Tom Clancy Books: Thoughts?

[ElderKingpin]

A few years ago my friend gave me 2 tom clancy books, Endwar and Ghost Recon and i enjoyed both of them. The one I have right now is Dead or Alive, which is his newest novel. I was just wondering if people have read his books and what they thought of it.

 

[Miz]

Unfortunately I haven't read any of his novels yet (haven't had any time) but I hope to get to one or two of them just because they have a reputation of being amazing.

 

[Bartuc08]

I've only read one, my dad had it lying around the house so i picked it up, can't remember what it was though. He's a great author with a fantastic reputation about him. I'd like to read some of his other works when/if I get a chance.

 

[Ioannes]

I've read
- Red Storm Rising
- Executive Orders,
- Rainbow Six (abandoned it halfway)

My thoughts are that he is very patriotic and adheres quite strongly to stereotypes. In his books Germans are organized, Western Europeans are well civilized, the Japanese are strict and honourable and a bit fanatic, etc. "In his novels, countries portrayed as hostile to the U.S. include the former Soviet Union, Syria, China, Iran, India, and Japan while Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom are shown as close allies of the USA." according to Wikipedia, and the USA is the bestest country in the world. There is no corruption in Washington but the rest of the world does suffer some sort of backwardness compared to the USA. All this makes for a rather cheesy and artificial setting for his characters. Who are always the good, Western guys, chewing gum and fighting for freedom, while the bad guys are the freedom-hating Terrorists (the USSR in his earlier novels). So his books are filled with 80's cliches. He's lucky he will be retired before China surpasses the USA as a superpower. Also, the final parts of those two were rushed. Also, his descriptions are frugal and skinny, more like Asimov than Tolkien.

On the bright side, he has good technical knowledge, since he knows so many people in Baltimore who work in the armed forces. Also, the politics in the books is quite real, if you are ok with the military-industrial complex being omitted. Red Storm Rising - my favourite of his - is the narration of one big WW3 and I liked it. Executive Orders was very cheesy and pro-American, and anti-Iranian. Although he still is respectful to every country he speaks of. And every ideology I've seen - there's always a benevolent Communist (RSR), Muslim (EO), Japanese (EO) and so on. Only the malevolent Americans are missing.