Rating: 
Summary: What Was That?
Review: When I bought this book I thought it would be an action-packed thriller about Ryan being hunted by Irish terrorists. Well, it's not action-packed and it mostly isn't a thriller. In fact, there's not much happening in the book, half of it Ryan is overwhelmed by the thought, "Oh, God! What if I'm attacked by the terrorists? Nah, they wouldn't dare!" and half is "Oh, what if they dare! I'm doomed!" That's it. Basically the whole plot. Maybe I'm a bad reader but it didn't live up to my expectations.
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Summary: Patriot Games
Review: Patriot Games is an action packed novel. Tom Clancy's best that I have read. It starts out with action right from the get go. Jack Ryan is the main character as he is in many other novels. It starts by Ryan saving the lives of two important people while on leave in England. He saved them from an assassination attempt by a side branch of the IRA. This "ultra left-wing branch" then tries to kill Ryan while he is in America. I would rate this book with a definite five out of five stars.Clancy uses a good technique in this writing which all other avid Clancy readers will notice and non-readers will appreciate. He tells the tale in the point of view of the protagonists along with the story from the point of view of the antagonists. Using this some people might think that he cannot build suspense but believe me it is a great book. I would recommend this book to any Clancy fan. Anyone that has seen the movie on television or elsewhere would like the book. It goes into a lot more detail and is much, much better than the movie.
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Summary: Pretty Good Prequel
Review: This prequel is a good story about terrorists and is more visceral than most Clancy stories, but it works to his advantage here. The book has a great beginning, then it slows down a bit in the middle, then it kicks back into high gear for an amazing ending. Jack Ryan here is a Professor of History at the Naval Academy on vacation in London when he intervenes in a terrorist attack on the Prince of Wales (who is never given a name, even in Clancy's later works). This book then tells of the revenge act by the IRA that ultimately ends with a mesmerizing end sequence with the ultimate gun fight. This is an excellent page turner, and it will not disappoint
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Summary: Terrorism on OUR home turf...very frightening indeed
Review: Clancy has given us probably his least techno-thriller to date with 'Patriot Games', and he doesn't miss a beat. Jack Ryan, acting more on instinct rather than rational thought intervenes in a bold terrorist plot in London to kill Prince Charles and Lady Di. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time gives Jack a chance to foil the entire scheme, more from luck than anything else--but the end results are the same: the terrorists failed. Leapfrog over the big pond and back to America and all seems to be hunky-dory for Jack and his family. He is recovering from the wounds he sustained in the attack, and well, he begins to re-think his job and role in life. During all this, the surviving member of the terrorist plot has made a daring escape, and now plans to bring the war to Ryans backyard. His rage for avenging his disgrace for failure at Ryan's hand borders on madness. He absolutely MUST teach Ryan a lesson. As it happens, Charles & Di are visiting America, and after quickly making friends with Jack and his wife (after all, it WAS nice of him to save their lives...) in England, they are invited for dinner at Jack's place. Believe it or not, Clancy writes it so the circumstances are NOT as hard to believe as you might think. Now we've got a BIG problem. Not only is Ryans family slated to be 'taken care of', a kind of punishment for interference in London, but now the original targets will be there, too. What a nice coincidence for our terrorist...and what a GREAT story for US the readers. Clancy here shows us just HOW he came to not just INVENT the throne for the 'techno-thriller' but came to dominate the genre. Although as I said earlier, there isn't much techno-speak in 'Patriot Games' as in his other novels, it IS high on action. If you count yourself a Clancy fan, then you HAVE read this...if you HAVEN'T...what are you waiting for??
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Summary: Terrorism Terror
Review: For Jack Ryan, marine training is one thing that has changed his life. While following his male "hero" instincts, Jack also uses his military training to foil a ULA plot to assasinate the prince and princess of Wales. After wounding one terrorist and killing another, Jack sustains a bullet wound to the shoulder. At this moment, Jack is unaware of who he has saved but is filled in later at the hospital. He is visited by many royals and gets on quite well with them as did his wife Cathy and daughter Sally when they were staying at the palace. When Jack returns to the US, he begins to work part time at the CIA, performing satalite imagery analysis and trying to find information and the location the ULA training camp. In a revenge attack, Cathy and Sally, while driving on the highway, are shot at which leads their car to crash. They both receive major injuries, Sally more than Cathy. An assasination attempt against Jack around the same time of the car crash is stopped by some suspicious marines. Jack leaves his job as a history teacher and begins works at the CIA full time, fuelled on by his now personal hate against the ULA. When the Ryan family hear the news of a royal visit, it is planned for the prince and princess to have dinner at the Ryan household. This becomes and ideal oppertunity for another ULA job. Will Jack be lucky again to save, not only his life, but the lives of the most high profile people in Britain? This novel is written in traditional Clancy style with the lengthy introduction and comparatively short conclusion. The character development of Jack Ryan is quite extensive and Clancy has done well to portray the "innocent working man". This novel deals quite a bit with family and is a change from his other technological war novels, not a bad change at that. The different action scences are well described and quite believible, which makes quite a suspensful story. An excellent read!
