Despite putting Red Storm Rising down some 200 pages toward the end, this review is not going to be entirely negative. On the contrary, there are a lot of good things to be said about it. The only book of Tom Clancy’s career not to be set in the Jack Ryan universe, it focuses on a fictional World War 3 scenario in which Russia initiates the taking over of oil refineries in the Persian Gulf after being victims of a devastating terrorist attack, terrorists who have blown up the largest of Russia’s own oil refineries.
The set up is terrific and is literally like nothing I’ve read in a techno thriller before. Set in 1986 (when the book was written), the conviction of its premise is terrifyingly believable. It also legitimately makes an argument for WW3 being a non-nuclear war and, despite there being great advances in technology since WW2, much of the war consists of tank battles and aerial dogfights.
Why then did I not finish it? Simply put: it blew its load early. Whilst the book itself is very well written (a given with Clancy) and the war itself is interesting enough, after the terrific set up, the narrative just meanders from one theatre of war to another repeatedly which, in turn, makes the book long winded (it’s 800 odd pages) and a bit dull. That in itself wouldn’t be too bad as my patience for reading is far greater than it used to be, but given how good the opening 200 pages were, it feels like such a let down.
Makes me worried for the truly massive Clancy works, such as The Sum of All Fears (1040 pages) and Executive Orders (1297 pages). Before I get to those, I intend to read a number of much shorter novels first.
3/5
FYI: Just wanted to point your attention to this techno-thriller, which is somewhat "torn from today's headlines" but is little known. It's not massive either, and readers have commented the ending does pay off.
ReplyDeleteThe novel “Rad Decision” culminates in an event very similar to the Japanese tragedy. (Same reactor type, same initial problem – a station blackout with scram.) The author has worked in the US nuclear industry for 25 years. Readers report the book is an excellent source of perspective for the lay person. The novel is free online at the moment at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com . (No adverts, nobody makes money off this site.) Reader reviews are in the homepage comments - there have been a lot, and they've been uniformly positive. One of the interesting things about modern nuclear power in the US is that few really understand how it works day to day -- including most scientists and journalists who are commenting to the media on the topic.