I've continued to read the Power Plays series only because, well, honestly I don't know why, the Clancy name on it I guess. I know he's never written them but I read them non-the-less because they usually sound like a promising topic. I've never read a book that missed so many "to's, as's, and it's". Maybe during dialogue that's how they'd talk, but in non-dialogue paragraphs? Ridiculous, I think even the editor's realize no one will really read this. I really liked the concept of Africa becoming a turf war, but it never really amounted to that-it came down to a vendetta and the whole UpLink African venture fell in the background. I was severly dissapointed and am writing this in the hopes that they get a new author for these books. Hell, I'll give it a shot if you give me a start-up price!

And as to John who believes I'm a toddler who's never gone to school, I've read ever Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton novel and excelled in my english classes at school. If you've got a problem with me, you do it outside of Amazon. I'm telling people what I thought, and I'm sure they don't give if you or anyone else spells perfectly on here-I wasn't aware this was graded. Grow up-I have.

This book has 421 pages and could be resumed in less than 150:
First 25 pages, then "girl loves dogs, daddy loves daughter, Gabon has some corruption, but it's ok, UpLink is a wonderful company but has some politics and some people don't like each other, the bad guy hates his father (and everyone else)" and finally, the final 100 pages.

I love when Tom Clancy writes and I am getting less and less excited when he just lends his name to someone else.

I thought this novel was the best. Period. And as to Adam from Wasau, Wisconsin, a previous reviewer -- before you take a shot at ANY writing job, or a stab at another of these reviews, or even a crack at making out a check or addressing an envelope, try to get your spelling right . . . or find some very, very patient editors (not "editor's", as you wrote) to assist you, since I think you'll need an army of them due to your severely (is that what you mean by "severly", whicn isn't an English word?) atrocious grammar. Nonetheless -- "non-the-less" isn't a word in my dictionary, either -- it's too bad you were dissapointed with the book (uh, ummm, now you've got me messing up. The correct spelling is "disappointed", but I'd better cut out of here before the misspelling bee that obviously stung you multiple times buzzes my way).

A parting word of advice before I go: Given your problems with the language, maybe you ought to take another look at the novel and read over the sentences that are supposedly missing all those "to", "it", and "as" words. Read slowly, take your time, there's no rush. Maybe ask someone with, ah, more refined reading and writing skills than your own for help, it's no shame. Nor would it be too difficult -- pick somebody off the street at random, and he or she will probably be a few ticks up on you in that department. Betcha you'll find those words aren't SUPPOSED to be there . . . and also learn something in the process!

Agree with the other reviews......No, it's not WRITTEN by Tom Clancy. Liked the plot, but too many characters that are never really developed, relationships left unexplained and dangling. Rather abrupt ending like the book was rushed to press without enough time to adequately complete it. Gets mired down in pointless explanations of subjects that really have no bearing on the plot/outcome. This is my 1st read of a book from this series, maybe some of the characters/subplots come from earlier books in the series that should really be read first ??

Tom Clancy, a world class adventure and military writer really vrought home how dangerous military operations are in extremely cold places, especially Antarctica. It is a medium sized book, but it sadly lacks the common twists and turns that become of a world class thriller such as this one. In a nutshell, the US military are experimenting with engineering and technologies so that if they want to, one day, they could work on Planet Mars. But, leading entreupeneurs want it a different way, and boy are they anarchists? A man who is dealing black market artworks is making money: a lot of money: and is funding the people who want to isolate the military into not going anywhere near Antarctica. With the unearned money, they buy nuclear waste from Britain, planting it around the site so that the personnel get dosed up with clinically high amounts of radiation. But all is not as it seems, and Tom Clancy, why does he have to always end without twists in the tale? Besides from that, it's a 'not bad' sort of book, but the story could easily be improved with a little more art and affection: more twists and more turns. I'll award two, perhaps three stars.

A 3-star rating for most writers is an accomplishment. Anything with Clancy's name on it implies, at least, tacit approval from Clancy. Since this was actually written by someone else (as a number of Clancy created series are), it would appear that Clancy has begun to care more for the money his name makes than the readers who trust his name. I am disappointed with Clancy. In fairness, though, the book does have good technical facts and plenty of action. The characters, however, appear to be good generic cut-outs.

SSN began as an exciting read. Capt. Mack Mackey takes his Los Angeles class nuclear submarine deep into enemy waters to stealthily attack chinese shipping and defend American assets in the area.

The world of a nuclear submarine is an exciting one and Clancy seems to be well versed in the details of that environment. I eagerly devoured the early action in this strange setting. However, once the submarine jargon got old I realized that that's all the book is. It's just a very detailed discription of the operations of a submarine.

