Tom Clancy Books

A reel disappointment. Four a book to bee enjoyed it helps if it does knot contain sew many speling and typograffikle errurz.

I usually enjoy TC's books---but this one was indeed a disappointment. Decent story, but the typos and errors became tedious. Halfway through the book I started circling the obvious errors for entertainment value alone. Obviously the publisher opted to use an automated spell-checker because the book was filled with typos---some funny, but most were annoying and detracted from the reading experience. Just because a word is spelled correctly does not mean it's the right word to use! Next time the publisher might consider having real people proofread TC's novels.

As usual I enjoyed the technical aspects of Clancy's Bear and Dragon. And incidentally I happen to agree with his politics, and I think he was actually quite kind to a certain former President. I'm also fairly patient about cliches and over-workings. So I only have one real criticism: Even with 1,000-plus pages, this story ended far too suddenly. I hate it when it appears that the author simply got tired of writing. Several deliciously rich threads were left to dangle in the wind. So I might hope for a sequel, just to wrap up a few very enjoyable subplots, but I'm sure it wouldn't work very well. From page to page I enjoyed Bear and Dragon, and I always enjoy the pleasant fiction of former enemies being such close pals -- fiction only in the sense of so readily allowing massive foreign military assets to touch native soil -- but this book most certainly needed another 20 or 30 pages of closure.

So Clancy would have us believe the Russians would not have employed nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons to repel the Chinese in this scenario?

Maybe Mr. Clancy is not as knowledgeable about the Russians as his earlier work would lead one to believe.

The premise that Americans would be invited to help defend the "Motherland" is just the final nail in the coffin of the Tom Clancy legacy of good writing.

Save your money, or if you insist on reading this, buy the paperback version.

I finished "The Bear and the Dragon" yesterday after a read that took about three days. Overall, I found the book to be enjoyable, but also noticed a not small number of frustrations and irritations.

First, I was disappointed by the way the author sort of hastily tied up the subplot involving Ming. At the point in the novel where the Siberian War started she and the American spy in Beijing just sort of disappeared from the story.

Second, I was disappointed by the failure to follow through on the Mike Reilly part of the story. After the renegade KGB agent confessed to his work for the Chinese, it seemed like Clancy just let FBI agent Reilly and his colleague, the Russian police officer, fade out from the tale. I think that was a mistake, especially since the last appearance of Reilly was when he told the FBI director about the Chinese plot to kill the Russian president.

Third, I got pissed off by the overt anti-Clinton comments in the book. They are totally illogical in the Ryan-verse, of which this book is part, because Clinton was never President in this fictional Ryan-verse and there is no indication in any prior novel that any of Clancy's fictionalized American leaders exhibited behavior like Clinton did in the real world. In any event, this is fiction, not a political speech. We don't need to have Clancy's Republican point of view thrown at us so obviously.

And the same goes for his several criticisms of environmentalism and those who advocate for it. None of those nasty comments, which he had come out as "thoughts" of several characters, especially Admiral Mancuso, had anything at all to do with the plot and they didn't even do much to bring out the character's personality. Again, I thought these were just random, unnecessary and irritating windows into Clancy's personal politics.

I didn't like the way the climactic scene involving the missile strike on DC was handled, either. There had never been any hint before that part of the novel that the Navy's hotshot civilian programmer was having any trouble fixing the missile software to allow interception of an ICBM. All of a sudden Clancy drops this thing about how he programmed the interceptor missiles to hit the heat coming out of the ICBM engines. That was weird and it seemed to me Clancy just forgot to set the table for that development.

I also didn't see the point of the whole Ryan being dropped off on the cruiser thing. It didn't add anything to our well-developed understanding of the character and I couldn't figure out what Ryan, who normally shows such great judgment in the novels, was hoping to achieve with that move. Clancy even concedes that when he has Ryan say pretty much the same thing.

Finally, I thought Clancy's economics were a bit off mark. Granted, before the financial disaster our government created for itself since the novel was published the U.S. had a big budget surplus and a big trade deficit with China, so the author's imagination of a China that was bringing in huge export revenues and spending them on weapons and military equipment wasn't a bad one. However, he never really got around to explaining how the Chinese military could have spent so much money but be so incompetent and so bereft of modern weapons technology or modern combat tactics. This part of the novel was muddled, at best.

