Rating: 
Summary: Corey's "Games of State" review
Review: This is my second book by Tom Clancy and judging between this one and Shadow Watch, it is a much better book. The characters are a little confusing on their backgrounds and where the scene is taking place unless you look at the headings but I thought even without a very strong plot that it was still interesting. I don't normally read many books so it takes a lot for me to stay interested and I just kept reading. One of the bad parts was that a reader can almost guess what is going to happen next.
The book has a small beginning, long middle, and short end. There are groups of neo-Nazi's in Germany that try to take over people throughout the world with video hate games on computers. Paul Hood and his team are in Germany buying things for Op-Center and get mixed up in the mess. That is all I can say. I don't want to spoil the end for anyone, so you will have to read it yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Games of State
Review: The first quarter or so was interesting and plausilbe, and I had high hopes for the rest of the book. But alas, action-based military/intelligence thrillers have become little more than "A-Team" television re-runs, and sadly Games of State fits this scenario to a tee. Summing up: Games of State was predictable, grossly unrealistic, predictable, comic-bookish, predic..., strangely sappy, pred..., lacking in creativity or originality. Oh, did I say it was predictable and unrealistic?
Yes, I finished it. Then I threw it in the trash.
Rating: 
Summary: My favorite of the Series
Review: Disregarding the fact that it was pretty slow moving, it was very good. This story takes place during the chaos days, a time where Neo-Nazis, Skinheads etc. celebrate racism and what they stand for (I hope you know what that is). Anyway, Paul Hood and some of collegues travel to Germany to by weapons and the latest technology. But things go awry when a group of Neo-Nazis raid a movie setting killing almost everyone. Here are my overall thoughts on this novel:PROS:
The novel keeps the novel real and along with this crisis Op-Center is trying to solve, Paul Hood is faced with a lover that abandoned him years before he got married. So along with this exterior conflict, you have a very intimate interior conflict. Along with this there are some very intense action sequences. For example, when Bob Herbert was being chased by Neo-Nazis, I was on the Edge of my seat. CONS:
There is only one main problem I have with this book and it is the fact that it's slow moving and I almost gave up on it. But besides that, I really enjoyed this book. OVERALL:
This is the best book in the Op-Center series, hands down. I highly reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys reading.
Rating:
Summary: An eye opener
Review: Finding out that I had to read a least five hundred pages by the end on the first semester of my senior year did not please my very much. But when I got started in this book and read it for a while I began to enjoy it and find some enjoyment that I had not found in any other previous book. Reading Tom Clancy's Op-center made my want to keep reading until the book was finished.
This book took place in another country in the distant future were every thing has changed from what we know it. After have terrorists destroying part of the city, one man and a organization call Op center must try to stop the terrorists before they take over and turn everything form what was good to what would become bad. I highly recommend this book to any one that likes to read a little action sci-fi books. It is a great eye opener and makes you take a look around to see what could become of you cities.
Rating:
Summary: Bad research?
Review: I started to read Games of State a few days ago and I must say that I am very disappointed. It shows that American writers sometimes feel that thorough research is not really necessary. How can you write about "Chaos Days" in Hanover as a neo-Nazi Event? Even if its a fictitious story, and even if you are American, there is no way that you can mistake a "traditional" left-wing event with a Nazi-event.
There are many details about Europe and Germany in particular in that book that are flatout wrong or badly researched. Stick to the truth.
Making easy money might have been the only idea behind this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good read for "down time"
Review: I'm a philosopher, so I read a lot of heavy books. Once in awhile I have some "down time" books which I like to read just to pass time reading something that I don't need to scrutinize with pencil and paper nearby. This is one of those books, and it really does fulfill that purpose well. This is not the 'Clancy Classic' of "Red Storm Rising" or "Without Remorse," so don't get your hopes set up for that. I enjoyed the different characters and their role in problem solving. The authors do well in showing how people often have self-interest and fair-weathered natures. I also thought that the subplots (e.g. with Hood's son, with the diplomat's wife) were present enough to engage the reader, but not overdone. I felt that it was somewhat difficult to keep track of the various foreign characters because of their names. Instead of picking just their surname or family name, often the characters are referred to in numerous ways - thus, making it tricky to keep up. Also, I feel that perhaps a few pages could have been spent on explaining the Op-Center itself, given that this book is the first in the series..... the reader is left only basic clues about the status and origin of the Op-Center. All in all, an excellent book for waiting rooms, beach days, and/or lazy hours on the porch.....