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Summary: An Adventure for Anyone
Review: Jack Ryan is a former Marine turned history teacher. He is in England with his family when ULA terrorists attack a car. Ryan remembers his training in an instant and disarms one terrorist before killing another. After Ryan recovers from his own injuries sustained in the battle, he learns that the people he saved were the Prince and Princess of England. This earns him hero status in England and everything seems to be fine until the terrorists turn their sights on him. The terrorists plan attacks on both Ryan and his family. Their first attack fails but nearly leaves Jack without a family. After this Jack vows to protect his family forever, by any means necessary. Patriot Games is filled with action and energy from the virst page to the last, from the first assassination attempt to the raid of the Ryans' house. Clancy builds an extreme amount of suspense in all of the battles, and leaves them about until the very end. The book is also very factual. Clancy uses many real places and people in the novel to give it an authentic effect. The book gives many accurate details as concerns customs, military procedures, and firearms. The book is very detailed as related to characters and scenes. Clancy uses vivid imagery when describing places and objects. He also uses allusions to relate chaarcters in the book to real people. Patriot Games is a book that can be enjoyed by anybody that likes to read action-packed, suspenseful stories. Because of the attention paid to detail relating to guns and the armed forces, this novel might be more fully appreciated by a person in the area of law enforcement or armed services.
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Summary: A Great Read! One of Clancy's best!
Review: I Highly recommend this book but read Hunt For Red October First. It better introduces you to the Jack Ryan series. Anyway this is the best clancy book. Its like your there in the situation the way clancy writes. Read THIS BOOK!
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Summary: The complete backstory on the Jack Ryan story
Review: On vacation in London, Jack Ryan stops a terrorist attack by the Ulster Liberation Army on the Prince and Princess of Wales and their infant son. When the leader of the attack escapes from custody, Ryan and his family become targets. To defend them, Ryan goes to see his old friends at the C.I.A. and tells them he wants back in. The climax of the book is another attack on the terrorists at Ryan's own home where the Prince and Princess are dinner guests. "Patriot Games" is an atypical Tom Clancy novel in that is the Jack Ryan book least reliant on cutting edge technology, dealing more with the consequences of Jack's choices for his family and his career. In is interesting to read this 1987 book knowing that filming it turned Tom Clancy against selling the movie rights of his books to Hollywood (although apparently the powers that be can have their own way with the Jack Ryan character). The problem, of course, was the final scene. In the film, Harrison Ford's character kills Sean Miller at the end of an exciting fistfight on a speeding boat. In the book, Jack Ryan does not shoot his gun at the fatal moment so that he can tell his newborn son, "Your father isn't a murderer." Clancy's conservative inclinations are well known, but forcing him into a fascist stereotype really misses the point, especially when it tries to make his hero some sort of a reactionary. "Patriot Games" takes back several years before the events described in "The Hunt for Red October," where the Sir John Ryan backstory is certainly alluded to at a couple of points. I wondered if maybe Clancy had simply written this novel first but could not get it published, yet one of the strengths of his work over the years has been the detailed backgrounds on the various characters (the best examples are probably Red Wegener and Ding Chavez in "Clear and Present Danger," where the complete backgrounds are given although one is a minor character in the novel and the other goes on to be a main supporting character). One of the reason I always liked this book is because of the pure audacity of making members of the Royal Family main supporting characters, especially Prince Charles, who has continued to pop up from time to time. This is the book where Clancy dropped the annoying subtitles used in his first two novels. In retrospect "Patriot Games" is a much more intimate novel than what is follows. Certainly the threat is much more personal, targeting Ryan and his family. With Clancy's tendency to tell stories where nuclear war is a distinct possibility, this becomes an atypical effort, similar to "Without Remorse," which supplies the complete backstory on John Clark. Another reason for the feeling of intimacy is that Clancy's novels have tended to get longer and longer. Final note: people who have read these book in the "correct chronological order" find "Red October" to be something of a step backwards, so the best advice remains to read them in the order they were written.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not the best
Review: The book is good but by far not his best work. I found myself wanting to finish the book quickly, not because I wanted to see the ending but beacause I wanted to start a new , better book. It's arguably worth reading but if you don't want to waste time but still want a clancy book read clear anf present danger
Rating:
Summary: A good read, but a step down.
Review: Patriot games is a good book, make no doubt about it. It is as exhaustivly researched as any of Clancy's books, and the ULA provides an interesting and capable enemy. In Hunt For Red October, There really was not much of an 'Enemy'. Yes the Russians were the bad guys, but it was not as personal a book as Patriot Games. This is all about revenge, pure and simple. This does make it hard for Clancy to do what he does best, layer innumerable plots, all interweaving and eventually forming a cohesive whole. While the relative lack of manny subplots makes Patriot games a bit easier to read and comprehend then some of Clancy's other books, the Revenge Thang does get a bit old. Honestly, the finale is just not as gripping or as palm sweating as it could, and should, be. A good book, and still light years ahead of the competition, still, it has flaws. 3/5.
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