Customer Reviews
Too many words! - By: Embkay, 26 Aug 2008 
Inside this mammoth tome was a great novel waiting to break out. But it never got the chance. You have to reallly be a dedicated thriller reader to plough through the first 500+ pages to get the reward which awaits - & it does await, don't get me wrong, but perhaps Clancey was being paid by the word? Yes, its a great story, but it wasn't worth the effort. I would like to see it cut to about 600-700 words. Some of the details are unneccessary & just plain dreary.
Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock... - By: Dashwood2, 26 Nov 2006 
Terrorists build a nuclear bomb & plan to detonate it at the Superbowl. The president & his National Security Advisor are imbeciles but can Jack Ryan stop the two of them causing nuclear Armageddon? Tom Clancy's novels are good "blokes" stories - this one doesn't disappoint.
fast paced thriller - By: blue giraffe, 16 Mar 2006 
What an awesome book! I started the book as someone who had never read Clanys work, but after this I was hooked! Started out quite slow, building background & character profile, but it reallly accelerates toward the end, until I could't put it down! Clancy is always descriptive, but not distatefullt so when dealing with certain situations in the book. Id recommend this to anyone!
Nuclear Device is Lost & Found, Paranoia, Nearly WWIII - By: Erika Borsos, 18 Feb 2006 Tom Clancy is brilliant & absolutely without equal for developing this complex plot filled with international, political & military action. When I picked this book up, I was glued to to the spot, unable to break from reading it. In this novel, he creates the worst-case scenario of world paranoia, where the two major world powers, the USA & former Soviet Union, play cat & mouse games with military technology & bomb-laden submarines, as the world leaders exchange communications, trying to read between the lines of carefully worded messages, to uncover the truth about a nuclear explosion in Denver, Colorado, the cause of which neither side can readily determine.
This most believable book includes suspense, intrigue, political maneuvering, media manipulation & exploitation, espionage, cutting edge technology, military power & submarine warfare. Arab terrorists combine forces with East German scientists. Disgruntled political activists, an American-Indian & German, get together under the most auspicious of circumstances to destablize the world as we know it. The Arab terrorist group uses an East German scientist to redesign a nuclear bomb which was found by chance buried in a farmer's garden in Syria. All the characters are fleshed out, realistic, completely believable. They have personality traits which make the reader look forward to reading about their responses to circumstances that unfold. It is worth learning how this accidental find played into the hands of a terrorist organization who redesigned the nuclear device for their own purposes. It is worth discovering how the aftermath of this explosion creates havoc between the two super-powers. It is worth reading to see the effect this unexpected terrorist attack in Colorado has upon Washington, DC: the President, CIA Deputy Director Jack Ryan, the National Security Adviser, Liz Elliott, & the FBI. This cataclysmic event could unleash waves of destruction throughout the Middle East & the world, discovering its resolution is worth reading. This roller coaster ride of a novel has so many ups & downs & twists & turns it should not be missed! Erika Borsos (bakonyvilla)
Great thriller, but overlong, and dated. - By: , 25 Feb 2005 
The Sum of alll Fears is set after the Cold War has ended, but shows us that the danger of nuclear war won't go away quite that easily as terrorists attempt to provoke a war between the US & Russia. This continues a lot of the themes in Clear & Present Danger about the abuse of power & corruption. The book is well-written & the story well-told, but it isn't quite as good as Clear & Present Danger. The plot is obviously inspired by Black Sunday, it takes far too long for the main part of the story to kick off (the nuke) at times it comes close to soap opera with Ryan's family problems, but the author must be credited with making it interesting enough to make us actuallly want to see this thing through the end.
What's most surprising about this book, is how much it has dated, even more so than, say, Clear & Present Danger. This was long before 9/11. Basicallly, the book shows that without Soviet backing many terrorist groups would die out, one of the reasons why the villains in this book want to strike - they feel they have sacrificed comrades for nothing. Unfortunately, as we have alll become aware, the Islamic ones never died out. In fact they've expanded. It wasn't Clancy's fault, but the book now seems a little overoptimistic.
Despite flaws, I would say this would rank behind Clear & Present Danger as one of the best of the series.