Rating:
Summary: Nice Techno Thriller
Review: I've typically enjoyed Tom Clancy novels. I like his ability, despite whatever political opinions he might have, to make characters with real personalities and backgrounds and beliefs. It's so easy in this genre to fall back on stereotypes. That said, this is the first time I've listened to an audio book, and it's probably for that reason that Op-Center: Acts of War fell flat. Because of the abridged format, I suspect that any material that might have allowed me to mentally engage the characters was left out. Since none of the old standby characters were present (no Jack Ryan here), I knew nothing about anyone. The story is standard, and even in the lessened format we can hear the standard Clancy attention to military detail. We get to learn a few things about how ballistic missiles and satellite surveillance systems work. It's interesting that back in 1997 Clancy was railing against international terrorism as the greatest threat facing us in the future. No one ever said he doesn't pay attention to current events in the world. But as entertainment, I have to think the print version must be better than this.
Rating: 
Summary: Actual review of the first Op Center book
Review: It seems that all the reviews for every book in the Op Center series get stuck together here. The original one takes place, in large part, in Korea. This book has a reasonably decent story line although not nearly as good as most of the Jack Ryan series of books.
The thing that I found most shocking was the poor research, particularly with regards to the Korean language. Not only did they not have a native speaker look over what they said, it appears that all the Korean in the book was written by someone armed with a poor phrase book. At the time I read the book, I'd been living in Korea for nearly a year and had learned to speak a bit of Korean and even to my relatively inexperienced eyes it was blatantly apparent that nobody had given the first thought to checking whether what they had written was accurate.
In my opinion, Tom Clancy merely lends his name to some of the series like Op Center and Net Force. They're Ok for a cheap thrill but they don't live up to the standards set by his original Jack Ryan series.
Rating:
Summary: The Turkish Army is not this weak
Review: The story is nice and all but it is not realistic. Not only do the Syrians kill Turkish border guards no match, but they also manage to steal a helicopter, blow up a dam, and also get back to Syria. Clancy is actually a good writer but America and Israel are the only nations in the world to have powerful militaries. Then the unrealistic story continues. Later on in the book we find out that a small Turkish unit was "wiped out" by a Syrian army! What? The Turkish army is the region's most developed and powerful. Turkey also posses the second largest army in NATO and has a powerful work ethic. When I went to Turkey for the NATO summit, I saw some Turkish soldiers train at the military barracks and boy did they look fierce. Nothing like some soldiers in the region. Had this situation really took place, Turkey would not only invade Syria but also crush any rebellion inside. In this book (which has badly researched), America and Israel "save" Turkey because they are the only countries in the world to manage this situation. Take my advice, skip this pro Israel pro American book and read something else.
Rating:
Summary: The best of the Op-Center series by far.
Review: This entry in the just-about-above-average Op Center series is easily the best one to read out of the lot. The first one wasn`t bad, Mirror Image was passable, Acts Of War was a bit old hat and plain daft, but this beats the lot! The story of Neo-Nazis inciting race hate to change world events by means of right-wing propaganda computer games based on KKK cookouts and Nazi concentration camps may seem far-fetched to some readers, but the technology behind it is described in such a way to make it easy to understand and, frighteningly enough, feasible. The angle on the re-unification of Germany starting the resurgence of Nazism is also well put together. The characters are a lot better portrayed, especially Paul Hood`s first love paranoia. But the main criticisms which stopped this from being a ten out of ten were the co-incidence of Nancy just happening to work for the Neo-Nazi organisation trying to provoke hate(come on!) and Bob Herbert`s Dirk Pitt-style heroics in a wheelchair! That got a bit too silly, but on the whole the story and the politics behind it are the strengths here. Well worth a read.
|
