ogd5XOt reviewed The hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy (Jack Ryan (2))
Powerhouse of a Debut Novel
3 stars
It's hard to believe this is the first book Tom Clancy ever published. It's exactly as compelling today as it was 40 years ago.
The amount of technical detail and military nuance Clancy crammed in his books was always impressive, especially for someone who did his research before the days of the World Wide Web and who had no military service himself. He didn't write textbooks, but if anyone wants to get a sense of the scope and scale of the US Armed Forces, Clancy is where they should start.
His debut novel has some pretty big plots holes and other ends that don't quite meet. It suffers in the fact that not a whole lot of actual conflict happens until the end. Clancy also establishes his habit of "single-use characters" here, where several pages are spent developing someone into a relatable human only to never see the character appear …
It's hard to believe this is the first book Tom Clancy ever published. It's exactly as compelling today as it was 40 years ago.
The amount of technical detail and military nuance Clancy crammed in his books was always impressive, especially for someone who did his research before the days of the World Wide Web and who had no military service himself. He didn't write textbooks, but if anyone wants to get a sense of the scope and scale of the US Armed Forces, Clancy is where they should start.
His debut novel has some pretty big plots holes and other ends that don't quite meet. It suffers in the fact that not a whole lot of actual conflict happens until the end. Clancy also establishes his habit of "single-use characters" here, where several pages are spent developing someone into a relatable human only to never see the character appear in the story again.
Flaws aside, the book survives the test of time and is still easy to recommend to military fiction aficionados.
