Background Info
on novels

Date first published	13/12/2011
ISBN Number	978 0718 15914 6
Page Count	713 h/b
h/b= hardback : p/b= paperback

Storyline

Master of explosive international intrigue Tom Clancy brings together his greatest characters and a new generation to fight the war on terror.

Although his father had been reluctant to become a field operative, Jack Ryan Jr. wants nothing more. Privately training with a seasoned Special Forces drill instructor, he's honing his skills to transition his work within The Campus from intelligence analysis to hunting down and eliminating terrorists wherever he can - even has Jack Ryan Sr. campaigns for re-election as President of the United States.

But what neither father nor son knows is that the political and the personal have just become equally dangerous. A devout enemy of Jack Sr. launches a privately funded vendetta to discredit him by connecting the presidential candidate to a mysterious killing in the past by John Clark, his longtime ally. A shadowy mercenary team is dispatched to capture the former Navy SEAL.

With Clark on the run, it's up to Jack Ryan Jr., along with Ding Chavez, Dominic Caruso, and the rest of the Campus team, to stop a threat emerging in the Middle East: a corrupt Pakistani general has entered into a deadly pact with a fanatical terrorist to procure nuclear warheads, which can be used to blackmail any world power into submission.

With the breakneck speed and military action scenes that have made him the premier thriller writer of our time, Tom Clancy delivers a novel of high-tech warfare in which the enemy within may be even more devastating than the enemy without.

Review

Clancy novels have become something of a lottery since his last really excellent book Executive Orders. Rainbow Six, was not bad, just rather repetitive, with him reaching an all time low with The Teeth of the Tiger, it's best quality being that it was short!

This latest offering co written by mark Greaney, however felt like a Clancy of old, and had a lot of elements from the past, old characters, new threats both foreign and political. The book does veer off on occasion but it is not half bad.

I always view a book on how much I want to read it, and how long it takes. I read this in just over a week, so by that judgement it was into the reasonable read territory.

So although a good book, it did have some weaknesses.

Firstly, John Clark being rescued by the SVR, and then expected to sort out the issue at the Cosmodrome. Bearing in mind he had been tortured for several hours, I think this highly unlikely. We all know that he is a tough guy, but really.

Tom Clancy has always been pro USA services, and CIA, however I did think that this veered to far right, with attacks on virtually every institution imaginable. Although I do think he is right, that we treat terrorists with too much kindness, and give them rights that they would never consider giving to anyone else.

The other issue I have is whether the 'Campus' is actual a legal entity, after all it does get it's intel from the CIA by hacking their feeds. For an author who has based much of his career on solid technical know how, and accuracy it seems to be a sell out.

So having looked at some of the weaknesses, what about it's strengths? These are less easy to pin point, but there is a much closer meshing of the political and action section of the books. Operations are planned (go wrong), and the team get injured. This is a big move away from Teeth of the Tiger, where every thing went to plan, and it all fell into the good guys laps. Has life ever been that easy?

Ryan jnrs liaison is going to get very messy. No happy ending following the path of his mother and father. Quite what Melanie Kraft is remains to be seen, but it seems obvious that the Campus has drawn attention to itself, and there is someone plotting its downfall. Who, remains to be seen, the book hints that it is DDI Alden, however it seems to be a bit too clever for him, who is he the puppet of?

As I said at the start the book is an improvement, however it is still short of the likes of Executive Orders,Sum of All Fears and Debt of Honour. To give it a 4 rating would denigrate those novels, so it gets a 3.5. Lets hope that the next one sees a four star.

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