don't mind this length as long as it keeps me interested. I had to jump the boat on this one because if I am not enjoying something, I'm not gonna keep doing it.
If you are a Clancy fan, and there MUST be a ton of you out there, then I guess we are just very different in the way of what it is that we find entertaining.... and that is just fine: it would be a very boring world if we all thought the same.