Is any of Tom Clancy's novels good?

[Sephiroth_IX]

I dont like his style to tell you the truth. He is one of the writers that will jump from a situation to the end of another and then backtrack and tell you how that ending came to be.

It will be like "Ding's mp5 burst ended what was left of the terrorists. As the plane crashed down, people screamed. It was a monday morning at the airport...."

Just a little jumpy for me

 

[XMan]

Clancy's writing technique does bother me from time to time . . . sometimes he mixes his tenses up. He'll be speaking about, say, Ding Chavez in the second-person, and then he'll say something like "The Heckler and Koch MP5 is the finest submachine gun in the world." It's almost like, for one moment, the book jumps from a fictional narrative into non-fiction. It's annoying, to me anyway, especially when he could say something like,

It could have been argued differently by others, but Ding regarded the Heckler and Koch MP5 as the finest submachine gun in the world.

It just flows more evenly . . .

With the exception of his principle characters, most of the people are cookie cutters, too. Especially the woman. You either have "the bitch," or the "butch-but-sensitive woman."

 

[XMan]

Oh, and Montanafan - Executive Decision was a movie with Kurt Russel and Steven Seagal. I think you're thinking of "Executive Orders."

 

[BiB]

I'm 1/3 of the way through Rainbow Six and although Clancy writes as if its a movie script, and sometimes I cringe from the cliche's - for instance, "You could just tell by looking in his eyes", its a pretty good book. Clancy seems to know his special forces and I thought the lack of sucking off the Navy Seals as every other american seems to do was quite refreshing. They _aren't_ God's gift to special ops!

BiB

 

[denali]

BiB, I take it then that you don't like the Rouge Warrior series by Richard Marchinko?

 

[montanafan]

 

[AlphaIVT]

Starting reading Patriot Games today, I've gone passed 7 pages and wow! I got hooked onto it right away. Other novels/books give you the setting that goes on for +15 pages. This book went right to the action. Thanks all for recommending this book.