Customer Reviews

Patriot Games (G K Hall Large Print Book Series)

5 star:		(109)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

International terrorism is the topic Clancy tackles in his novel, 'Patriot Games.' When history teacher and sometime CIA anylist Jack Ryan intervenes in an IRA hit on the Prince of Wales, he soon finds himself a political target. When his family is attacked in Baltimore Ryan again goes to work for the CIA in the hopes of stopping the terrorists. While the story is gripping and the action scenes fast-paced and exciting, the first two hundred pages of the book are for the most part slow. If you're a patient reader you should get through it okay. The ending is a climax in the great Clancy tradition and the characters, as always, are people you'd like to know. There is much more in the book than in the movie, but it's essentially the same story. On the whole it's a great first ride for Jack Ryan.

Patriot Games written by Tom Clancy is a Jack Ryan novel. As Clancy's hero Jack Ryan takes us to England, Ireland and the United States in this techno-thiller, with international terrorism and action-packed excitement.

Clancy works his magic with this story and leaves the reader with a sense of dangerous adventure. This book gives the reader a better sense of who Jack Ryan is and Clancy keeps you well engaged throughout the book.

I enjoyed the read, as page after page seemed to melt away to an exciting climax. You will not be disappointed reading this book as a daring assination attempt and violence seem to carry you on to the conclusion. Tom Clancy is a storyteller in this well written book.

Definitely entertaining...

I've been a Clancy fan for years and love this series. However, the Kindle edition has some obvious flaws apparent right from the beginning. The initial quotes in Patriot Games from Edmund Burke and William Webster are simply not in the Kindle edition. Also, I believe the publisher used some form of OCR (optical character recognition) to input this book. Words like 'corners' in the hard-copy edition come across in Kindle as comers. Not a big deal, but jarring nevertheless. While I love the convenience of carrying around the whole series without the need for a backpack, this kind of sloppy, lazy data transfer gives e-books a bad name.

This prequel is a good story about terrorists and is more visceral than most Clancy stories, but it works to his advantage here. The book has a great beginning, then it slows down a bit in the middle, then it kicks back into high gear for an amazing ending. Jack Ryan here is a Professor of History at the Naval Academy on vacation in London when he intervenes in a terrorist attack on the Prince of Wales (who is never given a name, even in Clancy's later works). This book then tells of the revenge act by the IRA that ultimately ends with a mesmerizing end sequence with the ultimate gun fight. This is an excellent page turner, and it will not disappoint

Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

If you're a fan of long, realistic, action filled novels, you'll love Patriot Games, but if you enjoy reading short books filled with pure action and suspense, don't even bother trying to read it, unless you are feeling adventurous. Patriot Games dives into the world of terrorism matched only by Rainbow Six.

It starts with amazing action- a terrorist attack upon the Prince and Princess of England. John Ryan, the hero of Hunt for the Red October and Clear and Present Danger, is caught in the middle. He stops the attack and kills one of the attackers; but unknowingly, he has brought himself into the world of terrorism and the cubicles of the CIA. Clancy describes beautifully, as he always does.

But then comes the part that can cause one to abandon the book: the huge number of pages that separates the action. However, if you have enough stamina and survive the dull parts, you soon get pulled back in as terrorist activity spreads for the first time into the United States. It is one of Clancy's finest, and is a thrill to read.

On vacation in London, Jack Ryan stops a terrorist attack by the Ulster Liberation Army on the Prince and Princess of Wales and their infant son. When the leader of the attack escapes from custody, Ryan and his family become targets. To defend them, Ryan goes to see his old friends at the C.I.A. and tells them he wants back in. The climax of the book is another attack on the terrorists at Ryan's own home where the Prince and Princess are dinner guests. "Patriot Games" is an atypical Tom Clancy novel in that is the Jack Ryan book least reliant on cutting edge technology, dealing more with the consequences of Jack's choices for his family and his career.

In is interesting to read this 1987 book knowing that filming it turned Tom Clancy against selling the movie rights of his books to Hollywood (although apparently the powers that be can have their own way with the Jack Ryan character). The problem, of course, was the final scene. In the film, Harrison Ford's character kills Sean Miller at the end of an exciting fistfight on a speeding boat. In the book, Jack Ryan does not shoot his gun at the fatal moment so that he can tell his newborn son, "Your father isn't a murderer." Clancy's conservative inclinations are well known, but forcing him into a fascist stereotype really misses the point, especially when it tries to make his hero some sort of a reactionary.