There are no characters that we know anything about, and there is not much of a story. If you're looking for a story I can sumarize it for you fairly simply: 1. The Cheyenne nuclear submarine encounters enemy. 2. Cheyenne sinks enemy becuase Cheyenne is quieter, has better sonor equipment and longer range torpedos and missiles. 3. Repeat process untill war is over.

Every mission was essentially the same.

In conclusion, I believe this is a good choice if you are looking for a book about how a modern submarine operates. If you're looking for a story or any interesting characters I believe you should look elsewhere. Two stars for interesting description of submarine operation.

I've not read much of Tom Clancy's work, but based on what little I have read, I held out much hope for this book. It definitely did not deliver.While the action "scenes" were quite fun, they were also rather repetitive. There was very little plot, and no character development. The end result is a story that is about as believable as a Rambo movie. I very seriously doubt that the entire Chinese navy, which was being constantly augmented with Soviet boats and crews, could be eliminated by a single sub. I don't buy it, and neither should you.

While this is not the usual top notch novel by Tom Clancy, it wasn't meant to be a fully fledged novel. It is a companion book to a CD-ROM game published by Simon and Shuster in 1996. If you are a fan of the game, and some people are, then it's a bit of fluff to read while on a long plane flight or bus ride.
If you aren't a fan of books based on games or expect great literature, then this book is not for you.

Ok..to make this short and sweet...this book is so bad that It coulden't hold my attention for the first 50 pages..yeah I gave it some time..it was so confusing and made no sense. I had to do a book report and had to make up or emphasis certain parts that I did read to make it seem like I did. I would have not given a star if there was that choice.

It was kind of like watching a movie that was somewhat entertaining. It was OK nothing more nothing less. The plot skipped around a lot. Had some characters that were developed and used throughout the entire book. The ending was better than I expected. I think it would make a much better movie than a book. Tough to build tension in a business environment with characters that are supposed to be professional and distanced from their emotions. Their motivations were evident just not that believable or compelling.

The Roger Gordian business conglomerate is threatened by impending hostile takeover from the wiles of archrival Caine and his evil underworld conspirators. Intrigue follows intrigue as one plot after another is foiled.

This work, while typical of the style familiar to most Clancy works is atypical in that less than adequate detail is given to technical editing and character development. It seems like the writer was trying to "crank out" a story to go along with the accompanying software. Several words were repeated ("There was WAS even a small...." pg 184, "...UpLink company has been BEEN marginal..." pg 225), and other words used inappropriately for the sentence ("...all of which were controlled by his seemingLESS endless...." pg 183 "...agents pretending to be demonstrators AND dispersed throught the..." pg 184) (Capitalization mine).

All in all, it was a good book. Some of the characters could be developed a bit more, but considering it is an accompanying book to a software program, I feel it met its intended effect.

For readers not familiar with Tom Clancy, I recommend it as a must read. For those familiar with, and avid Clancy fans, it might be somewhat disappointing. For both groups, be sure to read POLITIKA first!

Start reading it only if you get it for free! Read the first 60 pages and ask someone to tell one what else happenes. It will take him around 1.2 seconds to do so. It's not worth 200+ pages.

At one time Clancy could claim the title of the greatest writer on earth. After I have read Net Force,Op Center and these Power Play books I have started reading the Robert Ludlum books. The villain in this book is terrible. The hero in this book is just about as bad. I have yet to figure out what the plot is.This book was just plain bad.I hope Tom Clancy starts taking his writing more serious. Maybe he can come back to life with the Bear and the Dragon.

Well, this book wasn't terrible, but it could have been much better. Definately doesn't live up to Politika or Ruthless.com, let alone the plethera of other Clancy novels. The biggest problem I had with this book was the fact that the characters never seemed to get their act together. They spent all but the last 60 or so pages of the book doing almost nothing. It seemed like for the first 250-300 pages, maybe two hours had passed in the world. To make matters worse, the ending wasn't even very glorious, for lack of a better word. It was like the good guys foil the plot, and a low monotonous "yay" murmers from the audience. An entire chapter was also spent describing a train wreck that should have been summed up in about 3 paragraphs tops. He basically described a couple hundred innocent people dying, and it had no real impact on the story WHAT-SO-EVER.

I don't really know much about how Clancy is doing buisness, but I see people saying he fathered the series and sold it out to other authors. All I have to say is that it doesn't speak very highly of Clancy as an author to let authors nobody has heard of write books in his name and not even check to see if they're on par with his original works. I found it disappointing overall.

However, if you've never read any Clancy novels, the Powerplay series might be a good one to start out on. You may expierence disappointment from Politika and Ruthless to Shadow Watch and other books in the series, but you definately won't be disappointed when you start reading other Clancy novels like Without Remorse and Clear and Present Danger.