Executive Orders (original 1997; udgave 1996)

Executive Orders is a techno-thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on July 1, 1996. It picks up immediately where the final events of Debt of Honor left off, and features now-U.S. President Jack Ryan as he tries to deal with foreign and domestic threats.

This is the book that finished my interest in reading Tom Clancy novels. It's a real shame, too, as I thought Clancy's previous one, Debt of Honor, had an inventive set-up (necessary, as the Cold War ended too soon for the man) and a plot that kept things humming along entertainingly. Yet the end of that novel saw a contrived situation that set up the stage for this one, with Clancy's main protagonist/avatar now President of the United States. This gave Clancy an opportunity to sound off on American politics, a field which he demonstrates far less command than that of the military hardware that were a distinguishing hallmark of his previous novels. Moreover, Ryan is now completely detached from the action, which means large stretches of the novel are consumed with Clancy's attempts to write a political thriller, an area where he demonstrates far less skill than he did as an action novelist. By the end of it, I was through with Clancy, wishing only that I had stopped reading his books at the previous novel so I could have maintained a better opinion of the author than I have now. ( )

Mind-blowing thriller that reads like a horror story because of the plausible scenario. ( )

1358 pages yes 1358 of Tom Clancy and now the nightmare is finally over!!
This book took me a year to read, not because of its length but because it's incredibly boring for loooong stretches, I would set it aside for months at a time.
The beginning was good and the ending (the last 300 pages was gripping) but to get there you have to get through a 1000 pages of of the main character Jack Ryan, now president, whining and complaning about being president and the political process(if there was ever any doubt where Clancy stands, he makes it pretty obvious). Every few pages Ryan complains about the bad day he's had blah blah blah and bums smokes from people(come'on he's the pres somebody buy him a pack already!!)
Clancy threw in everything but the kitchen sink in this book, it's just too much.
This book is a perfect example of what is wrong with book publishing in the past decade. Editors (remember them?) are now afraid to say no to the big brand name authors and let them get away with some horrendus decisions. This book could easily have been cut in half and nothing missed. Or better yet made in 2 books. ( )

Reading this was entirely an exercise in reading something that lies way outside my comfort zone. Why is it outside my comfort zone? Well, it's not aimed at me for a start; I'm a woman, and I'm not American. I knew what I was taking on; it's a thriller, by a mega-bestselling author who specialises in a particular kind of macho, flag-waving, Budweiser-swilling, big-dick, patriotic, all-action Americana. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, if the writing's good and knowing that I had every opportunity to avoid reading it in full knowledge of what it was. And besides I don't always conform to type. I love the spy thrillers of John le Carré and while your standard Action Movie leaves me cold (Bond films in particular because actually I'm quite fond of Fleming's original Bond books) I do have a big soft spot for The Dirty Dozen for reasons I've never fully understood. So, I was determined to see this one through.

Anyway, the premise of this 900-page doorstop is something like this. CIA spook and alleged family guy Jack Ryan becomes President by accident after a Japanese airline pilot flies a 747 into a packed Capitol (yes, really!) wiping out both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and a goodly part of the Washington establishment. Yes, it's a Tea Party wet dream! Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, the demented leader of Iran takes advantage of the situation to take over Iraq and launch an invasion of Saudi Arabia with the wildly improbable cooperation of both India and China. And to complicate things, also attempts to kidnap the president's younger daughter and start an epidemic of haemorrhagic fever amongst America's car salesmen (you feel like shouting "Yay!" at that point)

Ok, it's fantasy stuff (Le Carré always has the ring of authenticity, not least because he was a real spook while Clancy was an insurance salesman) and that's fine if it's well-written. The big problem is that it's appallingly badly written. To be fair, Clancy knows his stuff about military hardware and he's obviously done his homework about life in the White House; in fact those are the most interesting bits although still a poor substitute for The West Wing. The rest is just dismal. Violence? I wish there was some. For great stretches nothing happens at all except digressions on Clancyan hobby-horses like why the US tax system needs reform. There's no humanity; we keep being told how much President Ryan loves his family but we never see any evidence; he never takes time to read his youngest a story, or play with his son, or have conflicts with his teenage daughter. In fact by the end of the 900 pages we know hardly any more about the children than we did at the beginning. There's the endless pauses while the author stops to explain some trivial point to his braindead readership (hey, naval parlance still talks about a ship 'steaming' even though a modern ship's engines don't do it that way, isn't that amazing, tell Ripley's Believe It Or Not at once!) Foreigners, of course, are meekly compliant and admiring (Russians, would you believe?) or sinister, devious, comic-book villians (Gadzooks! My master plan has been foiled again by those pesky Americans!).

Worst of all, though, is the sickly sentimentality of it all. The triumph of Mom's Apple Pie, beer and franks at the Ball Game and the Grand ol' Opry, with the mean streets of South Central LA and West Baltimore kept well out of the way in the Free Speech Zone. Hell, they love their President so much there's not a whisper of a protest even when the unelected President Ryan overrides the constitution to impose a ban on crossing state lines. I can think of one president who'd be glad of a tiny fraction of the cooperation from his truculent nation. And no, I'm not being unpatriotic: the US is a foreign country to me, I'm an alien there (I've been told as much in no uncertain terms) and owe no allegiange to Old Glory.

Ok, it was an experiment, and I'm glad I read it. But I don't think I'll be going back that way any time soon.
( )