Dead or Alive- new Clancy book
By
Alpha-One,
Posted on: 2011-01-18 08:22 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
The ghostwriters are slipping. 
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
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Next book title: Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball: A Tom Clancy Novel.
Would be about as well written and far more entertaining.
I was surprised to see this book on store shelves. I thought TC had retired the Ryan-verse after Teeth of the Tiger. But if he got a ghost-writer to take over the series, no thanks, I think I'm done.
I saw this book at the bookstore today.
It's Huge. Then I opened it and saw how big the type was. If someone was holding the book open across the street I could still read it.
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Yeah, I've been noticing that with a lot of published books recently. Publishers have been progressively using larger and larger typeface. What's up with that?
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Originally Posted by warden_de_dios
I saw this book at the bookstore today.
It's Huge. Then I opened it and saw how big the type was. If someone was holding the book open across the street I could still read it. |
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Overcompensating for those with bad eyesight?
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Originally Posted by Scythus
Yeah, I've been noticing that with a lot of published books recently. Publishers have been progressively using larger and larger typeface. What's up with that?
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What? Do they think everyone has bad eyesight now? I'd say a lot of the typeface they use now is larger than a Dr. Seuss book. It's just... HUUUUGE these days.
Clancy himself (I presume, hard to say when the ghostwriters took over) ignored his own world's history fairly soon. I think it might've been the second book after Ryan became President where I was reading it thinking, "How could this possibly *be* if Congress was wiped out?" We've seen what's happened in real life when lesser attacks against America occur, even imaginary ones (the explosion of the Maine). Wiping out Congress and then a city would've started WWIII, no questions asked.
All of that to say I stopped reading Clancy years ago.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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His world was reasonably internally consistent. Congress was wiped out in Debt of Honor, and the elections to replace them were held in Executive Orders. |
Originally Posted by Ironik
Clancy himself (I presume, hard to say when the ghostwriters took over) ignored his own world's history fairly soon. I think it might've been the second book after Ryan became President where I was reading it thinking, "How could this possibly *be* if Congress was wiped out?" We've seen what's happened in real life when lesser attacks against America occur, even imaginary ones (the explosion of the Maine). Wiping out Congress and then a city would've started WWIII, no questions asked.
All of that to say I stopped reading Clancy years ago. |
In Sum of All Fears Denver never actually got nuked, only sort of. The bomb didn't work quite right and the yield was low.
Yes, you can complain that his interpretation of reactions isn't realistic, but his world was consistent and followed the history he created. I've read every Clancy book and until this one there had not been such an issue.
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Heck up to this point the Ryan-verse was more consistent than Star Wars and Star Trek. But as a friend of mine said after Bear and the Dragon: "One day Jack Ryan won't be president anymore, and he's got nowhere else to go but down. It's not like he can become a god!"
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Originally Posted by docbuzzard
His world was reasonably internally consistent. Congress was wiped out in Debt of Honor, and the elections to replace them were held in Executive Orders.
In Sum of All Fears Denver never actually got nuked, only sort of. The bomb didn't work quite right and the yield was low. Yes, you can complain that his interpretation of reactions isn't realistic, but his world was consistent and followed the history he created. I've read every Clancy book and until this one there had not been such an issue. |
I'm wondering if anyone out there has finished this already. I've been plodding along through it (couple hundred pages in out of 900 or so). I have to say, the fact that Clancy is even on the cover seems to be a stretch. It seems readily apparent that the other named author did most of the writing.
Even the limited portion I've read has glaring inconsistencies with the 'Clancyverse'. Clancy's reality diverged from ours a goodly time ago. You can't very well smash the Capitol Building wiping out Congress and SCOTUS without it leaving a mark (not to mention nuking Denver in an earlier book). Jack Ryan being president for a couple terms with some crazy international incidents cannot be glossed over, and just referencing real world events instead as if his history never happened(except Ryan still was president, and the other characters are all still there). However the current book appears to be trying that. I suppose they might imagine it would make it easier on new readers, but as a long time Clancy reader I find it extremely jarring.
Heck, the new author can't even get the Rainbow anti-terrorism squad stuff right. He refers to the team as Rainbow Six, when that's just Clark's designation as the leader. He even gets their equipment wrong. I imagine I'll get on through the book eventually (I did buy it hardcover-foolishly it seems), but it really isn't a classic Clancy page turner.
Too many alts to list.