So I'm a Clancy fan. When i was younger, his novels totally captured my imagination. books like 'The Hunt for Red October(HFRO)' and 'The Cardinal of Kremlin' were (and still are) among my favorites. Intriguing and complex, with a realistic feel and great attention to details (esp. military hardware), the early Clancy books were very entertaining.

Alas, how things have changed. Ever since 'Without Remorse', Clancy's books have been going down hill. Its like he did all his research during the early 80s and lost touch with the world ever since. While HFRO was based on a real incident [1], his other books are pure fictions. By his 20th book, the 'the bear and the dragon', Clancy has totally lost my interest. The sterotypical description of the chinese there felt like prapaganda materials left over from the 60s. The obvious lack of research and knowledge there made me wonder just how 'realistic' his older stuff were.

One of the biggest problem the new Clancy novel has is the plots are always really thin, while the books themselves are really, really thick. So it takes about 80% of the book to get the story rolling (we are talking about 300 to 500 totally skipable pages here), and the ending climax is over in less than 30 pages.

So last month I was in LAX waiting for a flight, and got really bored. Ended up picking up Clancy's new book 'Theeth of the Tiger' to kill some time, and boy what a mistake that was... This book is by far the worst Clancy novel I've read. The plot seems to be inspired by the 2001 movie 'Swordfish', but again, with typical bad characterization and thin plot, it was just not worth the time to read.

Sigh,  Washington Post called it a "bloated, boring, silly novel". If only I had read the reviews before I bought the book...

[1] On November 8, 1975, the Soviet Krivak class missile frigate Storozhedoy [ "Guardian" ] attempted to defect from Latvia to the Swedish island of Gotland. The mutiny was led by the ship's political officer Valeri Sablin; The mutiny was unsuccessful, the ship was stopped, Captain Sablin was captured, arrested, court martialed [which began July 13, 1976 ], and executed by Soviet military authorities.