All in all, the novel kept my attention well. I am not sick of Jack Ryan as President. I hope, in fact, that Clancy writes another novel that focuses on what happened to Ryan after the events in "The Bear and the Dragon." While he's at it, maybe he can tie up the loose ends involving Reilly, Ming and the American agent, and the Russian general who became a hero in this novel (Bondarenko). And in what story was Robby Jackson supposedly killed off, anyway?

Big fan of Clancy's books, but I felt this was an overly-long and rushed effort. There were numerous spelling mistakes, factual errors (he switched what planes were doing what in a crucial sequence as if he forgot what he had already set-up) and perhaps the weirdest thing was that Clancy would repeat character's observations, opinions and thoughts repeatedly - as if he had run out of original things for them to say. If I had to read Robby Jackson say something about having "a Tomcat strapped to my back" one more time I was going to scream. The book takes a long time to get going and then wraps up a little too quickly - as if the publisher cut Clancy off and told him to get the book into stores. Don't get me wrong - Clancy is a fine at what he does, but clearly the attention to detail and imaginative work of his previous efforts are no longer applicable in his recent work. I was disappointed enough that I went back and read "Hunt for Red October" again. Hopefully he resists the urge to get more books/product onto shelves and takes his time to come up with more original material and more in-depth characters. This book was just irresponsible laziness on his part.

I had high hopes when I bought this novel. The concept immediately enthralled me; the idea that the death of Boris Yeltsin creates a power vacuum, which resurrects the old Cold War hostilities between the west and the east. It is such a compelling concept that I couldn't help but buying it.

The first few chapters did not disappoint, as the plot moved quickly and set up much suspense. After the beginning, however, this disintegrated and the novel degraded into a sleep stimulator. By half way through this garbage it became a tedious snooze fest only useful for inducing a catatonic like sleep or as an ineffectual paperweight!

This novel was such a disappointment, mainly because it had so much potential. Shame on you Tom Clancy for getting my hopes up and then crushing them!

The best part about it is that it is short. Shame on Tom Clancy for allowing his name to be put on this worthless novel.

This book was a good book to read in an afternoon, but it needed some more length. It was great but it was to short. It had awesome details and action. It is very interesting about what might happen if the president of Russia did die. I recommend this book to anyone who has an afternoon to not do anything.

I'm a great admirer of Clancy's work but this is one of the rare occassions that he has not lived upto my expectations. It is also my first book in the "Power-Plays" series. I liked the way he prepared the plot upto the explosion but the story seem to lack "punch" after that. Still it is not that bad.

//From an unacknowleged letter to the publisher about the paperback edition// Page Erratum Comment 18 Bashkir...Far Eastern I think you mean "Siberian"; the Bashkirs are not in the Far East. If "Bashkir" is not an ethnic Bashkir, why does he have this name? (There is a famous pianist with the name Bashkirov) 30 Romual Perhaps you mean the Polish first name Romual'd (the apostrophe indicating the Russian soft sign, that being how the name is spelled in Russian) 43 Bishir yetso Neither I nor another experienced Russian linguist have any idea what this means. 62 vor v. zakone The period is not necessary (it's not a middle name!); rather than "godfather", such a person is more like the Mafia "made man" or, simply, "professional (as opposed to petty) thief", who subscribes to a code. See "Soviet Prison Camp Speech", by Meyer Galler, based largely on Solzhenitsyn's early works, for an excellent reference on this subject 110 Republican convention ?the previous summer"; in 1998? 181 Gorbachev He wasn't president in 1992 235 MIDI MIDI is a digital protocol governing the transmission of musical data between sound modules/synthesizers and computers or other sound modules/ synthesizers 261 Zgranitsa etc. Za granitsa (SIC) is a prepositional expression; no native Russian speaker would use it as the subject of a sentence like an English speaker might. 337 Mercedes Wold a rabid Russian nationalist/ Communist be seen in one of these? Bad image. . 343 Komerade ??? You mean "tovarishch"? "Komerad" is what German soldiers traditionally say when about to surrender 364 IL-76 This is a cargo plane, not a passenger plane. Although it is used to carry paratroopers, they don't sit in "passenger seats" any more than US airborne units do.

Internet police save the day.


Or something along those lines. While the whole premise of Clancy's Net Force Agency is rather silly, the people in it, both geeks and grunts come off as interesting enough to make this book readable, even more so probably if you are one of those people that likes silly computing and tactical reloads.

