Rating: 
Summary: Technical errors and trivia destroy this premise
Review: I heard that this novel was going to be made into a movie. I hope the Hollywood writers do a better job than Clancy did. Clancy is known for his technical errors, at least among those in the aerospace industry, but this book gets the error prize. Some readers dismiss his errors quickly, but in his effort to create a scenario in which NORAD will misinterpret data and think a nuclear attack had come from Russia, Clancy reveals that he hasn't got a clue how things actually work. One example: he has a small atomic bomb create an electromagnetic pulse which is received by commercial and military satellites. In order to protect themselves, the satellites automatically shut down their downlink transmitters, thus appearing as if Russia had attacked the satellites themselves in a bid to wreck our communications capability prior to an all out nuclear strike on the U.S. Commercial satellites will not do this because this kind of capability is not needed and costs money. A large electromagnetic pulse (at Clancy's described power level)will only saturate the channel with no damage. The channel will then come out of saturation less than a second later and the satellite will operate normally thereafter. This premise is crucial to Clancy having the president almost launch a nuclear attack on Russia. The rest of the novel is from the worst soap operas laced with excruciating trivia. (Tom, you don't have to put in everything you have found out on a particular subject!) ....
Rating: 
Summary: The best Tom Clancy book I've read.
Review: This is my favorite Clancy book. It doesn't contain as much right-wing diatribe as some of his others (as a Hollywood liberal I don't go for that stuff). The plot is fantastic...a Middle Eastern group of terrorists discover a nuclear bomb in Syrian farmland and try to get it working again. They set it off during the Super Bowl & along with another terrorist group in Germany, try to trigger WWIII. This is a scary part of the book as the US and then USSR go to the brink of nuclear war. Jack Ryan is able to save the day...as much as this sounds completely sappy it actually works. If you're new to Tom Clancy you can start with this one...his other stuff is great, too but this is by far the best.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Clancy novel says Author of $oft Money
Review: I have read every novel written by Author Tom Clancy, and this one was his best. Gripping, action packed, and very plausible. The attention to detail and chronology of events held me spellbound. I have read few books of this length that I failed to put down. I read this book in one sitting. Tom Clancy is a writer whose work I read religiously. I could go on and on, but I will simply say that this is a must read and one I highly recommend. Thank you Mr. Clancy for raising the bar in the arena of political fiction and action adventure.
Rating: 
Summary: Denver gets the shaft!!!
Review: This book probably signalled the start when Tom Clancy started going downhill- especially with the end of the Cold War. So many people have reviewed this book, so I won't go over the plot again. Basically, Palestinian and East German terrorists, caught in the changing winds of relations with the U.S. and the former USSR and isolated in the wake of a Middle East peace agreement (orchestrated by Jack Ryan), find an Israeli nuclear bomb and plan to ignite a nuclear war between the Americans and the Russians. (they later hope to destroy Israel). Clancy leaves readers in the dark on many issues. After finding out at the end that the only section of Denver destroyed physically by the terrorists was the SkyDome (where the Super Bowl was played), what about the side effects like radiation on the city? If such a nuclear explosion took place, Americans would probably be pretty mad at the Palestinians as a whole and bitterness would likely continue even after Qati and Ghosn's (the terrorists) execution at the book's end. Also, Clancy's conservatism came in the way in his depictions of Native Americans (including terrorist Marvin Russell) in the traditional image of "savages." A footnote: This novel actually has some similarities to a Batman graphic novel written in the late 1980s in which a Middle East terrorist with a "Q" named Qayin tries to start a nuclear war between the US and the USSR. Using a U.S. satellite controlling the weather, Qayin attacked Russia, making it look like the Americans were behind it. I don't know if Clancy noticed these similarities (he probably didn't) but his novel is certainly not one of his best.
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Summary: Tom Clancy; A man who knows about pacing!
