As mounting tensions between China and the United States push the world’s two great powers to the brink of war, it falls to President Jack Ryan to identify the lethal chess master behind the scenes in this thriller in Tom Clancy’s #1 New York Times bestselling series.Jack Ryan is dealing with an aggresive challenge from the Chinese government as the G20 Summit approaches. Pawns are being moved … Pawns are being moved around a global chessboard: an attack on an oil platform in Africa, a terrorist strike on an American destroyer and a storm tossed American spy ship that may fall into Chinese hands. It seems that Premier Zhao is determined to limit Ryan’s choices in the upcoming negotiations.
But there are hints that there’s even more going on. A routine traffic stop in rural Texas leads to a shocking discovery—a link to a Chinese spy who may have intelligence that lays bare an unexpected revelation. John Clark and the members of the Campus are in close pursuit, but can they get the information in time?
more
Carries on the story of some remarkable characters. Clancy would be proud his characters continue so well in his absence.
Not as good as when Clancy alone wrote the books.
Good book
Though it says from Tom Clancy, it’s not. That’s not to say it wasn’t a good read, it was. Jack Ryan as president, what’s not to like. But would he really want his son in the CIA? I’m just saying.
Not quite Tom Clancy but the next best thing.
too many plots for me and a little too dark or scary. excellent author just not for me
OK, but done not come close to the original books.
Too predictable but easy to read
Great book, but a little longer than others.
Not as good as other Clancy books I have read.
Typical Tom Clancy; detailed, believable and great characters. If only our government functioned the way his does.
The book started out promising, but it quickly devolved into a mish-mash of multiple plot lines, some of them unnecessary to the central plot. The book ended suddenly without tying up loose ends, a very unsatisfying ending.
The book couldn’t decide what it was trying to be, with several different, unrelated plot lines, some of them unnecessary. It’s as if the author couldn’t decide whether he was writing an international spy story, an American child-trafficking story, a Coast Guard search & rescue story, or a political intrigue story about an internal coup in China.
The main UNNECESSARY plot line was the child-trafficking story. Every few chapters, the scene would switch back to a gruesome story of child sex slavery in America, which had no relation to the main plot about Chinese spies and coup attempts within the Chinese government. If you took out the child-trafficking subplot, it would improve the book, because that subplot was totally unnecessary to the overall plot. It seemed like the author really wanted to write a novel about child sex-trafficking, but his agent told him they wanted a Tom Clancy novel instead, so he said, “Fine, I’ll write your darn Tom Clancy novel about Jack Ryan, but I’m going to shoehorn my child sex-trafficking story inside the Tom Clancy novel just because that’s what I really want to write.” Why not make it two books instead, one about child sex-trafficking (nothing to do with Jack Ryan), and a second book about Jack Ryan?
Furthermore, the main plot (the spy story) suffered from numerous loose ends that were never explained and never tied up in the ending! Such as…
***SPOILER ALERT: LIST OF LOOSE ENDS AND UNNECESSARY SUBPLOTS BELOW***
Why was the Chinese container ship blown up? What purpose did it serve? Why did the bad guys do it?
Were the bad guys planning on blaming the Chinese container ship explosion on the Americans, or on foreign terrorists, or on Taiwan, or on the Chinese premier?
The author never explained, not even in the ending! Why waste so many chapters on writing details of an event that had no consequences that mattered? A few merchant sailors died in a fire, but it didn’t cause an international incident, so why did the bad guys do it, what did they hope to accomplish, and what did the author hope to accomplish by wasting so many chapters on an insignificant event? Personally, I’m a U.S. Coast Guard fanboy, having served in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary, so I am happy that the author pointed out that the U.S. Coast Guard does a great job at search and rescue (SAR) operations, but to those who aren’t Coast Guard fanboys, this was wasted ink.
Why did the bad guys (in this case, pirates) try (unsuccessfully) to attack a US Navy patrol boat, and why waste a couple chapters on the details? Again, not sufficiently explained, although presumably it was to make the Chinese premier look bad, but it was a whole lot of buildup that ended with no significant action (a couple dead civilians, a couple dead terrorists and one U.S. sailor, but the bad guys accomplished nothing, the good guys accomplished nothing (except rescuing one hostage), so what was the point in writing a detailed account of an insignificant event?)
Why the sub-plot about a small U.S. spy ship caught in a typhoon, and why waste a couple chapters on the details? That was a whole lot of buildup that ended with a whole lot of nothing! This was even more meaningless than the pirate attack on the US Navy ship or the explosion of a Chinese container ship, because this spy ship caught in a typhoon wasn’t the actions of terrorism or piracy, nobody died, nobody was captured, so what was the bloody point of wasting so much ink writing a detailed account of a totally insignificant event?
Yes, I get the fact that it mentioned a Chinese admiral reluctant to obey orders of the Chinese premiere, but nothing happened as a result, nobody was killed, nobody was shot at, nothing happened as a result (other than a Chinese admiral getting arrested off-screen).
Why put the child sex-trafficking subplot in the story? Did someone tell the author, “It’s a Tom Clancy novel, so you’ve got to include lots of confusing sub-plots”? Most of us who buy a Tom Clancy novel do it to read an action novel, not a child sex-trafficking novel. There is a market for crime novels about child sex-trafficking, but this subplot was just a distraction from the main plot, which was a spy story of sorts (with a lot of loose ends never tied up).
The above incidents wasted the author’s ink, and wasted the time of the reader.
They used up valuable space in the novel that could have been used, SHOULD have been used, to tie together the major plots and then wrap up all the loose ends that the author never wrapped up in the ending.
Character development was lacking, for most of the characters. The characters seemed wooden. They’re what’s known in writing courses as “flat characters”, as they never do anything unexpected. The bad guys commit crimes. The good guys track down the bad guys. Jack Ryan Senior is a US President who listens to what his underlings have to say. The women are all kick-ass hardened agents who can beat up men in a fist fight, but who have a weakness for tall, strong, and handsome American spies. There wasn’t much romance, but even the little that there was seemed forced and wooden.
And the ending…. most unsatisfying. No spoilers here, as predictably the good guys win, the bad guys die, and Jack Ryan prevails as always. But the ending never explains why the bad guys did what they did, or what they hoped to accomplish with their feeble attempts to do bad-guy stuff.
Loose ends include: What happened to the Chinese premier? What happened to the traitors in the Chinese government? Did the US and China ever sort out what really happened with the Chinese container ship and why?
Why the devil did the bad guys sink that Chinese container ship, what did they hope to accomplish, what (if anything!) did they actually accomplish, and why was it important enough to waste several chapters of the book on?
You’ve probably noticed that the loose end that bugs me the most is that Chinese container ship, because it took up so many chapters, and at the end amounted to NOTHING, NOTHING!
Showing the virtues of the U.S. Coast Guard, that’s about the only thing those chapters accomplished, but this wasn’t supposed to be a US Coast Guard recruitment book; it was supposed to be a Tom Clancy / Jack Ryan action novel!
A real page tuner! Having loved and Read Clancy from the first books, it’s refreshing to see the authors continuing his leagacy of style of Jack Ryan & Campus characters I have loved for so long Kudos to Marc Cameron.