OK, so I finished this a while back, and despite it appealing to a lot of my interests, I honestly found it pretty meh.
I really enjoyed the realistic military/tactical aspect of it all, as that part is right up my alley, but… I did not care about the characters, the plot seemed hollow, and it seems like some things that could have been explored further were simply ignored.
For example, in the beginning these guys blow up a refinery. There are vague descriptions as to why, but after this it is practically not mentioned again. Whatever movement they were part of apparently disappears, and there are no repercussions for their home oblast.
The only thing this book has going for it, in my opinion, is that military nerds like me enjoy the detailed writing about the different types of hardware involved in the book.
So, since I am by no means a literary connoseur, I’m curious about what others think of this one.
I once chose to read a Tom Clancy book over the summer for a book report in the following semester (I enjoyed those Rainbow Six games from the 90’s, so the books would probably be cool too right?). I stood up there in class and was like “I’m gonna be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to read more than half of this.” And the teacher was like, “I don’t blame you.”
I gave up on Rainbow Six as well. I didn’t really understand the plot.
Apparently I was meant to be on the side of Team America: World Police and not sympathise with the environmentalists trying to save the world from corruption and climate change.
Yea, r6 was not what I was expecting.
My second favourite crazy conspiracy theory is that Tom Clancy didn’t really exist and that he was the front man for the CIA’s public relations office. Red Storm especially leads this as the whole novel reads like someone took a high level war game and tried to make a novelisation out of it.
I’m pretty sure I remember reading that Clancy and a buddy essentially wargamed the conflict and wrote out the results.
Yeah his buddies from DOD’s PR and from the NSA. /s Yeah I’d believe that the whole novel really reminded me of a YouTube of some war games.
I suppose I could’ve just checked wikipedia, I was sort of right but also sort of wrong:
Development Tom Clancy met Larry Bond in 1982. The two discussed Convoy-84, a wargame Bond had been working on at the time that featured a new Battle of the North Atlantic. The idea became the basis for Red Storm Rising. “We plotted out the book together, then, while I researched the military issues, Tom wrote the book,” Bond said.[5] “I’m listed as co-author, but I wrote like 1 percent of the book,” Bond stated in a 2013 interview.[6] For research on the Politburo scenes, Clancy and Bond interviewed Soviet defector Arkady Shevchenko.[7]
Clancy had purchased Bond’s wargame Harpoon as a primary source for his future novel The Hunt for Red October (1984).[8] Clancy and Bond used the board game’s second edition miniature rules to test key battle sequences, notably the Soviet operation to seize Iceland and the attack on the carrier battle group in the “Dance of the Vampires” chapter.
Dance of the Vampires This refers to the chapter where the Soviets lure a NATO carrier group into a trap and almost manages to wipe it out.[9]
The game sessions typically involved several players on each side (Clancy among them) acting in various roles.[10] with Bond refereeing. The games did not influence the outcome - the chapter’s ending was already decided - but they gave Clancy and Bond a “better understanding of what factors drove each side’s thinking”.[11][12]
This attention to detail made Vice consider Red Storm Rising a “great example of fictional military history.”[9]
The collected and annotated notes on the three Dance of the Vampires scenario playthroughs would later be published by Bond.[11][13]
I think it was mostly meant as military nerd porn.
Like, the guys who blow up the refinery are only important in asmuch as they create the need for a conflict with the West. Some oppressed group pulls off something wild but doesn’t have the men/material to do anything major afterwards (which is how a lot of terrorism goes.)
Instead of reading Clancy read Matthew Reilly. I suggest you start with Ice Station. It’s got everything you need, French Baddies, Spaceships, Hovercraft, and even killer Killer whales!
It’s not a great classical literature, for sure. The characters are almost entirely flat and forgettable, and even the handful that do grow (the young Soviet commander, the US destroyer captain) barely do so. Their experiences never almost never inform their later actions.
But among the techno-thriller/war-simulator genre, I found it more compelling than several more recent attempts (Ghost Fleet, Nuclear War: A Scenario, etc). Many of those seem to go out of their way to bend the plot to produce the author’s intended point, and while RSR wasn’t exactly innocent in that regard, I found it far less guilty than others - largely because Clancy was holding to the known or theorized-near-future capabilities.
Where I actually find it fascinating is how, in retrospect, we can see the biases of the era influencing how Clancy makes certain predictions:
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The Soviets place immense importance on taking Iceland to permit a “second Battle of the Atlantic” against US carrier groups. In retrospect, we know the Soviet Navy had no interest in this and intended to act as a cordon around northern Europe; specifically the Soviet SSBN bastions.
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While Clancy did loosely predict the nature, role, and value of Stealth aircraft, the design and air-to-air role he describes them in is actually too advanced for the 1980s setting. Essentially, Clancy bought the rumors, which were wrong.
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Land attack helicopters with ATGMs play relatively little role in the ground fighting. This was because the current generation (namely the AH-64) had just been introduced; their full capabilities and impact were not yet publicly available.
These mistakes, although understandable, provide an interesting insight into what the American defense establishment was thinking about in the early 80s.