Review: An action packed powerhouse of a novel by the master of all that is slam-bam action packed! A really really really really good novel by this master craftsman of pacing and edge-of-your-seat thrill-a-minute high-tech excitement! I really liked it and think it is superior to any other book on any other subject. I hope this review has been helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Terrifyingly plausible
Review: One missing nuclear warhead. A terrorist finds it and discovers just how easy it could be to cause mass destruction. This book is absolutely terrifying. Every step of the way, Clancy shows us just how easy it would be for such a scenario to happen. And the last act of the novel (which covers the span of only about half an hour) presents an all too plausible portrait of two distrusting nations plumetting closer and closer to an all-out nuclear war. Even if you do find some of the details too much of a stretch, the ideas certainly are not. This is one scary novel.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Start Here
Review: I have read every Clancy book in the Ryan series and this is clearly the lowpoint. I saw some folks rating it highly and I wanted to throw my two cents in: This one contains almost endless pages on some suspected affair he's having from his wife's perspective, etc. By far the most soap opera-ish work he's done, making it hard for a regular Clancy reader to get through. The stuff on building the bomb is also protracted and uninteresting. If you're just starting with Clancy, I'd start with Clear and Present Danger or one of the more recent one like Rainbow Six. I'd start just about anywhere else if you want the best of this excellent author.
Rating: 
Summary: This could have been better
Review: Clancy has some profound need to put out 1,000+ page books. It's not necessary. This could have been really great. Too bad there's so much fluff in between the covers. Overall a great story and well thought out, as usual. However, I and others, grow tired of Clancy's longer-than-necessary novels. The story reveals a very real look at what could happen should a nuclear device fall into the hands of a terrorist. This is quite possible today. What makes the book good is how real this situtation is. The terrorist group in SUM brings us to the brink of WWIII. Clancy makes it all make sense and so real. If you can get past the fluff, this is a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Quick - get this man an editor!!
Review: While this book was not terrible, I found it much worse than other Clancy works. Clancy has always been a bit "long-winded," but I never noticed it quite like in The Sum of All Fears. Clancy's penchant for throwing endless trips to Carol Zimmer's store (and that annoying way he writes her accent), endless football banter between the "SecDef" and others, and other tedious paragraphs (he must have Marvin Russell fantasize about revenge for his brother's death at least 5 times - in nearly the exact same way - throughout the book) contribute extra pages to the book, and in the same way, takes away from pages that could be used to improve the book. This leads to my first complaint about the book. The ending of The Sum of All Fears does not justify the nearly 800 hardcover pages that lead up to it. At all. It is quick (bang bang bang - and the book is over), and it simply does not do justice to the characters that are woven throughout the story. Furthermore, it is unclear. I don't want to give away anything, out of respect for a reader considering laboring through this enormous book, but when I turned the last page, I left quite unsatisfied. This ties in to my above theory: Clancy wastes so many valuable pages on meaningless tangents and the inclusion of too many details that he leaves himself without enough maneuvering room at the end to bring the book to a satisfying conclusion. Two examples: the whole Ricks USS Maine submarine tangent of the story is barely related to the plot of the book. It is merely thrown in to show us that Clancy knows submarines, I suppose; it wastes pages. Also, while impressive that Clancy did much research about how to build an H-Bomb, unless you are a budding third world terrorist/scientist, you might find yourself simply turning past the endless pages detailing H-Bomb construction. Next, besides Ryan and maybe Clark, Clancy cannot develop a character. Elliot, the NSA in the book, is a prime example. She hates Ryan, but we never know exactly why, other than she is a petty academic, without the real-world experience of Ryan. Perhaps that is enough, but that is a cliché, and it cheapens the book in that we never really know why the NSA has such a thing against the DDCI. And finally, Clancy's conservatism really comes out in this book. Usually I could look past it in his works, but it really struck me in this one. Besides the normal comments he usually slips into his books about liberals and environmentalists, he takes on Native Americans now, as well. I do not have any quotes handy, but if you read this book, you will notice that when he is dealing with Marvin Russell, and writing about his internal thoughts (in Clancy's best style, these are nothing more than clichéd ramblings), Clancy never turns down the opportunity to bash Native Americans as savages, and early Americans as civilizers. He does this alternately through the voices of his Arab characters, a German a time or two, and if I am not mistaken (I just finished the book last night), he even gets on the soapbox against the Native American lifestyle in the form of direct narration. For a cheap read this book is not bad. But it is not well done; if you're new to Clancy, I'd suggest Clear and Present Danger or Debt of Honor as two better places to start. Personally, I've got a few more unread books of his that I bought cheap at a yard sale - I think I'll hold off on reading anything else from Mr. Clancy for awhile.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing but religious prejudice
Review: The book was a typical Clancy novel...except the prejudice seems to switch from women (as in his previous books) to Muslims...whom Clancy seems to demonize.
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