Rating: 
Summary: IS ANYONE STILL AWAKE?
Review: Basically, this book is for people with sleeping disorders who don't want to take sleeping pills. Common! 400 pages of economics lessons, Geez! Read Red Storm Rising. One of his few novels without Jack Ryan worship and one that is not as boring as Debt of Honor. And that's truly sad for Clancy fans who've come to expect more.
Rating: 
Summary: Ridiculous Ending Mars Mediocre Book
Review: Pretty interesting book that is fast paced. But what an unbelieveable ending. Ruined the whole thing. Good Grief! For Tom Clancy fans only.
Rating:
Summary: Clancy at his best and his worst.
Review: I've been a Clancy fan for years, and this is a true Clancy book. What he does well, he does brilliantly. Battle scenes, explanations of inexplicable technology (even high finance in this one), and the crafting of a complex plot are superb. He obviously knows a lot about military affairs, but he is grossly ignorant of espionage, even from a common sense level, and he should steer clear of it. The book's biggest failing is in the characters. Don't they pay Clancy enough to think up some new characters? He's retreading virtually every one from all the way back from the Hunt for Red October. He goes so far as to use a Latino soldier from Clear and Present Danger as a CIA field officer, speaking Russian fluent enough to pass as a native (!) and picking up functional Japanese in two weeks (although his English is still kind of marginal.) Since Clancy does little to develop any character, you'd think he could just throw out some new names. The most distasteful part, of course, is about 600 of the 1,000 pages being devoted to a love-fest for Jack Ryan with everyone, in every walk of life, knowing his "rep" and drooling over him wonderfulness. Not that Ryan is Clancy's own superhero secret identity or anything.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Clancy at his best, but still worth a read.
Review: Having spent a lot of time in Japan both as a student and otherwise, I have to say the main flaw of this book is how Clancy treats the Japanese. While this book is clearly a work of fiction, Clany's attempt to find a vilian in the Japanese government and society is totaly not grounded in reality. I liked the economic aspect of the book, though. All and all a good read but Clancy needs to spend some more time in Japan and get rid of his WWII bases sterotypes of the Japanese.
Rating: 
Summary: Tom's best book ever!
Review: Debt of Honor is probably Tom Clancy's best book. If not it comes in a close second with Executive Orders. He tells an amazing story with action that never quits. If you follow the Jack Ryan series then you have to get this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book to have in a storm!
Review: Compare this one to an accelerating steamroller:
the farther it gets the faster it goes. Tom Clancy is a master at describing interesting and plausible plots, `Debt of Honor' is one of his masterpieces herein. The characterizations are not Tom Clancy's biggest asset, Jack Ryan is a little too good to be real (apologies to all Jack Ryans of this world for denying their existence). Mr C. and Ding are ambivalent enough to be of this world. I didn't like the one-sided characteristic of the final conflict, pitied the doomed Japanese soldiers.
But I guess it had to be so, to balance the last landing of the JAL 747. 'Debt of Honor' is a story about relations between nations going out of balance and then someone decides to force a new balance and all goes to crap,...
until the cavalry arrives that is.
And it is a story about people. 'Different masks, but the same flesh underneath.' In a way this book is very balanced, very ying-yang style. It is a book about at least two debts of honor. But read for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Awesome!
Review: I`d love to give this one twenty out of ten! The Japanese angle where the industrialist has a say is what goes on as far as the country is run(Raizo Yamata) is highly feasible and well done, if somewhat inspired by Clive Cussler`s `Dragon`. The military action is superb, utilizing Stealth technology to great effect - loved the B-2 bomber sequences! The stock market crash and the research behind what goes on behind the scenes was faultless. Also, the faulty car fuel tank sparking the fatal crash and the ensuing trade restrictions is an all too realistic situation. As for the climax, unlike some reviewers I won`t divulge details! Totally nerve-shredding! Altogether, one of Clancy`s very best.
Rating:
Summary: Good story but Tom, Please cut down on the paper !!
Review: The seventh book of Clancy's that I have read and this one seems to drag on through the middle four hundred pages where Tom feels the need to explain the entire workings of the world financial markets. He takes too long to set up his plots and subplots even though I enjoyed the book. The last two hundred pages wizz by as the action heats up and the battles rage in the Pacific and at home. The ending is a little far fetched but exciting and I hope Tom can limit his stories to five hundred pages. I hope Tom can switch subjects and write another "Red Storm Rising" type novel, without Jack Ryan, branching into a different area. Still his best is "Patriot Games". Message to the movie studios: NEVER ravage another Clancy book like you did to "Clear and Present Danger" the movie departs from the book after two minutes and never comes close to the book again!!
Rating:
Summary: I hope Clancy's next book is 250 pages. I want some sleep.
Review: The economics is informed, but weak, and it's a side issue. Clancy spins marvelous stories, but 1000 pages??? By the dawn's early light, so much deliriously exciting prose remains.
Rating:
Summary: What if the government decimated by a kamikaze attack?
Review: Jack Ryan's back and Roger Durling's got him! If you ever read a Tom Clancy novel, DON'T MISS THIS ONE! Clancy's main characters are back and there are some new ones as well. Take for example, the egotistical, self-centered, half-mad, and vengful, Raizo Yamata. Yamata institutes a plan so fiendishly simple that it's complicated in its simplicity. The Japanese Prime Minister is forced to resign, blackmailed by Yamata and his corrupt cronies, into resigning. The embarrassing sex scandal involving Yamata and his friends is covered up by the murder of an American singer who was forced into prostitution. At home, the crisis builds and takes on a life of its own when all but one member of a Tennessee family is killed in a fiery auto accident. This sets the stage for the passage of a protectionist trade bill called TRA. In a subplot reminiscent of the scandal that brought down the Singapore branch of the British Brandell's Bank, an opportunistic Wall Street trader who's a cross between Oliver Stone's Gordon Gekko and Ivan Boesky, sets up a program that's a computer virus. There's another opportunist as well. A Commerce Department official who wants to be a lobbyist for Japan. The war between the U.S. Japan begins when the Japanese Self-Defense Forces invade Guam and Saipan. Ryan, as usual, saves the day. There's another well-plotted subplot. This involves Roger Durling's Vice President, Edward Kealty, who as a U.S. Senator, was responsible for the death of a former aide, who drove her car into a bridge abuttment. This one could apply to Bill Clinton although at the time it was written, Bob Packwood's sexcapes were in the news. The ending is like something out of those old World War II movies--a 747 flies into the restricted air space around the White House and the Capitol and crashes into the Capitol decimated by a decapitating kamikaze strike. The only survivor is Jack Ryan, who was on his way into the House of Representatives at the time and is whisked away to the Marine Barracks by the Secret Service. You can rest assured that this isn't the end of Ed Kealty. Like a bad penny, he'll turn up again.
|
