Rating:  Summary: Nothing Special Here Review: In my opinion, this book suffered somewhat from a lack of interesting characters. The plot was choppy and loose, coming together at the end for a mediocre finale. The villians were lackluster at best and far less compelling than those of other books affiliated with the Clancy name. The most interesting character to me in the book was the cunning freelance agent, Lathrop, who managed to pit rival drug lords against one another and benefit in the process. But the story wasn't really about him and it grew increasingly dull in the middle. I can't really recommend this book as anything special.
Rating:  Summary: May have been good as a short story Review: Most of what is written in this book exists for no apparent reason. The characters are all poorly developed, many are just cliches, so you never really care what happens to any of them. There are countless characters and conflicts that appear, and are never mentioned again. All you really know about the villains is that they are ruthless, cold-blooded killers. You never really have any reason to fear them. The story goes like this... The villains develop a deadly bio-engineered virus. They plan to make a fortune by selling it to other villains. They also use it to infect the head of a multi-national technology firm. He just happens to be a kind, caring man from a working class background. Now his elite, world-wide private security force, known as Sword (what is this, Get Smart?) must track down the villains before their beloved leader, and perhaps the whole world, is doomed. Guess how it ends.
Rating:  Summary: May have been good as a short story Review: Most of what is written in this book exists for no apparent reason. The characters are all poorly developed, many are just cliches, so you never really care what happens to any of them. There are countless characters and conflicts that appear, and are never mentioned again. All you really know about the villains is that they are ruthless, cold-blooded killers. You never really have any reason to fear them. The story goes like this... The villains develop a deadly bio-engineered virus. They plan to make a fortune by selling it to other villains. They also use it to infect the head of a multi-national technology firm. He just happens to be a kind, caring man from a working class background. Now his elite, world-wide private security force, known as Sword (what is this, Get Smart?) must track down the villains before their beloved leader, and perhaps the whole world, is doomed. Guess how it ends.
Rating:  Summary: Bio-Strike Made Me Sick Review: This book from the Tom Clancy stable of pulp writers -- not from the author himself -- has an ingenious concept. It's too bad that it couldn't be translated to the book's pages. The story is so full of irrelevant characters, subplots and improbabilities that the reader can't maintain focus from one page to the next. Characters are introduced over the course of a few sentences near the beginning of the book and don't re-appear for more than 150 pages -- again for only a few sentences. Subplots come and go as if the author had a word quota to fill and many of the situations within those subplots could not be resolved in the way they were written in a million years -- let alone in the autumn of 2001, when the "novel" takes place.And the editing ... ! The story doesn't pick up any semblance of pace or rhythm for almost 200 pages. By then, the readers really don't care what's going on. They will only continue because they've invested too much time in the book to quit. Technical descriptions even flabbergast the writer who runs sentences on for 30 or 40 words trying to figure out what he's actually trying to say. Overall, the book is a monumental waste of trees. I give it two stars only because of what it could have been if a competent writer was given the keyboard. There's only one cure for this book. Don't read it.
Rating:  Summary: Wasn't as good as most Clancy Thrillers! Review: This book was a terrible book. The content was pretty boring at most times. This was nothing like the Sum of All Fears, or Patriot Games. I only liked brief parts of it. Hey Tom! Pick up the pace!
Rating:  Summary: An excellent book Review: This book was simply awesome, Tom Clancy did it again. A beautiful idea with the the virus unleashed on the head of Uplink Technologies and how ricci and the rest of the team find the vaccine to save not only Roger Gordian but everyone else who has inherited the virus. a real page turner. Honestly I enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who likes Tom Clancy novels.
Rating:  Summary: Absolutely terrible Review: This is one of the worst books I've ever read. I couldn't finish it. After reading over 250 pages of the 430 page book, not only did I not care what happened to the principle characters, (and didn't even like or wish to understand them), but I was actually angry with the author (Preisler, NOT CLANCY), for wasting my time and writing so poorly. The story moves at glacial speed with incredibly stupid content. Example: At one point in the book two people are soaking in a HOT tub and eventually have sex. The conversation is ridiculous and aggravating. But the REAL kicker is the author is so stupid that he describes the water temperature as 180 degrees. Water boils at 212! I was also pissed at Tom Clancy for puttng his name on it. If I put my name on a book I didn't write, I'd at least make sure that the book was well written. As a general rule, book burning is a bad thing. If it must be done, I'd recommend starting with anything written by Jerome Preisler.
Rating:  Summary: Complexity and characterization equals winner Review: This is the biggest and best of the Power Plays series to date -- an intelligent, intricate, cutting-edge, genre-bending work of suspense that weaves different characters and plotlines into a fully realized masterpiece. I loved every word . . . and unlike one of the previous readers who commented negatively (and threw in an unannounced spoiler to boot, folks) read all of them rather than skim through half the book, which is a fundamental criteria for any worthwhile review. Or ought to be in a reasonable universe, I guess.
Rating:  Summary: Tom Clancy? Review: This is Tom Clancy's third book in the last two months. Since he is not Asimov, I wonder how much involvement he really has in the writing of these novels? Jerome is most likely the true writer and should thus receive more credit. Good book though.
Rating:  Summary: Can't believe this has averaged 4 stars! Review: This is without a doubt the worst Clancy book I have read. I bought Bio-Strike because I loved his previous Power Plays work, Shadow Watch. This book was slow getting set up. I felt this took up at least half the book. It finally got pretty interesting, but then Clancy hung the ending. I don't mean he left it open to an interesting sequel; there was no closure to this story, and I don't look forward to reading a continuation of it.
|