"Patriot Games" takes back several years before the events described in "The Hunt for Red October," where the Sir John Ryan backstory is certainly alluded to at a couple of points. I wondered if maybe Clancy had simply written this novel first but could not get it published, yet one of the strengths of his work over the years has been the detailed backgrounds on the various characters (the best examples are probably Red Wegener and Ding Chavez in "Clear and Present Danger," where the complete backgrounds are given although one is a minor character in the novel and the other goes on to be a main supporting character). One of the reason I always liked this book is because of the pure audacity of making members of the Royal Family main supporting characters, especially Prince Charles, who has continued to pop up from time to time.

This is the book where Clancy dropped the annoying subtitles used in his first two novels. In retrospect "Patriot Games" is a much more intimate novel than what is follows. Certainly the threat is much more personal, targeting Ryan and his family. With Clancy's tendency to tell stories where nuclear war is a distinct possibility, this becomes an atypical effort, similar to "Without Remorse," which supplies the complete backstory on John Clark. Another reason for the feeling of intimacy is that Clancy's novels have tended to get longer and longer. Final note: people who have read these book in the "correct chronological order" find "Red October" to be something of a step backwards, so the best advice remains to read them in the order they were written.

This book is Clancy at some of his best. The action starts in the first chapter. In the chapter, CIA anylast Jack Ryan witnesses a shooting while vacationing in London. Jack interveines and kills two of the shooters. One shoots him in the shoulder and escapes. Later Jack learnes he saved the Prince of Wales, his wife, and their new son. He also learns that the attack was done by one of the most dangerous and secretive Irish terrorist organizations, the Ulster Liberation Army or ULA. Soon, Ryan and his family become a target of international terrorism. This book was exciting! A page turner indeed. Besides a few dull filler chapters, every chapter is as exciting as the previous. The smaller sub-plots provide action in every page. A bit long when you first look at it, but it is truly a thriller. Clancy is the king of detial. The man could write a 1,000 page story on a trip to the grocery store and still keep you entertained. Not that I want him to write this though. An all around great book! "Two Thumbs Up!"

Patriot Games takes place years before The Hunt For Red October, and it involves a younger Jack Ryan, in Patriot Games, he is a history teacher at the Naval College in Maryland, but he took some vacation time in London, and he discovers terrorist trying to kill a passing motorcade, and Jack Ryan is right there witnessing it! So he brings into action, killing one of the terrorist, and getting shot himself, but he saved the people inside the car; it turns out it was the Prince of Wales with their newborn son!
Now Jack has made some friends, and some enemies; a right-wing Northern Ireland terrorist organization from the IRA. Now the main bad guy Sean Miller is taken into British custody, and he is tried before a English court with Jack Ryan already into knighthood by the Queen of England, and he testifies against Sean Miller. So Jack heads back home to Maryland and goes back to work as a History Teacher at the Naval War College living his normal life.
Jack has a couple of friends in the CIA business, but he wants to do what he loves to do; teach history. One of them happens to be Admiral James Greener, the main man in the CIA, and Captain Jackson, another friend of Jack's. But what Jack does not know, Sean is planning to get back at Jack by all means necessary, so when he is being transferred to another prison, and he escapes by his fellow right-wing terrorist's, and escapes.
Now Jack finds out what happens, and he goes on with his life, but when Sean Miller comes to America and tries to kill Cathy and his daughter Sally on the freeway, Jack then decides to join the CIA as a analyst, and once he gets in, he is drawn into the world of the CIA. What Jack does not know, he knows that Sean Miller is out there, and he knows where to find Jack, he wants Jack dead because he kille his younger brother at the beginning of the book. Then at a dinner party, Sean Miller and his goons go to Jack's house, and they try to kill everyone, but they fail, and they try to make a run for it, but Jack and them get them, and kill them for what they were trying to do.
The novel starts out boring, but it gets better and better once you reach the end, it is very exciting in the last 100 pages of the novel as the suspense builds up. Great book.

I finished this book in less than 2 1/2 days. Any TV programs I usually watch during the time I was reading this book were recorded and watched later. I wanted to put my full attention in the book and not miss anything.
This will definitely be a book I will re-read - re-re-read, to get the repeat thrill the book put me through while reading it the first time.

This book, while not quite the same as Red Storm Rising, was nonetheless a great book! This is the intro for Clancy's main character, CIA analys/historian/Ex-Marine Jack Ryan. It starts out with a nice, calm walk in the park on a UK vacation, until a terrorist attack on England's Royla Family leaves Ryan a hero for thwarting the attack, his shoulder all banged up, and a target for the Ulster Liberation Army, a spinoff of the IRA. Now he finds that his family is endangered, with the terrorist suddenly operating in the IRA neutral country of America. When the terrorists make an attempt on his wife and kid, he resolves to not let them endanger him or his family again. But when a party with the original victims of the Royal Family is crashed by gun-toting Irishmen, Jack must fight to protect his family, his friends, and himself.