.com The bestselling author of Red Storm Rising and The Sum of All Fears brings Jack Ryan back in his to fight his deadliest battle yet. From England to Ireland to America, an explosive wave of violence sweeps a CIA analyst and his family into the deadliest game of our time: international terrorism. An ultra-left-wing faction fo the IRA has targeted the CIA man for his act of salvation in an assasination attempt. And now he must pay ... with his life.From Publishers WeeklyIntroduced in The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan, the naval historian who freelances for the CIA, returns in this novel, in which Clancy demonstrates once again that he is a master of a genre he seems to have createdthe technico-military thriller. On a visit with his wife and daughter in London, Ryan stumbles onto an attempt by a new Irish revolutionary group to kidnap the Prince and Princess of Wales and their eldest son. Using his Marine Corps training, Ryan saves the royals (which leads to several visits between the Ryans and the residents of Buckingham Palace), but Ryan becomes the target of the surviving terrorists. Many familiar elements of the Clancy style are evident here: a fascination with machines and systems and procedures; thin characters; idealization of the soldier's life ("the discipline and the essential toughness that makes them different"); sarcastic humor; and a discordant sentimentality about family life. There are also some unintended ironies, particularly Clancy's praise of the CIA and the Marines, considering recent news from Washington and Moscow. Nonetheless, Clancy spins a marvelously tense yarn that will appeal to his legion of fans. First serial rights to Penthouse; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Military Book Club, Reader's Digest Condensed Books selections. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.From School Library JournalYA Jack Ryan is back with a vengeanceliterally. The hero of Hunt for Red October (Naval Institute Pr., 1984) stars here in a prequel to Clancy's first novel, with page-turning results. Years before Hunt. . ., Ryan, vacationing with his family in England, thwarts an assassination attempt on the Prince of Wales, his wife, and child. The terrorists responsible do not take such interference with their plans lightly, and Ryan and his family are in great danger from their new enemies. All of Ryan's considerable talents and courage are put to the ultimate test of saving those he loves from terrorist vengeance. There is greater emphasis in this novel on plot and characterization, less on military tactics and hardware, so that Clancy has fashioned a more old-fashionedand first-classthriller than in his first two novels. Patriot Games establishes that Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising (Putnam, 1986) were no mere trendy flukes, and that Clancy is an action writer of considerable talent. Karl Penny, Houston Public LibraryCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. where can i read textbooks online for free Patriot Games (A Jack Ryan Novel)
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful. The start of the Jack Ryan sagaBy SuncoastIt's interesting to revisit a key bestseller that you first read over 30 years ago. This is the first in the Tom Clancy's long-running series about Jack Ryan, which has even been continued after Clancy's recent death via the pen of Mark Greaney.Jack Ryan is visiting London on vacation with his eye surgeon wife Catherine and 4-year-old daughter Sally when they find themselves close to a terrorist attack by the Ulster Liberation Army on a Rolls Royce driving through St James Park. After the terrorists have blown up the front of the car with a grenade they start moving in firing machine guns, intent on capturing the people in the back of the car. In seconds, Ryan tackles one of the attackers and kills another but is seriously injured. He didn't realise until later that the occupants of the car are the Prince and Princess of Wales and their infant son.This fantasy opening makes Ryan and his family close friends to the Royal Family and the Queen gives him an honorary Knighthood for his bravery. While the captured Irish terrorist Sean Miller is given life imprisonment, with the help of the ULA he escapes when being moved to a high-security prison. Miller vows that he will eliminate Ryan and capture the Prince.The rest of the book details Ryan's determination to find Miller and defeat the ULA and to do this he reluctantly accepts an invitation to work at the CIA. Miller pops up again in the US, targeting Catherine and Jack. Later on, he continues his vendetta against Ryan and the Prince with a stunning bloody gunfight at the end.I enjoyed going back to the start of the Jack Ryan saga and to read Clancy when he was at the top of his form. Some aspects of the book are dated (for example, terrorism was considered to always have political motives) and technology is fairly primitive. My main reservation is that Clancy's writing style is pretty ponderous and detailed. In those days, we expected blockbuster novels to be 800 pages but now we would expect this kind of story to be a compelling 400-500 page-turner.My other reservation is Clancy's inclusion of real people in the plot in fictitious situations, especially the Royal Family. He also has poor understanding of Royal protocols - calling the Duke of Edinburgh "My Lord" and the Prince "Your Highness".Many of you will have seen the movie of the book starring Harrison Ford and Anne Archer. I suggest that you read the book because the finale when Ryan finally catches up with Miller is very different and shows Clancy's forethought in making Ryan the kind of character he becomes in later books.As pointed out by several reviewers the conversion to an e-book has not been done well with no breaks between different sections of the action making some parts difficult to follow.19 of 21 people found the following review helpful. Bad eBook formatting ruined a good story.By Rod MAll of the Tom Clancy novels I've read have been thoroughly enjoyable. The reason I've reviewed this with such a poor score is due to the eBook formatting. Books typically leave white space between scene changes. This eBook ran everything together which was very disconcerting and distracting. A character at one location would be talking and then in the next sentence a different character from another scene would be talking to a different group of people with only a paragraph indentation for separation.77 of 79 people found the following review helpful. Great book - not so great Kindle editionBy Tony PruittI've been a Clancy fan for years and love this series. However, the Kindle edition has some obvious flaws apparent right from the beginning. The initial quotes in Patriot Games from Edmund Burke and William Webster are simply not in the Kindle edition. Also, I believe the publisher used some form of OCR (optical character recognition) to input this book. Words like 'corners' in the hard-copy edition come across in Kindle as comers. Not a big deal, but jarring nevertheless. While I love the convenience of carrying around the whole series without the need for a backpack, this kind of sloppy, lazy data transfer gives e-books a bad name.