Not a writer with a deep grasp of the non-military technology by any stretch but this is fun enough.

As a computer and security professional I was hoping that this would be a Clancy-esque IT Thriller. The research and veracity I've come to expect from a Clancy novel was totally missing. Some of the forensic methods were completely wrong and the use of VR for following a hacker's trail was just stupid. I couldn't wait for this book to end and was tempted again and again to just quit wasting my time and burn the book so no one else would get hooked into reading it because of the Clancy Stamp.

Hmmmm...not quite what I expected. While the plot line provided some excitement and a surprise or two, this just wasn't as satisfying as some of the other series created by Clancy. The near future setting and the use of virtual reality both felt somewhat contrived. I'm not sure how the use of virtual reality scenarios improves the investigative abilities of the forensic computer analysts. I found the passages describing these scenarios to be distracting from the main plot line. Also, while I have no problem with character development, why do we need to have TWO love story subplots? It felt like overkill. Overall, this wasn't a terrible light read, but its far from the best thriller I've ever read.

This book is as great as the first one. The outline story is much more weaker but the personal stories of all characters (Alex, Toni, Tyrone) finish in this book (althrough they continue in next books:-)). If you (again) don't expect Clancy-class story, you've got (again) a very good book.

About 300 Pages of great story telling, but then an extra 200 page of complete nothing.

Most of the book was great and entertaining, but for a good part of it I read stuff that didnt seem to have any relevance to the plot whatsoever and could quite frankly be left out of the book without changing the story at all.
But I did enjoy the book overall, even though it should only have been a 300 page book.

Diction, different ways of speaking a language, and dialect, the author's word choice, all affect this novel extremely. Because of the fact that it has a dual setting in both England, and Quantico, Virginia, make the author's word choice one of the only ways that the reader can discern between the two settings.
In this passage, the diction used implies that we are in the U.S. "You're in the Neuro Ward at the base hospital. You had a CVA, a cerebrovascular accident. A stroke." Compare that to a different passage a little bit farther along. "Not much, my boy. I was ringing you up to see about that, ah . . .small matter we discussed recently over supper." What a difference! Just by reading the two quotes, one can immediately distinguish that the first was set in an Army Base, in America. The second set in a castle in England. The use of the words my boy, ringing, and supper insinuate that the reader is now in a different place, where people speak with different drawl.
The dialect used in this novel also helps us distinguish from the settings, but it also allows the reader to discern between the upper and lower classes. For example: "Oh, and Applewhite? Se if you can't drum up major Peel. If you should happen across him, tell him his lord wishes to dine with him." Compare that to this quote. "Come on ya blimey old codger! Give us your money afore we beat your bloody coat red!" This almost automatically allows the reader to tell that the first was the higher class, and the second, the lower.
Diction and dialect were two dreadfully important literary devices in this novel. Had the author not used these devices, the readers mind would be a jumble of places, and people.

Annotation:A super genius computer hacker tries to take over the world by takeing over major computers across the globe. The Net Force opperatives must track him down and stop him before it is to late.

Autor Bio:The book Net Force Night Moves was written by Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy is the number one on New York Times best selling authors. Tom has created many books that envolve a form of law enforcement that has to take down the terriost threat. He is a great author.

Evaluation:The book Net Force Night Moves was an all around good book. It took a little bit of time before the book got started before i got interested in it. Also I would get confused when the charcters would jump in and out of the virtual reality when trying to catch the hacker. The characters in the story were decent, they all worked well with the way the book was put together. I like Tom Clancy and the way his stories are very intersting.I would recommend this book to a person who likes a twisted computer hacker story.

I've read some of his other books that have been better. The story was a little disjointed. He had some characters like Mikhaly Ruzhyo, and a few others that had great potential, but he got too many things going at the same time and too little time for each of them to develop properly. I did like the way he portrayed Lord Coswell, the English billionaire. He figured he was a law unto himself and seems to have gotten away with murder (kinda like what's happening here in the United States). I enjoyed the book but it wasn't his best.

Not up to Clancy standards. The main premise is compelling- What might happen if a technological advancement were developed which could quickly break large prime number encryption, upon which the security of the world depends? A real theoretical possibility... This premise kept me reading right to the anti-climactic end. Some of the characters are interesting, like the Russian fellow who had a great subplot going, but even his ending is a letdown. The 2 main love stories are tiresome, detract from the main plot, and take up way too much ink. The virtual reality subplot is a leap of faith.
Not worth reading.
Currently reading Without Remorse, which is much better so far.

