Rating: 
Summary: Clancy's running out of steam
Review: I was disappointed in and bored by this book, thoroly spoiled by Clancy's early novels. I found myself flipping pages to get past inane, irrelevant dialog, and kept waiting for some suspense to appear. It never did, or I couldn't grasp it amidst the pages of socio-political philosophizings that Clancy had his young heroes and their mentors mouth. I kept thinking "young American men (that I know) don't talk like that," as tepid dialogs over-punctuated by "roger that, bro" plodded on and on. I found it wearying, too, to wade through all the references to the main characters in Clancy's earlier works. They felt like curtains hung around a rectangle painted on the wall.
The all-American heros and their handlers were never in any significant danger. The big terrorist attack was sobering in its realism, but was tidily cleaned up by our heros and staunch compatriots. Yawn. I literally did a double take on the last page, not ready to accept that the book just ended like a staircase going nowhere.
This is the first time I have ever put my copy of a new book up for e-sale within minutes of closing the cover. I will never read this book again, unlike most titles by early-Clancy, Gresham, Sandford, Woods, Cook, Michener, Chrichton, Forsythe, Brown, et. al.
Take a vacation, Tom!
Rating: 
Summary: Uninspired
Review: This is the book I would expect TC to write if he needed money in a hurry for a divorce settlement, and didn't have more than a few weeks to crank it out. Gone are the intricate, larger-than-life terrorist plots like a mass Ebola outbreak or a nuke in Denver. In its place are a terrorist plot to shoot up a few shopping malls on the same day, a couple dozen dead in each of four large cities. Yawn. There are no, repeat, NO interesting antagonists.The answer, of course, is the old outside-normal-legal-channels gambit, ala Don Pendleton's The Executioner, with a top secret private intelligence operation spying on the bad guys and then killing them, with blank, signed, Presidential pardons tucked away in the safe. Who does all this? Why, Jack Ryan, jr. and his two cousins. NOTHING ever goes wrong for them, and there is one massively unlikely coincidence that makes their initial reluctance disappear. The speed at which they race around the world killing terrorists reads like a Hardy Boys mystery. The dialogue between young Jack's twin cousins is embarrassingly bad, consisting of the two constantly calling each other "bro" and two stupid Italian nicknames, "Enzo" for Enzo Ferrari (the fast-driving brother) and "Aldo" for Aldo Cella (the brother who doesn't dress well.) This book felt more like a warmup for a "real" story.
Rating:
Summary: Teeth of the Tiger
Review: Don't have much to say about book. The only reason I finished the book, is that I am recovering from an operation,and I am able to read a lot. This spring and summer, I started with "The Hunt for Red October, and reread every one of his books. This , my opinion was only written to please this publisher, not his fans.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite as good
Review: I enjoyed the story lines and overall liked the book. My disappointment is that it read more like a Clive Cussler novel than a Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy's books have always been a more involved story with more actual technical details which brought the book to life. This one doesn't have that. It focuses on the character's relationships and personal perspectives. The larger print and fewer pages seems like this one was put out in a hurry. I did enjoy it but it is not up to prior standards.
Rating: 
Summary: An improvement
Review: The latest Jack Ryan series is a marked improvement over Tom Clancy's recent work. The book is a lot shorted and is in a font that is actually readable for this middle age reader. The story is fairly slow paced with only few action scenes in between many of the author's personal views. The action, when it does happen, is rather exciting. The author also did a good job describing local colors whether the setting is in the US or in Europe. Overall an improvement over "Red Rabbit" but definitely feels that sequals are fast coming. I am looking to follow these three young characters for their continuing adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Good but disappointing
Review: Tom Clancy does a great job of staying current with world events when writing - never more so than in The Teeth of the Tiger. Clancy's views of terrorism and what our government should do about it are definitely unique and fall into the category of "wouldn't it be great if we could actually do that..." That having been said, this book was relatively disappointing because of the lack of explaination of the back story. Jack Ryan has apparently resigned the presidency, Robby Jackson has been assassinated and the new generation has become the main characters of the novel. Reference is made to the Caruso brothers being cousins to Jack Jr., but no clarification is made. It seems that the attention to detail was missing in this book. Additionally, much time is spent in the training period of Jack Jr. and the Carusos, but little action occurs until towards the end of the book, which seems to end abruptly. It's clear that Clancy will continue these new characters - but one can hope that he will spend some time fleshing out their backgrounds. Still, this was an entertaining read, just not up to Clancy's normal stellar standards.
