Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNeither Clancy's nor Audible's best
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2017
This is a weaker Clancy book and quite dated. It reflects the early 1990s fear of economic dominance by Japan and the plot is among Clancy's least probable, although it does serve as a useful cautionary tale on the role of the military in projecting US power in peacetime. It was slow to build but once the action started, it was pure Clancy.
This is the second time I've "read" it, this time as an audio book using the Kindle version with Amazon's Whispersync technology (Whispersync is great, I highly recommend it). I had a difficult time with the voice artist. He was fine with dialogue but his narration (the closest thing I can think to call it is recitative) was so wooden that at first, I thought it was an electronic voice transcription. The difference between his narration and dialogue was so great that I wondered if the producers had used two voice artists. While he was good with voices and accents, at times his Indian and Japanese characterizations veered uncomfortably close to racial stereotypes.
The audio production was also weak. Clancy constantly shifts among various locales and in this version, locales and chapters run together with no break or audio cue to let you know when you are shifting to a new scene. That made for a disconcerting and sometimes confusing listening experience.
