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Red Storm Rising (Tom Clancy)
by Authors:
Tom Clancy, F. Murray Abraham Features:
Abridged
Audio Cassette Description:
Using the latest advancements in military technology, the world's superpowers battle it out on land, sea, and air for the ultimate global control. A chillingly authentic vision of modern war, Red Storm Rising is as powerful as it is ambitious. It's a story you will never forget.
Hard-hitting, suspenseful, and frighteningly real.
Average Customer Rating:
Flawed, but on the whole, good.
I read this book years ago, and it gripped me all the way through. I read it again recently, and it doesn't really seem anywhere near as good as when I read it the first time. It is still worth a read, though, but I am comparing it to two other similar books, WWIII by Ian Slater, and WWIII by Sir John Hackett.
Firstly, the trigger for the war is pretty unconvincing. WWIII by Sir John Hackkett and it was far more convincing. In Sir John's book, it is a large number of seperate incidents that create a momentum of events which bring the two sides to war, much like the start of WWI.
Second, there is a bit of military hardware overload. It is very interesting to learn about various systems and equipment, but you just get flooded with it. You need a Jane's manual next to you to imagine whole sections of the book. The absolute worst part is the anti-sub warfare element, which was so boring that I ended up skipping whole paragraphs just to get through it.
Third - and I don't think Tom Clancy is the only author guilty of this assumption - Nato wins easily against the Warsaw Pact. I'm sorry, but though the West has an edge in technology, it isn't that great, and even less when you consider how outnumbered NATO forces are in Europe. Clancy is aware of this, and creates a number of handy 'coincidences' which allow NATO forces to prevent potentially devastating attacks. The Warsaw Pact does not get similar 'coincidences' in the book. With only one or two, they would roll right over the thinly stretched NATO forces. There is a book by Ian Slater about WWIII, which feels far more realistic about NATO's chances. In his book, the Warsaw Pact gets lucky on occasion, as much as NATO does.
Fourth, the ending is a bit sudden, and unlikely. In the two books I mentioned above, Sir John Hackett's makes the same mistake. Ian Slater's finishes with the war still raging, which is better than trying to fudge an ending to the book.
But there is a lot to enjoy. I was glad of the inclusion of the action in Iceland, which was a welcome distraction from the anti-sub related boredom. And you can see why the Warsaw Pact would invade Iceland, so they could ravage the Atlantic convoys. It's a smart bit of stragic thinking out of the box, and far more interesting than the slog in Europe. The love-story is a bit contrived, but forgiveably. And British soldiers do not speak with plummy, 1930's Noel Coward-esque accents. Other than that, well worth a read. With a copy of Jane's next to you.
A great techno-thriller, perhaps the best one ever written
When a Muslim terrorist group succeeds in blowing up one of the Soviet Union's key oil field, the Soviet leaders know that their economy will be crippled. As far as they can see, there are only two choices open to them: plead for assistance from the West and be subject to Western extortion, or launch a preemptive strike on the West and then seize the Persian Gulf oil fields. They choose the latter.
But, when the Soviet armies roll into Germany, and the Soviet fleet puts out into the Atlantic, they find resistance much stronger than they ever expected. They have a limited supply of oil to fuel their military machine, and the clock is ticking. Can they push through to victory in time?
Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (b. 1947) is an American author who is most famous for his thrillers that focus on political, intelligence and military science concepts. His first book was The Hunt for Red October (1984), which began his Jack Ryan series, and was a bestseller that was later turned into hit movie. This is his second book, which came out in 1986, and is one of his greatest Cold War stories.
I really enjoyed this book. I found it to be quite suspenseful, and the action positively gripping. Also, I must say that his grip on the military state of the art in 1986 was really something. If you read this in 1986, you were prepared for what happened in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. This is a great book, a great techno-thriller, perhaps the best one ever written. I give this book my highest recommendations!
Fast-paced novel but abrupt ending
Red Storm Rising is Tom Clancy's mid-1980s vision of how a war between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries might come about and be prosecuted. It was for a while required reading in many major military academies worldwide, and though with the demise of the Soviet Bloc and the new types of conflicts the US now finds itself involved in, it still makes for a fascinating story.
Like all of Clancy's novels, this book moves fast. The rapid--and sometimes frequent--scene (not to mention POV) changes jar the mind and keep the senses alert. If the twenty hours this book takes to read aren't the fastest you've ever had awake and sober, you're not paying enough attention to it.
The fast pace does create confusion, though. It is often difficult to keep the names straight, especially since they are often so similar to each other (for example, two Russian generals that figure prominently in the story are named Andreyev and Alekseyev). Furthermore, one tends to expect the various subplots to somehow merge together in the end a la "Clear and Present Danger", but this does not happen--land/air engagements in Iceland and Germany and the naval battle for control of the Atlantic are all resolved at the same point in the book, but as separate parts of the story.
Tom Clancy's cheesy sentimentality is also apparent in this book; for instance, his description of a US Air Force officer's falling in love with an Icelandic rape victim he rescued is a bit over-the-top and ungenuine. Clancy tells an excellent story, but episodes such as this make it painful in places.
Finally, the book ends rather abruptly. Perhaps this is to be expected, as it comes as one of the participants is stretched almost to its limit, but it still reads as though Clancy had realized that he had a deadline the next day and he had one night to finish it. It's difficult to describe it without giving away the ending; suffice it to say that one would expect the story of the ending of World War III to be told with more drama.
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DVD's
Flawed, but on the whole, good. 
A great techno-thriller, perhaps the best one ever written 
Fast-paced novel but abrupt ending 
