Customer Reviews

The Archimedes Effect (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (Tom Clancy's Net Force)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

After reading my first Net Force book, I immediately fell in love with the characters - the nerdy Jay Gridley, the courageous Alex Michaels, the sexy Joanna Winthrop and the amazing Toni Fiorella.

These characters were my friends, and I could really relate to some of their situations.

And then Clancy and Perry decided to change characters. Understandably, the Michaels' had live their lives out. Tom Thorn, Marissa and Abe Kent seemed very cool - but they had no depth.

In this book, Thorn has resigned from Net Force after what? two appearances?!?

So what's going to go on next? Is Clancy ending the Net Force series? Who's going to take over next? Where is Gridley going to go? Honestly... what was the point of this novel? To make everyone get married, say they're going to live happily ever after and not really do anything to the Net Force saga itself?

I miss Alex and Toni Michaels!

Please don't read this book if it's your first Net Force book. Read the first one. You'll enjoy it, you really will. If you're a diehard Net Force fan like I am, purchase it and read through it. Add it to your collection... but please don't expect very much. It shall leave you disappointed. In fact, the publishers have made an offer that if you didn't like it, you can send it back and get a refund. That's definitely a possibility.

Looking for a quick read? You've got it.
Looking for the depth of the original Net Force novels? Go read Net Force 6: Cybernation again.

This book is simply so awful, that I don't know where to begin. I recently wasted a few hours of my life (stuck in an airport) reading it, and boy was I angry! I was much better off sleeping. This book is a marvel of bad writing and banality.

First of all, it isn't interesting. From the very beginning it describes in detail what the "bad guys" are doing and who they are. Then you get to wait as the protagonists stumble around trying to find out what you already know. Annoying. The premise of the book itself isn't engaging and is completely unrealistic, not to mention full of plot holes, so it is all very very boring.

Perhaps I would care more about the characters, if they weren't so one-dimensional. There is nothing beyond a name, function and a description of a couple of banal qualities or hobbies. Some ridiculous combinations are attempted probably to make it look more realistic, but all it does is make it look even stupider. Here is an example - one of the protagonists is a very successful native american who got rich from running a software company (but of course!), who is going to marry a black girl (also very successful, working for the CIA or something), and he likes fencing. Another protagonist is a military who came into possession of an expensive guitar (by killing the spy who owned it) and sentimentally decided to learn to play it, and of course fell in love with the female music teacher and married her (of course!). I am not going to spoil it by describing the antagonist, but suffice to say it lives up to the rest of the book. Weep, Dostoyevsky, weep!

Many events in the book happen in "Virtual Reality" - people are wearing electronic goggles and full body suits creating artifical environment with 3D video, sound, touch and even smell. Not a bad concept, if it wasn't abused so terribly. First of all, the author keeps insisting that doing basic office activities in Virtual Reality is easier or more convenient. Let me explain - in Virtual Reality doing an internet search, for example, means actually, physically, searching, with hands and feet across rooms, sometimes even killing "virtual bad guys". In the book an internet search is very similar to a session of Doom or Quake. Realizing the monumental stupidity of this idea takes some time. Let me clarify - the results of the search are obviuously already available in the software, but they are artifically obscured in a game-like virtual environment so that the user may lose a couple of hours "looking for them".

Virtual Reality is abused in other ways too - whole chapters of the book are filled with pointless adventures in Virtual Reality. The protagonist is doing an Internet search for something and we get to follow his progress in a mini game, created purely for his amusement (he chooses the plot himself). Why should we care about any of that ? I could write a book describing a session of playing a game, but why would anybody want to read that ?

I mentioned that the premise of the book is not engaging, but I should go further than that. It is also idiotic. I hesitate to spoil the fun by describing it here, but believe me it makes no sense whatsoever. It is as if the author(s) couldn't figure why the bad guys would be doing whatever they were doing, so in the end they just picked something at random. Later in the book the plot breaks, but who cares at that point.

I don't know if other Tom Clancy books are like this one. I hope not.

Spell check would have helped with the flow... aside from even just that trivial stuff the whole book is just one constant stream of 'yeah, thought that was gonna happen' or 'where did they come up with that? That makes no sense'. The constantly changing point of view and story telling means absolutly nothing even at the end of the book. Joe Blow A goes to visit the future in-laws... great...where does this fit in with the story? Oh yeah, it doesn't at all. You killed 3 trees to waste 6 pages and 2 minutes of my time... and that's only one of many instances of things like that. Notice that people are selling this thing used for $0.72... that should be a good clue for you...

I ordered the book on a tuesday and it was at my doorstep on thursday!!!!!! I couldn't believe how fast it was!!!!!!

Not much to say about this book. Jay Gridley is front and center, but everyone else seems to be just thrown in as filler for a mundane plot. Definitely not the strongest of the series and probably is the weakest. This book isn't bad, it just isn't good.

This book is a knock off a formula writing based on the adventures of who cares. Partly dime store romance and partly computer geek without the computer knowledge.
There is a very week plot with hints of romance and sexual suggestion to attempt to get the reader interested.

By far one of the worst of the recent Clancey production line novel writing approach.
Save your money and buy a comic book instead. It will appeal to the same reader.

If I could have rated it -1 star I would have done so.

To sum it up. This book sucks.

The only pleasure I got from this was watching it catch fire and burn in my fireplace. What a crock of crap.

I like the new character development; plots are the same, but great summer reading fare

I surely hope this is a sign that the good writings are back. This book was great not to much dronning on and on about sword fighting. Easy to follow and a true joy to read, it was hard to put down.

I would have enjoyed the book more if all measurements were in inches, feet and pounds. That is the whole idea of reading a book is to get more details and the feeling and a picture of what is going on. The book uses different units of measurements and I can only think in U.S.A. measurements.