Why I Chose to Quit Reading "Patriot Games"

 

Trailer for Patriot Games

     Every school year, I always fall into this pattern of reading one book series for the entire year. 6th grade was Harry Potter, 7th was Alex Rider and 8th was the Divergent series. This year, I decided to read a more mature book series, the Jack Ryan books, by Tom Clancy. I was inspired to read them after watching "The Hunt for Red October" at 1:30am the morning I went to Hawaii. So, for my first book of the year, I read the book version of the movie. Then, to continue the books, I read the next one, Patriot Games, but this book may have turned me off to the whole series.

     In this book, Jack Ryan, the series protagonist, saves the Duke and Duchess of Wales from an attack by a ultra-radical, Irish paramilitary group. Then, this group tries to get back at Ryan by trying to kill his wife, daughter and unborn child in a car crash. But as interesting as it may seem, the majority of the book is just guys standing around, talking to each other. Nowhere near the scale of the previous book, where the worst possible outcome would be a nuclear holocaust and not a bunch of people getting killed. There were also rouge Soviet naval commanders and nuclear subs and everyone denying everything. Now it's just alot of talk that keeps the plot moving, and seems kind of lazy to me. There just wasn't enough action, which from the movies I've seen, actually makes the movie version of Patriot Games.

The Best and Worst Parts of Patriot Games

Poster for the film version of Patriot Games

     Patriot Games by Tom Clancy and in comparison to my first post on this book, the action is still quite slow. Still, the best parts of the book are the action sequences, meticulously detailed by Clancy to give the readers a picture in their mind of what's going on. For example, in the beginning of the book, there was an assassination attempt on members of the British Royal Family in London, complete with a car bomb and AK-47 flailing Irish nationalists firing into the Rolls-Royce. This is how the story starts, with our protagonist Jack Ryan knocking out one of the terrorists and killing another, for which he gets knighthood. A little later in the book, the captured Irish national, Sean Miller, is being taken to a prison on the Isle of Wright via an armored truck. But at a stop at a bridge, members of the Ulster Liberation Army (ULA), an ultra-violent, Maoist paramilitary group Miller is a member of, use bazookas to blast the doors of the van open and free Miller. The following quote describes what was going through the mind of Sergent Highland, a cop in the van with miller during the escort and shows perfectly the way Clancy describes people's minds.
I am now on page 215 of
      "Highland wanted to say something , but knew nothing would really matter. he wouldn't even entertain them with a curse - and it came to him that he understood Miller a little better now. the realization shocked him out of his fear. Now he knew why Miller hadn't spoken to him. What d**mded fool things go through your head at a time like this, he thought. (Clancy 169) This type of narration is also one of the best parts because it gives you what the character is like, how they act, think and live.

Patriot Games Review (up to page 130)

 

Patriot Games is the second book in the Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy. In the book, Ryan, on vacation in London, stops the attempted assassination of the Duke and Duchess of Wales and their son (Their counterparts being Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Prince William, respectively). He even manages to capture the leader of the attempt, Sean Miller, who works for the ULA, part of an Irish militant group, but I'll get back to that. After being shot himself, and recuperating, he becomes a witness during Miller's trial. After the trial, he flys back to Washington DC, on the Concorde.

The story is set on the back drop of The Troubles, for about 30 years between the late 60's and 90's, tue British military fought against militant groups in Northern Ireland, who were fighting for seperation from British rule. Groups like the Irish Republican Army (IRA), would some times act like terrorists, blowing up buildings and cars. The fictional ULA, is an extremely violent, Communist off-shoot of the IRA.

     To be honest, I really am not liking this book. I find that it's moving slowly and there isn't as much tension as The Hunt For Red October had. But my dad says that the ending is awesome, so I guess I'll read on.