Clear and Present Danger
“The world wasn’t exactly overrun with justice, but there was some to be found.”
2.5/5 ⭐
This book professes to be an action-packed page turner, but it was bogged down in too much military jargon and boring conversations for the pages to turn at any considerable speed.
My copy came in at nearly 700 pages, which is a lot for a run-of-the-mill action story to start with, but even worse since at least 300 pages of it could have easily been cut. This book had the potential to rank as high as a 4/5 if it those 300 pages of fluff were trimmed.
The number one offender was the endless military jargon. Take this sentence:
“They were armed with West German MG3 squad machine guns, which the Columbian Army had just adopted because it used the same 7.63mm round as their standard infantry weapon, the G3, also of German manufacture.”
May I suggest an edit: “They were holding machine guns.”
If minute detail about military structure is appealing, then this book is for you; if not, get ready to skim.
On the positive side, this book has a dozen different storylines set up, all building to the final climactic 100 pages of blockbuster action. Clancy does a great job of making everything tie together, with a few good twists and a great final, intense mission. There are even some interesting moral questions about the War on Drugs (is it effective, who’s to blame, what should be done about it, etc.) that gave a bit of depth to the story.
Again, without the fluff, this could have been a really enjoyable read.
Lastly, and not necessarily a bad thing, but if you are expecting Jack Ryan to be the main character, you will be disappointed. He is barely in it, and when he is, he is far from the most important or interesting. I have no idea how they made this into a movie with Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) as the main character.
Some underline-worthy quotes:
“The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.”
“One’s perspective gradually changed one’s views.”
“People tended to hear only that which they wished to hear, and to ignore the unpleasant parts.”