This is the very first Clancy novel I've tried and I wasn't much impressed. Basically a Sidney Sheldon melodrama with some science fiction tacked on. Also there were some unnecessary subplots that were weak and irrelevant (the colonel's son, the agent's love triangle, the female monk...). These took the edge away from what I thought was going to be a to-the-point, intense SciFi-thriller. Not a complete waste of time, but not time well spent.

overall i thought the book was excelent. the book kept me on my toes thinking about what was going to happen. the book was action packed with not only the whole gun slinging scene but also in the scence of how Tom portrayed the world years from now. I love how he made everything electonic. and how everything was made into a thechnologicaly advanced system.
the plot kept moving making the book a page turner. the only thing i disliked about the book, but made it flow however, was how it would jump between charators. beyond that i loved it.

The language used in the book is full of slangs.
But I do not think that the book is so bad as the reviewers say.
May be a good read for teenagers but not recommended for adults.

Up to this point, I have loved all the Clancy books I have read. This one was simply horrible. Please note that the author of this book is Steve Perry, not Tom Clancy, and it is not up to par with the works Clancy is known for.

The story line is very simplistic and they characters are very one dimensional. About 50 pages from the end you could predict the ending with a good degree of accuracy.

If you haven't read any of Clancy's books (the ones HE wrote), then pick one of those up. This one isn't worth the time or the money. Too bad 0 stars isn't an option.

I wrote my review about 40 pages from the end of the book. I must now revise it and remove all points. This has got to be about the worst book I have ever read!!!

I picked this book up because it was sitting there, I was out of reading material, and it had Tom Clancy's name on it. I was skeptical when Clancy hadn't written the book, but I thought that if he put his name on it, he believed in it.

There is no story here. Nothing happened. Nothing! ... A few disconnected scenes of people practicing martial arts, some guy drinking beer in virtual reality bars looking for clues (ridiculously stupid angle), and a conclusion that must have been written in one afternoon because the author was bored. The problem is, as is customary, I read to the end of the book to find that out.

... There were some parts that held some promise, but there is no coherency, and the conclusion is so bad that I wanted to destroy the book and any credibility it has. ...

I had thought, in the beginning, that CyberNation would be pretty good because Tom Clancy wrote a ton of really good books and many great video games are created based on his stories. However, as I read along, there was hardly anything to enjoy. Obviously, I had not read any of the other reviews, so I had no idea what trap I was falling into. The storyline of this book is devoid meaning and completely boring, the complete opposite of what Tom Clancy would normally write.
The "storyline" about Gridley, Howard, Michaels, Santos, Chance, and Keller is completely disjointed. One of the few reasons why this story is connected is that they are fighting against each other in the internet world, and using the VR, or "Virtual Reality", to track things down or to mess things up. In fact, the whole story is covered up with sex, crime, and violence that there is hardly any connection shown. Of course, if I had not been able to follow the storyline, I would not be able to write this, but it was still quite confusing.
So I ask, again, why did Steve Perry write this? He has no sense of what Mr Clancy writes, nor of his style, elegance, and flair. One cannot imitate a type of writing without being the type of person, obviously, so why did Mr Perry try to do so? Mr Clancy truly should write more of his own books, even if he thinks he is too important and too proud to do the writing. Mr Clancy and Mr Perry must have decided to play a prank on loyal fans of Mr Clancy (not that I am one) because this has disappointed many enthusiastic readers. Of course, these questions I am not really able to answer, but I would not be surprised if Mr Clancy's name was written in huge, bold letters on the book for the profit.

Wow, this is by far the most BORING "thriller" I have ever picked up. It starts out pretty good, but then gets bogged down in several boring and confusing sub-plots. Even the writing style is dreadful -- I kept reading hoping it would pick up and it never really did. This book is a DOG, don't waste your time with it. Tom Clancy did not write this book - I am surprised he would endorse such a lame novel with his name.

This book was a terrible book. The content was pretty boring at most times. This was nothing like the Sum of All Fears, or Patriot Games. I only liked brief parts of it. Hey Tom! Pick up the pace!

This story seems to jump from topic to topic without any real coherence. When the end finally came I was so lost, I didnt even realize it was coming. Not worth buying.

