Red Storm Rising

Rating:
Summary: Chilling Look at Terrorism, Its Aftermath: Our Future WWIII
Review: This is the second book written by Tom Clancy which establishes him as a powerful storyteller, a global tactician of power politics and of military technology. Did he have a crystal ball with which to read the future? It seems he zoned in on the possible effects of Muslim terrorism *way* before the "real world" woke up to the truth ...

An Ajzerbaijani Muslim student received special treatment at the Moscow University for his loyalty due to his good standing in the Communist Party. After 15 years in the Party, he attained the respect of his comrades, a good salary, an automobile and an above average position in his chosen field of study ... but beneath the suface ... he was seathing with anger ... plotting revenge on the very people who provided him the opportunities for success. He blew up the largest oil producing field in the Soviet Union ... crippling the Soviet economy. The Politburo met to deal with the consequences - the possible collapse of the Soviet Union. US satellite intelligence picked up the seismic event and discovered the oil field was destroyed. Another noteworthy discovery was: a shortage of car and truck batteries. At the same time, the Soviets were engaging in Peace Talks in Vienna, Austria. The Foreign Minister gave a press conference where he spoke of "deeds not words" as he described the Soviet's committment to reduce and destroy nuclear weapons. This included a deadline of three years and site verification. Plus the Soviets
proposed all signatories, USA, France, China, and the UK join in the negotiations. The "maskirovka 1" by the KGB had begun (masquerade 1). Another suspicious intelligence discovery made by the USA was four colonels in the Soviet Army were executed for falsifying "readiness" reports. Not long afterwards, an unusual bombing incident occcured in the Kremlin, exactly before the Politburo was to meet. Innocent children died ... the incident was attributed to terrorists, in an odd twist of fate a CNN cameraman caught the explosion on film, right when it happened. Also, US intelligence gathered information showing the Soviet submarines were maneuvering ... allegedly practicing tactics. The combined findings of these intelligence reports could lead to no other conclusion but the invevitable: the Soviet Union was planning World War III. The reasons were self-evident ... they faced economic disaster by losing their fundamental source of energy, their largest oil field.

In this novel, Clancy keeps the reader spell-bound, hanging on every word, wanting to know what happens next. There are three major battlefields: on land in Germany, in submarines under the ocean near Norway, and in the air in Iceland, which becomes the homebase of the Soviet Airforce. It is an exciting experience reading about the events and outcomes of the different battlefields in a fictional World War III. The scenarios are highly probable. The characters are realistic and very human. Most intriguing is the weatherman, a survivor of the battle for the US airfield in Keflavik, who becomes a guerrila soldier in the mountains of the region, providing very significant information via a radio on untraceable frequencies to intelligence operatives based in Scotlan. This is the quintessential "best" of Tom Clancy's novels. It is a most highly recommended contemporary novel. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

Rating:
Summary: World War III as a Giant Game of RISK
Review: This novel is really a war game that focuses only on the military side of a possible WWIII scenario. What's missing are the facts of a third world war: the collapsing world economies, the broken alliances, the failed currencies, the disrupted food delivery systems, the millions of refugees in Europe, the panic in the streets, the police crackdowns, the political chaos at home and abroad. Presidents aren't mentioned; diplomatic efforts aren't mentioned. It's all rather clinical. Ships are blown up, planes are hidden behind interesting displays of chaff, subs sneak around each other, and all the characters speak the same, act the same and are one-hundred percent military (except for the occasional Soviet rapist). In this novel, China doesn't take advantage of the situation to invade Taiwan or Japan and absolutely no one thinks of the nuclear option. The Azerbijani terrorists who started the war (out of a private spat with the Soviets in their region) are never mentioned, nor are any of the other Soviet satellite countries, most of which are Islamic republics and, as it turned out, absolutely hated the Soviets. They aren't given any further role in this novel. Clancy gets all the gizmos and hardware right, with some nice surprises. But I felt Clancy wasted a good opportunity to examine the horrors of war, REAL war, and instead focused on the sexy hardware and what it might do if turned loose on the Soviets. This novel read like a giant game of RISK and seemed oddly bloodless by the end.

Rating:
Summary: good
Review: This was the first book of his I read and it had me hooked to the novel. now i like his novels.