Red Storm Rising | Tom Clancy | Chilling Look at Terrorism, Its Aftermath: Our Future WWIII

Red Storm Rising | Tom Clancy | a chilling war [no spoilers]

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Red Storm Rising

	Red Storm Rising Tom Clancy Berkley, 1987 - 736 pages average customer review:based on 286 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Chilling Look at Terrorism, Its Aftermath: Our Future WWIII

This is the second book written by Tom Clancy which establishes him as a powerful storyteller, a global tactician of power politics and of military technology. Did he have a crystal ball with which to read the future? It seems he zoned in on the possible effects of Muslim terrorism *way* before the "real world" woke up to the truth ...

An Ajzerbaijani Muslim student received special treatment at the Moscow University for his loyalty due to his good standing in the Communist Party. After 15 years in the Party, he attained the respect of his comrades, a good salary, an automobile and an above average position in his chosen field of study ... but beneath the suface ... he was seathing with anger ... plotting revenge on the very people who provided him the opportunities for success. He blew up the largest oil producing field in the Soviet Union ... crippling the Soviet economy. The Politburo met to deal with the consequences - the possible collapse of the Soviet Union. US satellite intelligence picked up the seismic event and discovered the oil field was destroyed. Another noteworthy discovery was: a shortage of car and truck batteries. At the same time, the Soviets were engaging in Peace Talks in Vienna, Austria. The Foreign Minister gave a press conference where he spoke of "deeds not words" as he described the Soviet's committment to reduce and destroy nuclear weapons. This included a deadline of three years and site verification. Plus the Soviets
proposed all signatories, USA, France, China, and the UK join in the negotiations. The "maskirovka 1" by the KGB had begun (masquerade 1). Another suspicious intelligence discovery made by the USA was four colonels in the Soviet Army were executed for falsifying "readiness" reports. Not long afterwards, an unusual bombing incident occcured in the Kremlin, exactly before the Politburo was to meet. Innocent children died ... the incident was attributed to terrorists, in an odd twist of fate a CNN cameraman caught the explosion on film, right when it happened. Also, US intelligence gathered information showing the Soviet submarines were maneuvering ... allegedly practicing tactics. The combined findings of these intelligence reports could lead to no other conclusion but the invevitable: the Soviet Union was planning World War III. The reasons were self-evident ... they faced economic disaster by losing their fundamental source of energy, their largest oil field.

In this novel, Clancy keeps the reader spell-bound, hanging on every word, wanting to know what happens next. There are three major battlefields: on land in Germany, in submarines under the ocean near Norway, and in the air in Iceland, which becomes the homebase of the Soviet Airforce. It is an exciting experience reading about the events and outcomes of the different battlefields in a fictional World War III. The scenarios are highly probable. The characters are realistic and very human. Most intriguing is the weatherman, a survivor of the battle for the US airfield in Keflavik, who becomes a guerrila soldier in the mountains of the region, providing very significant information via a radio on untraceable frequencies to intelligence operatives based in Scotlan. This is the quintessential "best" of Tom Clancy's novels. It is a most highly recommended contemporary novel. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

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a chilling war [no spoilers]

Due to political reasons, the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic decides to initiate a bold offensive against NATO in the intense book titled "Red Storm Rising". A realistic scenario during the Cold War period unfolds with authentic technology and exceptional writing.

Throughout the novel, the reader follows key politicians while the military point of views include all aspects of the armed forces, from naval and air force crew to the foot soldiers. While the air and land combat scenes are powerful, the submarine warfare is the most detailed, reminiscent of Clancy's prior novel, "The Hunt for Red October".

Having a non-military background, it might be difficult to follow some military jargon and acronyms and a glossary for those unfamiliar with the terms would have been excellent. The ending of the book doesn't finish the war well, similar to a movie when the ramifications of crimes against humanity and how characters deal with the success and loss of battles are neglected for the sake of a clean and speedy conclusion.

Overall "Red Storm Rising" is an excellent Tom Clancy novel for any fan of the Cold War genre.

Thank you.

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World War III minus the Nukes...

This Cold War thriller gets off to a slow start, but it's entirely worth the wait. The action heats up about 100 pages in, and never lets up after that. Middle Eastern terrorists sabotage the USSR's most productive oil fields, leaving the paranoid Soviet Politburo without the fuel needed to run their military and industry. In a few months, when their stockpiles of oil begin to run low, they will become vulnerable to attack. They decide to attack first, while they still have the fuel reserves to seize the upper hand. The Soviet military hits NATO head-on, and the result is a slugfest in the air, on the ground, and at sea. If you like military action, this book has got it in spades.
Red Storm Rising has gathered a lot of criticism from Armchair Generals, but I spent a decade and a half studying for, planning for, and training for war with the Soviet Navy, and I think Clancy did a better job with the subject than anyone else. In hindsight, his descriptions of stealth aircraft were a little off the mark, but he made a lot of pretty shrewd guesses about a branch of technology that was still completely under wraps when he wrote the book. Slow start and minor errors aside, Red Storm is a page-turner.

Jeff Edwards, Author of "Torpedo: A Surface Warfare Thriller"

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Red Storm Rising

This book while lengthy is very well organized in the multiple plot lines. There is humor and suspense at every turn. The novel is based on the US Dept. of Defense analysis of the invasion of the Western part of Europe by the Soviet Union. This was a real assessment that was turned into a book. "Red Storm Rising" is Clancy's finest non-Ryan work. This book really doesn't fit with any other of his books so there is no need to worry the order to read this book. Some may not like the length; it is not quick read, but it will keep you interested throughout. I had a hard time putting it down even when I was dead tired and my eyes hurt. This work is fabulous and very realistic for the time period (early to mid 1980's).

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Clancy in his prime

I'm just now wrapping up reading this book for the third time, and it's almost bittersweet to realize how good Clancy was, and how far he's fallen since his best source material, the Cold War, has ended.

I'll echo the comments about it being slow to start. You know the book is about a Soviet/NATO war, so getting through the reasons and build-up can be a bit tedious. Then the book is so long that I almost wished it would start wrapping up at the 2/3 mark. But the story itself is very compelling. In true Clancy fashion, you follow the paths of several characters which sometimes cross or affect each other in powerful or subtle ways.

Since it was written in 1986, it could have been easy for Clancy to portray all the Russians as evil and/or stupid, but with the exception of the leaders who plunge Europe into war, most of the Russian characters are given sympathetic personalities and are just as intellegent and human as their NATO counterparts. A balanced viewpoint that Clancy has seemingly forgotten how to write lately.

The book does suffer a bit from being written nearly 20 years ago. It depends significantly on describing the "gee wiz" technology being used, much of which is now antique in the high-tech world. So I would occasionally chuckle at some of the descriptions that were meant to be awe-inspiring (like the fact that a sub was transmitting data at half the speed of a 56k modem!!!). I also thought it suffered from the strange problem that, while it has a rather large (and sometimes confusingly so) cast (4 primary Americans, 1 Russian, and probably 2 dozen minor characters), the conflict sometimes seemed more about the equipment rather than the people. Perhaps this was due to the fact that, besides the small party in Iceland, the land war is told from either the perspective of the tanks/APC's or command posts. There's very little written about the tens if not hundreds of thousands of infantry engaged in the war.

Still, this is an exceptional book, and an example of Clancy at his sharpest. If only he could still write about characters who are believable instead of the squeaky clean heros that whine nonstop and pure evil villans that do nothing but plot America's downfall.

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