Unlike most readers on these reviews, this is the first "Clancy" book I have read. I put it in quotes because it wasn't till I got home with the book that I realized a ghost writer was involved. The first 4 pages were awesome, setting up an "outbreak" type scenario. Where did that story go for the next 300+ pages? There were so many characters in this book that I got confused repeatedly, and finally gave up trying to figure them out. What was up with all the sub-plots which go nowhere...ej. The government guy and Megan, Thibideaux and Ricci..... The story dragged on and on and finally picked up at the end, but it was too late to salvage this story. If he wanted to write a thrilling series, with the backing of Clancy, it could have been done, since everything he needs is in this book. The problem is that by combining all of these story lines into one 400+ page novel, the overall product turned out to be a confusing mess.

I picked up this book because I'm a Tom Clancy fan since the Jack Ryan days, and needed to pass some time....not usually a ficiton reader, I've always managed to admire Clancy's use of his knowledge of intelligence and military operations and hardware to weave a compelling story.

"Cold War" is a book I picked up hurriedly expecting it to be on the topic of the actual Cold War, which it is not, it is set in Antarctica--but after the first few pages of initial disappointment, it becomes another Tom Clancy page-turner, which is what I'd hoped for.

I cannot say for sure how much involvement Mr. Clancy had in the actual writing or story plot and direction (he is NOT listed as an author or writer--but this could easily become another great movie with a good scriptwriter or two and CG budget....moving from continent to continent in a flash and keeping your attention whirling.

Although that is conceptually a different idea from the novel, it gives you an idea of my reaction to this pocket book (which it truly is). I recommend it for the purpose I bought it--a timepasser...and a good one at that. It has all the elements you associate with Tom Clancy...

Tom Clancy spins another great tale in Zero Hour; if your a Clancy fan you will be kept on the edge of your seat with this one.
As always this book is great reading from cover to cover. I found this book hard to put down; I wanted to read it cover to cover!

This is my first Tom Clancy Novel I have ever read, and possibly the last one I will ever read. In my eyes as a reader, there was hardly and action in this novel or possibly non what so ever. I sometimes even wanted to stop reading at times because I became very bored with it even after reading three pages of this novel. There are even some times when a character is described but is totally irrelevant to the main story. This was a terrible waste of paper due to this and it was a total waste of my time. There are a lot more book that I would probably have more interest in a lot more books than reading this shallow novel . I don't think I've been so upset at a novel in my life before but like they say there's a first time for everything and this is definitely a first time for me. This was an utter disappointment I recommend this to...nobody, that's right nobody.

What a dissapointment. I guess I picked this one up because of the Clancy name, but after Power Plays 6, "Cutting Edge" I guess I should have known better. I only read about 40 books a year, and I'm really sorry I wasted my time on this one. This is truly one of the worst books I have ever read. Imagine 4 pages dedicated to describing a man entering a building and walking to the elevator. Or how about 5 pages describing a mother walking to her car. If this appeals to you, then by all means, invest your time in this 330 page disgrace of a novel. Tom Clancy should be embarrassed to have his name associated with such poor writing and imagination.

To the anonymous reader from California:

You crossed out all those sentences, huh? Must have lotsa time on your hands. But waitaminnit . . . wait just a gol-durn minute here! I see now that your "review" was of the AUDIO CD version of the novel. Wow, there's a really neat trick, crossing out those words on a CD, I mean! You'll have to patent that technique; bet it'll earn you a fortune. Also, I've never heard of nonessential (or "not essential", as you put it) characterization. Couldja explain the concept to us sometime? 'Cause I was kinda made to feel sorry for that woman you mentioned (whose murder -- as well as the fact that she had a kid in playschool -- was key to the plot in about a dozen ways).

Yee-ee-eesh.

Zero Hour is one of the worst books that I have read in recent memory. I can't imagine Tom Clancy linking his name to book. There is next to no action. There are too many characters that have dead ends. The Pakistan characters add nothing to the book except to provide some graphic violence. The Roger Cordian presence and the rock wall sequence is nearly pointless. The climax was so ho hum. The villain has been shot in a previous scene and simply dies of blood loss before triggering the laser. The whole notion that a stockpile of chemicals in New York in this day and age that could be so easily targeted seemed unlikely. The book ended with the murder of the Pakistan character left me speechless- what was the point. The main villain was dead. What was the point of the main villain's photo sensitive disease - surely the author could have developed at a least a death scene for him related to that illness rather than an octopus bite. I kept expecting something imaginative to happen but it didn't.
This book seems to be a clever attempt to use Clancy's name as a selling point. This type of marketing is doomed to failure.

