Customer Reviews

The Cardinal Of the Kremlin

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A story that is well written and uses realistic characters. Tom Clancy has done his research and has composed it in a highly digestible and enjoyable format. Great fiction and lots of suspense. One of the better fictional military story writers. Lots of intelligence and military details. Clancy has polished the techno-thriller genre and taken it to a new higher standard. I've read all of the Jack Ryan-related stories: Hunt for Red October, Cardinal of the Kremlin, Rainbow Six, Clear and Present Danger, Red Storm Rising. They are all great.

Nail-biting action, excellent characterizations, brilliant use of multiple plots.

However, keep pencil in hand: You'll need to record characters and their positions. For Clancy uses first name, last name, nicknames, patrynomics. He also has multiple characters with the same or simiar names -- DC staffers named Mary Pat and one simply Pat, and many Johns. You'll want to list committee names of groups or battles, as acronyms are used thereafter. Focus, as many new scenes start with action, only later naming the patricipant. And minor characters reappear -- Prince Charles, a Saudi prince, Russian political people.

Clancy's Jack-Ryans must be read in chronological order, as each novel refers to past action, and characters appear in subsequent stories.

(P.S. My friends are laughing at me: some books reach eight-hundred pages and are unwieldy to hold. So I cut them in half for ease in reading. Anybody want a couple of two-part Clancys, comelete, including cover and dust-jacket?)