Comment

Apr 30, 2014Keogh rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
A bit of an improvement over some of his more recent work. Perhaps that has more to do with a fairly decent second half of the book, and the use of a young Jack Ryan in sequences set in the past. This has both President Ryan and his son and colleagues at the black ops agency the Campus dealing with a resurgent Russia and a mystery dating back to the Cold War involving a shadowy Russian operative. Still, the problems remain that have plagued Clancy books since the post Bear and the Dragon era. He's disregarded continuity, inserted too much of his political leanings into things, and has created characters in the Campus era that just aren't that interesting. Jack Ryan Jr., Dominic Caruso, Sam Driscoll, and others just aren't compelling when you compare them to Jack Ryan and John Clark, and that's been a persistant problem in these books since the last good one. That said, however, the political and military situation he sets out here with his collaborator are eerily predictive of the current situation on the world stage, a gift Clancy has always been exceptional at. If this is indeed the final Jack Ryan book, at least the second half of it uplifts a slow start.