I bought this book to read at the airport; Clancy's name in big letters on the cover led me to expect another jingoistic international military thriller. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this is a more traditional political drama set entirely within the United States, and that it actually shows some sympathy for non-right-wing viewpoints (the novel's villain is an isolationist, militaristic Presidential candidate). I wonder if the notoriously conservative Clancy is paying much attention to the content of these franchise novels.

A note to author Jeff Rovin: get a grammar textbook and learn about semicolons. I continue to be amazed at the number of successful, published authors who don't know that it's incorrect to join two independent clauses with a comma.

I enjoy Op-Center books, but Call to Treason was a major disappointment. The plot was not as rich and clear as usual, but it was the unsatisfactory writing and editing that caught my eye. It made the conversations very stilted.

One basic need was to be consistent with contractions. Or the lack thereof. In one paragraph, a character will speak normally (meaning acceptable for the character and situation), and in the next sentence, the same character doesn't use any contractions. Far too much of this.

Rovin is a good writer, but in this book he doesn't grasp the culture and lingo of the characters in his book. I'm hoping his next Op-Center book shows improvement. I'll bed it does.

Disjointed, improbable plot... I agree with a previous reviewer, an annoying penchant for totally stupid acronyms. Annoying "faux Clancy" factoids (e.g., totally useless details about the Apache helicopter that had nothing to do with the plot and were just distracting).

I loved Clancy's early work, but his later work (and these subcontracted ghost-written pieces of junk) are pathetic.

I bought this book in an airport to kill time on a long international flight based on the Clancy name. I gave up trying to read it after a few hours because it was so poorly written and edited. The story is so disjointed and the style so annoying I could never get interested in the either the characters or story and never finished it despite repeated attempts. Despite two eight hours flights and being stuck in a foreign hotel without television or radio for a month I could never put up with it for more than a few minutes at a time.

This is the eleventh book in the Op-Center series, and is the weakest story yet. Instead of an international crisis or espionage mission, Op-Center finds itself the target of a budget axe, and must downsize. At the same time, Op-Center finds itself drawn into a murder investigation that entangles it in the vicious world of Washington politics.

This book is trying hard to question the motivations and agendas of the powers-that-be in Washington, but fails to hit its target. In the end this book feels more like a worn-out detective story that happens to involve Op-Center characters. Hopefully, future volumes in this series will return to the international stage, where the stories are more interesting, and the potential consequences create more tension.

Tom Clancy, a world class adventure and military writer really vrought home how dangerous military operations are in extremely cold places, especially Antarctica. It is a medium sized book, but it sadly lacks the common twists and turns that become of a world class thriller such as this one. In a nutshell, the US military are experimenting with engineering and technologies so that if they want to, one day, they could work on Planet Mars. But, leading entreupeneurs want it a different way, and boy are they anarchists? A man who is dealing black market artworks is making money: a lot of money: and is funding the people who want to isolate the military into not going anywhere near Antarctica. With the unearned money, they buy nuclear waste from Britain, planting it around the site so that the personnel get dosed up with clinically high amounts of radiation. But all is not as it seems, and Tom Clancy, why does he have to always end without twists in the tale? Besides from that, it's a 'not bad' sort of book, but the story could easily be improved with a little more art and affection: more twists and more turns. I'll award two, perhaps three stars.

This is my first book in the Power Plays series. That could account for some of the confusion I (and others too) experienced about some "threads". What I can't figure out is why people don't realize the connection between the art forger, Scotland murders, and happenings in Antarctica. It seems so obvious to me, although they did seem sort of unrelated at first. The forger, murderer, and Antarctic criminals were employed by the same person and the arrest of one helped unravel the rest. It is a bit foggy even at the end though.
I found the book to be one of Clancy's better books (yes, I know it wasn't actually written by Clancy, but I don't know how else to put it) although it did seem to be tying up some loose threads while leaving others dangling. It had plenty of action, and also many unnexpected happenings. It seemed to encourage you to try and figure out the "mystery" by yourself before the main characters did. Definitely a book that I would recommend. Read and enjoy.

