Friday 18 September 2015

Patriot Games (Jack Ryan, #1) by Tom Clancy

The plot was good and the action scenes were engaging, but the writing was a bit weird. Clancy added too much description of details that were completely unnecessary to the narrative of the story. For example he would write something like "Jack retrieved the steaks, which he'd picked up from the butcher on his way home from work before marinating them in his own special steak sauce, from the fridge and placed them on the barbeque, where they started sizzling immediately." I don't think Clancy should have spent so much time and energy describing mostly irrelevant information like this in such detail. As I said before the action scenes were engaging, but the long, slightly boring and overly wordy breaks in between the action scenes left me feeling bored and wanting to skim the pages to find the action and parts of the plot relevant to the story. I would recommend the first few chapters while they are in London and then the final few chapters while they are on the final chase for the terrorists - they were the most interesting parts. Most of the story in the middle could be condensed into one or two chapters quite easily without losing anything of the plot. Might try one of Clancy's later books to see if his style of writing has changed in the 25 years or so since he wrote Patriot Games.
 
 
 
 

 

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