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I recall liking it, but I read it in like the 5th grade so my standards were low (before that I’d been reading my mom’s terrible ‘caterer turned detective’ novels).
I enjoyed Clancy for a long time after that but at this point I aim more towards militaristic speculative fiction.
Similar to my experience. I enjoyed reading but hated the process of finishing a book, finding a new, one, and getting started again. T. Clancy books were my go-to because they were interesting enough and WAAAY longer than they had to be so I could just keep on reading.
RSR is the only Clancy book I’ve read. Is it comparable to his other books?
I specifically remember liking Rainbow Six around the same time and I liked his books until he started tag teaming with other authors which was probably around 2000?
Based on that I imagine his books from 1986-2000 are “similar” enough.
The old school Rainbow Six games were my gateway drug to the book.
The plot is essentially “what if tree huggers went batshit and weaponized a virus” so take that for what you will but the training and operations in that book were facinating to me. I saw it as world building for one of my favorite games of the time
Yeah, all of the Rainbow Six plotlines are about people conservatives hate.
The Hunt for Red October is far more thrilling if not as realistic. The characters are far more unique and interesting, though jack Ryan and anything navy/CIA is just propaganda. At least it is fun to read propaganda.
The other books are far more plot and character focused, less exacting military stuff. If you like RSR, you might like the following books even more. It’s an outlier, but not too far, from his other books.
Caterer turned detective?
Don’t get me wrong, I loved them as a kid, and it was a nice way to transition to “adult” books but not really my speed anymore and I imagine if I went back I’d think they were “bad.”
Relax: Calm down, chill bro.
you’ll be pleased to know yours is a very reasonable opinion to have and you’re right for having it, too.
I mean, it’s Tom Clancy. It’s a fun read, like Dan Brown or Brandon Sanderson, but it’s not literature or anything.
First in what way is Sanderson similar to Clancy? Sanderson books are massive tomes of epic fantasy. Also how is it not “literature”? Or do you just consider only non-fiction “literature”
They’re both mass-market pulp that are entertaining to read. There’s plenty of sci-fi and fantasy that’s literature: Ursula LeGuin, Tolkien, Gene Wolfe, NK Jemisin, Vonnegut… the list goes on.
Chaucer, Heywood, Shakespeare…
Oh, and Dunsany! Can’t believe I forgot him.
LOL
Good is relative. Finnegan’s Wake is a masterpiece, and it’s also deliberately obscure to the point you either need an education matching Joyce’s or a reading companion.
Is that good?
Is it bad if it is not approachable? Is it good if it is?
Red Storm Rising is one of the best modern military fictions according to a lot of fans of the genre, but that’s doesn’t mean you have to like it. I’ve got some straight up gunporn series I read when I’m in a mood for reading about automatic shotguns firing explosive shells into vampires, but I wouldn’t call them good at anything but that and objectifying women.
Have also read it, I found most of it quite forgettable. Maybe when it was written ('86) it seemed much more connected to a real world possibility so early readers filled in the gaps with real life happenings / politicians etc. I was reading it in the early 2000’s when you had Hillary Clinton presenting Russia with a “reset” button and it almost seemed like we might be on the same side. Maybe that undermined it a bit?
I also didn’t find its handing of nuclear threat particularly convincing.
I’ve not thought about it for years, but perhaps these happenings in Ukraine have shown the whole dynamic wasn’t (isn’t) as implausible as I thought.
I read it around 1990 and it was an ok thriller, with a somewhat unique play (world war and all) or so I felt back then. Doesn’t really remember anything noteworthy except the russkies would have won if they hadn’t been like unlucky IIRC (some spy stepping out in the street in front of a car, having like the attack plans or something). The people were totally forgettable.
So yeah, a nice read back then but that’s about it.
Yeah, the time period in which it was released definitely plays a part. I just find that anything in the book that isn’t geekery about army/navy to be tacked on. Such as the Iceland plot with that woman whose name I cannot care enough about to remember. “Yes, a book probably needs a subplot like that.”
Yes, you have pretty much perfectly described why most Tom Clancy books have pretty niche appeal. The literary value is all in the well researched military nerd stuff, and weirdly plausible hypothetical geopolitics
I read it in my 20s and liked it well enough. It isn’t great literature but it was a fun read.
I read it again in the last few years, I’m now in my fifties, and I had to skip the Iceland parts with the Air Force Lieutenant and the woman. My god, Clancy must have been an insufferable misogynist.
Someone should rewrite the book and remove or change that part.
I couldn’t finish it because it was both so over the top American (I’m not American so it feels different) but also because at times it was weirdly boring.
The thing I remember most about this book is the heroic American Mary Sue rescuing an Icelandic damsel in distress from a traumatic sexual assault by Soviet soldiers, and then immediately afterwards she falls in love with him and they have sex in a hot spring or something. Standard conservative male military-nerd wish-fulfillment pulp fantasy written by a guy whose main protagonists are all thinly-veiled self-insertions.
That said, as a fellow nerd, I love it when Clancy tells me all the little details about a submarine, and it’s a fun read. But I wouldn’t call it good.
I don’t think it is generally considered a good book, but I’m sure it depends on who you ask. I thought it had some interesting ideas, but was pretty weak overall.