A 3-star rating for most writers is an accomplishment. Anything with Clancy's name on it implies, at least, tacit approval from Clancy. Since this was actually written by someone else (as a number of Clancy created series are), it would appear that Clancy has begun to care more for the money his name makes than the readers who trust his name. I am disappointed with Clancy. In fairness, though, the book does have good technical facts and plenty of action. The characters, however, appear to be good generic cut-outs.

Yep, it's not of the same caliber that we'd expect from Tom Clancey. Maybe the reason is because Tom Clancey didn't write it. It is, though, an entertaining book that doesn't take a lot of thought. Kind of like watching a James Bond movie...lot of thrill and action...not a lot of need for grey matter.

This is the perfect book to take to the beach or summer get away. Since it take place in the cold depth of Antartica...it's a wonderful diversion from staring at an overheated thermometer measuring summer temperatures.

Characters are minimally developed. Action is abundant. The story is just gripping enough to keep the reader interested.

It'll never win a writing award...but then it probably wasn't intended to.

A great book for light summer reading.

The cover loudly proclaims "Tom Clancy's Power Plays", yet this book was neither written by Clancy, nor probably even reviewed by him before publication, given the shoddy quality of the writing.

To be fair, it is written in the "Clancy style" with technically accurate descriptions and multiple sites of action around the globe. It misses the mark, though, in terms of plot, belivability of characters, and general writing. There is no real climax, and instead of tying disparate story lines together as Clancy does, "Cold War" just seems to have several threads going on for the heck of it (to fill space?). I kept reading in the hopes things would resolve, but they never did.

As another reviewer suggested, this is the first in this series that I've read, and perhaps these are continuing characters and story lines which work better in that context. Personally, I don't think I will take the time to find out.

This book was one of the worst in the series. However it is important to remember not to criticize Clancy. He doesn't even write the books. This one is in fact written by Steve Perry. It is just "Tom Clancy's Net Force" because Clancy is the one who first created the series.

I have read all of Clancy's books and most of his Net Force books and this is the worst one by far. Fortunately I was able to read it quickly since I could skim over most of the book since it was material unrelated to the plot. The books spends a ridiculous amount of time on fencing, guitars and a VR world that to me is completely ridiculous and unbelievable. Look elsewhere.

Okay, I'll admit I knew before I picked up this book that I was leaving the real world behind and taking a trip down the road of great imaginations, but come on... a guy teaching himself control his own brain waves? While the majority of this book has some good sub plots and suspense, I found the outcomes a little to predictable. The "good guys alwarys win" seems to hold true with this series and while I like to see the good guys win, this particular book doesn't offer much to leave you guessing about what might happen next... though I'll still pick-up one of the other books in the series in anticaption of a better plot.

Like a bad car wreck, I needed to keep reading this garbage, holding out hope that it will get better. I was wrong. The plotlines are silly, the characters are unbelievable, and the dialogue is rediculous. This is a really bad book.

As a somewhat core fan of the 2 Net Force series (the regular novels and the younger Net Force Explorer series) I was more waiting to see what the latest installment would bring for the future's Net/world defense team. After reading the latest I was a little disappointed by the story but still hopeful that with all the new additions to the team future volumes will definitely keep up the good work.

The title refers to the fact that several prominent characters from past Net Force books make their last appearances as members of the Net Force, including Alex Michaels, the Commander in the first seven books. He hands down the title (hence "Changing of the Guard") to Thomas Thorn, while the field unit is handed from General Howard to Abe Kent, a former Marine.

Not too soon after the changeovers does Net Force find itself involved in a case where a disc containing the names of former Russian spies falls into its hands. The disc leads to an attempted kidnapping of one of Net Force's top computer agents, Jay Gridley. We learn that the attempt was perpetrated by a hitman assigned by a multibillionaire who is afraid the disc's information will reveal him to be a former spy himself and will stop at nothing to make sure that the info never sees the light of day. But when the kidnapping gets bungled and Gridley ends up in a coma, Net Force has to stop the attacker and find out what is hidden on the disc.

The story is a seeming partial re-treading of a previous Net Force story that also sent Gridley into a coma, but this time it isn't as engrossing as before. As for the new Net Forcers (Thorn and Kent), they get a rough first start in the mission field but hopefully their next adventure will definitely give them time to flesh themselves out to the reader.

Overall, this was an alright chapter in the Net Force legacy, but not all that satisfying to those who have been with it since book 1.