Unabriged the only way to listen to Clancy
One of his better books
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El mejor ejemplo de las novelas de Clancy
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Two of the best early Jack Ryan novels from Tom Clancy"Patriot Games" explains why the English keep calling Ryan "Sir John" in "The Hunt for Red October." I always fancied that Clancy had written this novel first (or, at least had the idea for the story first), but that having Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth be characters in a fictional novel was frowned upon; however, I consider the relationship between the Ryans and the Royals to be one of the most compelling aspects of the novel. Certainly "Patriot Games" shows a great leap forward in Clancy's writing style. The novel literally begins with a bang as Ryan thwarts an attack by a I.R.A. splinter group. What happens afterwards brings him into the fold of the C.I.A. The ending of the novel, decidedly different from that of the film version, refutes the idea that Clancy is a reactionary conservative.
"Clear and Present Danger" presents a scenario that remains one of the most attractive as a real world solution to a continuing problem, namely the use of the U.S. military to put the Columbian drug cartels out of business. The problem, of course, is that the President decides to make this a covert mission, which provides ample opportunity for things to go too far. This is the novel that introduces Ding Chavez to John Clark, and Clark to Ryan for that matter. In terms of the characters in the Jack Ryan novels, "Clear and Present Danger" is the one that probably has the most resonance with the rest of the series. Much is made of the way Clancy incorporates cutting edge technology into his narratives, but his strength has always been his characters. There is no better example of this aspect than in the beginning of "Clear and Present Danger," when Clancy introduces us to the character of Red Wegener with such wonderful detail that we are surprised to discover he ends up being a minor character in the novel.
You could read these two novels and then pick up the Tom Clancy series at that point with "The Sum of All Fears," which is the key transitional novel in the series as it sets the stage for Ryan's ascension to the White House. But given that the last couple of Jack Ryan novels have been the weakest of the series, you might as well read them all in "correct" order from start to finish. Certainly, these two novels will prove to the uninitiated why Clancy has a devoted following that have enjoyed (until recently) consuming his lengthy novels.
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Un libro imposible dejar leer! Masterpiece of the Cool WarUna obra maestra de la Guerra Fria. Unico en la serie de obras de este autor del "Technothriller". Libro leido hasta por el ex-presidente Ronald Reagan, nos lleva a como debio haber comenzado y desarrollado la Tercera Guerra Mundial. Esto dentro de un escenario real y equilibrado.
Varios personajes y escenarios paralelos de pura accion y suspenso. Donde no se obvia ningun detalle. Donde se narra el uso de armamento en aquel entonces experimental (escrito en la primera mitad de la decada de los ochenta, la comkposicion de la Europa entonces dividida por la cortina de hierro y el poder de la Union Sovietica. Todo con un gran sentido de humanidad.
Realizado mas de cinco años antes de ocurrir la Guerra del Golfo Persico, detalla, sin aspirar a ser visionario, el mismo escenario de la primera guerra digital de la humanidad.
Mi segundo libro de Clancy, es util leerlo tanto en su idioma original como en español.
Todas las obras de este autor son mil veces superiores a cualquier adaptacion cinematografica de las mismas. Si no lean Clear and Present Danger, The Hunt for the Red October y Patriot Games. En ambos idiomas.
red october in a nutshellThis is the second Tom Clancy book that I've read. My first was Red storm Rising and from there I was hooked. I just finished The Hunt for Red October and am just starting Rainbow Six. So far I have yet to be disappointed and I don't think I will.
In this techno-triller, the Russians and the Americans go head to head in a post cold war race to get to a defunct Marco Ramius. But they don't want him; they want the new class of sub that he has, an undetectable nuclear sub. Ramius was fed up with the Russian Communists when a drunken doctor during a procedure killed his wife. So he and some other high-ranking officials take the boat for an exercise but plan to defect to the US. This is when "the franchise" of the book, Jack Ryan comes in to hunt him down before the Rusky's blow him out of the water. This was a memorable book but honestly I must say the book was a little long and boring and the movie defiantly dominated. Some would say that the book had more to offer than the book and in some respects I can agree. But over-all I have to say that the movie was much more exciting and the character selection for the movie was excellent.
I am very pleased with Clancy's books. Red Storm Rising was a great book and Red October was also very good but I was more impressed with the movie. Over all I must say that Clancy is the man when it comes to spine-tingling books that leave you on the edge of your seat throughout the whole book. Keep it up man.
Book Rating: 4 out of 5
The Hunt is OnAlthough it was the first of the series to be published, Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October is actually the third novel in the Jack Ryan series. It propelled Clancy, who had been an insurance salesman with only a few letters to the editor under his writing belt, to best-selling superstar. His success with military and espionage-related fiction earned him a title he does not readily accept: father of the techno-thriller.
This novel, if I remember correctly, was the first work of fiction published by the Naval Institute Press, the publishing arm of the United States Naval Institute, a civilian entity which promotes all things naval, including the study of naval history, strategy, technology, and tactics. Some of the Naval Institute Press' other books include A.D. Baker's Fleets of the World, Clay Blair, Jr.'s Silent Victory, and Norman Friedman's Desert Victory: The War for Kuwait. But considering that although Clancy's novel deals with the workings of other federal agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and both the Executive and Legislative branches, the heart of the story is a sea chase.
Based loosely on a 1975 incident in which a Soviet frigate attempted to defect to the West, The Hunt for Red October tells the by-now familiar tale of how Captain First Rank Marko Ramius and a group of selected officers aboard the Soviet Navy's newest Typhoon-class SSBN (the Navy designator for a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, or "boomer") band together to defect to the United States and hand over the Red Navy's most advanced "stealth" submarine.
Ramius, you see, is motivated by one of the strongest emotions of all: the desire for revenge against the callous Soviet state. Not only for the death of his wife as a result of negligence by a well-connected surgeon, but for all the injustices he has witnessed from even his early childhood. His father, a Lithuanian communist and devoted Party apparatchik, was responsible for many deaths and unjust acts, and Marko, raised by a decent grandmother, sees both his father and the State as monsters who care for nothing but power and expansion.
In this novel, set sometime in the mid-1980s, Clancy introduces us to Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst being groomed by his mentor, Admiral James Greer, for better and more crucial postings within the Agency. Now currently assigned as CIA liaison in London (which puts this novel's setting to be after the current Clancy novel Red Rabbit), it is Ryan who first hands the U.S. its first intelligence data on Red October, courtesy of the British Secret Service.
The novel's focus is on Ramius' defection attempt aboard the Red October, which has been modified to use a "caterpillar" drive (described in the movie version as a "jet engine for the water") which enables a sub to glide through the ocean almost undetectably. It also deals with the Red Navy's desperate attempts to seek and destroy the defectors' submarine, and the almost equally desperate moves of an Anglo-American fleet to acquire Red October.
The novel, as if often the case, is far better than its film adaptation. Not that John McTiernan did a bad job with Paramount's 1990 feature film, but in slimming down the characters and situations to fit within a 2-hour movie, far too many exciting scenes were ignored and the scope of the sea chase is narrowed down from "seeing" almost the whole spectrum of the Soviet Navy in the novel to actually seeing one Bear-Foxtrot anti-submarine bomber and one Alfa-class attack sub. I am not saying the movie is not worth watching, but the book, with its various characters and storylines (some of them which would be woven back and forth in all the other Ryan novels), is far better.
Red October Review