Rating:
Summary: Clancy getting better
Review: Tom Clancy seems to have been listening to the people who complain he's gotten long, repetitive and gassy -- and too reliant on the f-word. Teeth of the Tiger is an improvment on the appalling Red Rabbit, in which the pre-presidential and somewhat juvenile Jack Ryan saves a defector while trying to save the British from lousy coffee. I hope he continues the climb back to the heights he occupied with Cardinal of the Kremlin.
Now Ryan (Big Jack, Jack Sr., Ivan Emmetovich, POTUS, SWORDSMAN, etc.) is no longer president -- in fact, minor nemesis Ed Kealty is the wholly irrelevant, except as a compare-and-contrast, president in this book -- and a character I've gotten to like is abruptly, ex post facto-ually, conveniently and permanently out of the way. And Jack Jr. (Little Jack, SHORTSTOP) is a junior number cruncher for an extra-legal organization devoted to offing the baddies one at a time in plausibly deniable fashion while making a little honest money on the side. He has two cousins, courtesy of Big Jack's sister (not mentioned since "Without Remorse," and then hardly at all), neither of whom mind getting their hands wet, especially after dealing with a stereotypical quartet of swarthy baddies in a shopping mall.
References are made, in true not-quite-naming-them-but-you-know-darn-well-what-they-are Clancy style, to the 9-11 attacks. Also as per usual in Clancy's later works, there are enough favorable comments about high-tech, ultra-high-end consumer gadgets (various Porsche vehicles this time, instead of Gulfstream business jets) to make me demand product placement fees on Clancy's behalf, were I his agent.
Clancy books are like potato chips ... I just have to pick one up, even if I know the satisfaction will be transitory.
Teeth reads like a competent setup for the continuing adventures of Jack Jr. and his cousins (SHORTSTOP does not stay a number-cruncher for long) while the aforementioned all-to-abrupt elimination of a crucial supporting character seems to be a good setup for a sort-of-prequel which would link the Ryan Presidency books to Jack Jr.'s world, so it doesn't seem like Clancy plans to go away anytime soon.
I sense a return to the spareness that was a Clancy hallmark before the gratuitous subplots that stopped up his later Ryan Sr. books. In fact, there's one plot development toward the end that makes you think our heroes are going to get caught in their extra-legal baddie-offing, but that subplot thread just vanishes almost as soon as you detect it. Tom, you big tease!
Teeth is an improvement over Rabbit, to be sure, and Clancy seems to have laid himself a solid track to continue the adventures of Clan Ryan. He's left me wanting more, like any good stadium hot dog, and I hope he gets better. I want Cardinal-level Clancy back!
Rating:
Summary: Close by no Cigar
Review: After reading the Hunt for Red October I consistently hoped for the same quality of suspense and action from Tom Clancy. After reading every book he published, until a few years ago, I was disappointed with the quality of Mr. Clancy's written product. His books always seemed dense and overly technical. The good news for die hard Clancy fans is that the Teeth of the Tiger is neither dense nor overly technical. From that standpoint the Teeth of the Tiger is a significant improvement. On the one hand Jack Jr. the son of the great Jack Ryan "Sr." is a fresh new character who holds promise for future books, on the other hand Mr. Clancy's character is very one dimensional, his writing style is overly simplistic...there's good (America) and there's evil (the rest of the world). There's coffee, which Mr. Clancy clearly loves and there are lawyers, which Mr. Clancy CLEARLY hates! This is certainly an OK vacation read BUT it is certainly not the same Clancy who wrote The Hunt for Red October. Nevertheless The teeth of the Tiger is, at times, an enjoyable, if not predictable read...unless of course, your a lawyer, in which case you probably shouldn't buy this book :)
Rating:
Summary: No conflict, drama or plausability
Review: What happened to Mr. Clancy. He used to write books to keep us on the edge of our seats. not anymore. This book has no drama. Everything is well scriped and happens with minimal conflict. The other problem is that the premise is a stretch at best.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, boring, boring
Review: I suffered through the first 120 pages of this book and finally had to give up. Far to much time was spent grossing up the number of pages by engaging in unnecessary character development and fluff. I am certain that the book must have picked up at some point. It HAD to. But is as typical of many fictional authors who struggle to break 600 pages, they accomplish in 100 pages what could have been done in ten. Pass on this one.
|
