Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Mirror Image

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Summary: Not just your every-day spy story
Review: Tom Clancy introduces us to a brand new set of characters whom the readers get to know just as good as we knew Jack Ryan from his other novels. Op-Center is an operations center comprised of some of the best experts in the world (in many areas, like psychology, foreign politics, intelligence, etc.). A bomb goes off in Seoul, fingers are pointed to the North Korean government, and the slowly increasing peace in the past years between North and South Korea is about to be shattered... its time for the newly formed Op-Center to prove its worth to the President of the United States.

This is the match that started the new brilliant series of books about Op-Center. To some people, these books may not seem as exciting... but it gives a good picture of America's intelligence and how something like Op-Center would operate

Rating:
Summary: Getting better
Review: Tom Clancy books are for a certain type of reader. For the diehard fan of Tom Clancy this book may not be the ideal one to read. However, this combination of Clancy and Steve Pieczneik, who also has some very excelent techno-thrillers, is getting better. This is the third book in a continual saga. This book is by far the best of the three however it does lack in suspense. The best part about this book is the "Pieczenik" Factor. What this incorparates is a paranoia frenzy that all Pieczneik's characters go through. This is not the best techno-thriller I have ever read but it is enjoyable reading.

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Summary: It stinks!
Review: If you're looking for the typical Tom Clancy "keep you on the edge of your seat" book, stay away from this one. It's not written by him, only his name is on it as developed by. Save your money and buy a Larry Bond novel!

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Summary: A disappointment that reads like a mediocre TV-Movie
Review: "Games of State" is the third in the series of Op-Center novels and comes up well short on most counts. This story revolves around the activies of Neo-Nazis who plan to destablize world governments including the United States by means of carefully planned attacks on minorities in concert with hateful video games distributed via the internet. The people of Op-Center have the task of stopping these plans before they can be carried out. Mr. Clancy in trademark fashion describes the technical aspects of weapons and tactics, and offers some insight of the sheer enormity of the internet, but looking underneath this veneer, this writer found a plot that was lacking in plausibility, even within this genre of books. For example, consider the relationships between the characters. The main protagonist comes into contact with a former lover who left him twenty years earlier, and who coincidentally works for the Neo-Nazi antagonist, who murdered two American tourists years before. The murders were committed in the presence of a german who would later become a high goverment official, and has the handy ability of being a crack pilot. As these events are taking place, Op-Center is under pressure from a lady Senator to cut back on activities, this senator still painfully saddened by the murder of her daughter twenty years before in Paris, a crime committed coincidentally by the main antagonist. As the story ends, she graciously changes her mind, in fine "TV Movie of the Week" fashion. Consider also one of the main characters, a wheelchair bound "rambo" who had cleverly decided to go undercover as a wheelchair bound american in search of information on the bad guys. As the situation unfolds, he finds a young girl taken and left for dead by the Neo-Nazis who escapes and then risks her life to infiltrate the enemy camp and announce to them that she is alive and still has her pride. As with any novel of the genre, leeway has to be given to the characters and events, but this writer sincerely feels that Mr. Clancy has stretched leeway and plausibility to the breaking point.

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Summary: A pale imitation of Clancy's earlier work
Review: If you were looking for anything like _Hunt for Red October_ or _Patriot Games_, you'll be sorely disappointed. Though this has Clancy's name on the cover, it's clear that it's just a cheap sell-out of his name. Inside, it's just a poorly thought-out, sub-average spy story, with none of the strong characters of his "real" work. Give it a miss, and avoid all of the derivative "Op Center" books..

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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.

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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: Eh *shrugs*
Review: Typically, I do not read fiction novels. Usually, I stick to non-fiction. Not long ago, I read my first Tom Clancy novel (Without Remorse) and thought it was one of the best things I have ever read. My wife had gotten me a copy of "Op-Center: Games of State". After reading the novel, I really had to wonder if the same author wrote both books.

Not to be overly simplistic, but the book can be divided to three sections, the beginning, middle, and ending. As to try not to ruin the book for anyone who has not read it, I will omit "key" details.

The beginning of the book gives the reader high hopes for what follows. The book has a heart-pounding beginning in Germany where a Neo-Nazi terrorist organization performed a terrorist raid on an American movie set. There are people killed and a person kidnapped. All of a sudden, the book cuts out to the "middle" (I would estimate the beginning is about 30 pages).

The middle of the book, approximately the next 400 pages is dedicated to the pursuit of a leader of a billion dollar a year business in France, who plans on crashing the European economy and encourage civil disorder in America through video games. Granted the idea is not as foolish as I am making it sound, but it is still a heck of a stretch. This part of the book revolves around Op-Center finding this person and battling the problem of White Supremacy groups (Op-Center can be thought of as being similar to the CIA or NSA in America).

The end of the book begins with a high-speed car chase as an Op-Center agent, who is in a wheel chair, is pursued and fired upon by members of the Neo-Nazi organization after he attempts to crash a Neo-Nazi party. Narrowly escaping with their life, the agent decides to crash a Neo-Nazi rally. Along the way, they meet up with a person, who is introduced in the beginning of the book during the terrorist attack, who has no concept of self-preservation. After a ridiculous statement by the person who the agent met to several hundred armed Neo-Nazis, the wheelchair bound agent and the person (who knows little about combat tactics and easily succumbs to stress) make a run for it. The ending involves several hundred healthy, armed Neo-Nazis pursuing a person in a wheelchair and their companion. All I can say without giving too much away is that the ending left me saying "alrighty then" and shaking my head. Also in the end, French and Nato commandos take down the video game guy in his factory.

This book is a little on the dull side and in parts is highly unrealistic. I think that 200 pages of "fluff" could have been easily cut out this book. Rather than reading like a novel written by a first rate writer, the book read more like a Junior High paper where the student inserts paragraphs of pointless information to make the paper look longer. The ending (especially with the Op-Center agent in the forest) was ridiculous.

I would only recommend this book to people truly interested in the Op-Center series or people who have nothing better to read. The book is like a marble cake is to someone who only likes chocolate. Parts of the book are really good and parts are foolish or pointless.


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.