Isn't it amusing...
Written: Sep 06 '00 (Updated Mar 25 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good Story
Cons: Weakly Told
The Bottom Line: Now that it's in remainder, you can buy it anywhere you like. :-)
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| baylink's Full Review: |
Y'all who read the Clancy reviews will be well aware that I wasn't especially happy with _Rainbow_Six_.
Y'all will remember that I said such intemperate things as "Tom; forget about buying football teams; write!" and "Putnams? Would you mind, um, maybe having your editors <em>edit</em> this time?"
Well, one out of two ain't bad.
:-)
A quick side trip: I find it amusing that the "triad" have written reviews all three of which seem to amount to: "Yeah, it's weak. Buy it anyway." But I suppose it's all the more amusing because that's roughly what I'm going to say too. That has some deep meaning...
If you figure out what it is, email me. :-)
This is the latest book in the 'Ryaniverse', of course, and it's sort of his 'Sunset' (a convention I've named after Robert Heinlein's _To_Sail_Beyond_The_Sunset_, in which he brought back substantially <em>all</em> the recurring characters he'd ever written, all woven into one story. Spider Robinson just did it, too, in Callahan's Key. As long as it's done <em>well</em> I don't mind it much).
The book is admittedly long, but unlike in R6, none of it seems wasted by the time you get to the end. I read *really* fast... and it's nice to have a novel I get to enjoy for a while; not everyone will agree... but hey, we only get one a year, right?
In any event, those who think that this is "Red Storm Rising II", and therefore that it "doesn't get started until page 782, or thereabouts" are, I believe mistaken. It's actually more "Cardinal meets RSR", and the overall structure wasn't what disappointed me.
<em>That</em> award goes, ironically enough (for the 'inventor' of the techno-thriller) to the sloppy use of technology in the writing.
SPOILER WARNING
There were a lot of small screwups in this book, things we'd call sloppy Bible reading: the RVS seems to have changed it's name without explanation to the SVR since John and Ding last worked with Sergey... and indeed, it changes back and forth within the book. Mary Pat says "Honey Bunny", as has been noted elsewhere, enough to make you reach for an insulin bottle and a syringe. If I hear the phrase "a little old lady with her Social Security check" one more time, the Secret Service will have to restrain me.
At least only two people have "been there and done that" in this book, and Ding finally demonstrates that he understands "The T-shirt addendum".
I attribute the pointless repetition of such literary devices to the fact that the book is 1000 pages long... or vice versa. But those were not the things that troubled me.
What bugged <em>me</em> was the fact that important plot points are hung on fairly improbable foundations. A modem that can ship data during the "connect warble", ok. But an ISP in *Beijing* will be able to do something with that? C'mon, Tom. That data is *out of band*, by definition.
It frustrates me endlessly that Clancy, who helped create a new genre by including enough petty detail to turn his books into 'geek-procedurals', gets worse and worse about making sure that that exact detail will be <em>plausible</em> to those very same geeks, so as to avoid reviews exactly like this one. It's more frustrating because it wouldn't have taken much caulk to plug that hole, or any of the others, and there are <em>uncountable</em> geeks that would <em>fall all over themselves</em> (myself not excepted) for the chance at the gig.
But I suppose it's better that I should harp about these topics than about fundamental weaknesses in the storytelling, as my review of R6 had to do. I don't need to do that here. Unlike the previous book, B&D is a *much* more solidly told story -- I could start my second reading immediately, instead of having to wait almost 6 months, as I had to last time.
This *is* a good story, for the occasional weaknesses in the telling; if you're a Jack Ryan fan, go buy it. But buy it at Sams' Club or Wal-Mart; no sense enouraging him *too* much. :-)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
baylink
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Member: Jay R. Ashworth
Location: St Petersburg, FL USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 4 members
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