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Is "Inferno" good-bad like "The DaVinci Code" or bad-bad like "The Lost Symbol"?
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Jun 1, 2013 00:44
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I thought bad-bad.
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Jun 1, 2013 06:19
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Haven't read it yet but I can only imagine Tom Hanks sitting there at his breakfast table, reading it and holding his head going "FFFFFUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKK I can't believe I'm gonna have to say this poo poo..." Didn't the other book (can't remember the title and it's been years since I read it) get completely swapped around in the movie, from RELIGION INTRIGUE to "gently caress it, let's make an anti matter bomb and blow up the pope"?
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Jun 1, 2013 06:44
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Didn't the other book (can't remember the title and it's been years since I read it) get completely swapped around in the movie, from RELIGION INTRIGUE to "gently caress it, let's make an anti matter bomb and blow up the pope"? Eh, the antimatter popebomb blot was in the book too. I thought they actually stuck to the book pretty closely for that one. It might have been because I read it in like middle school or something and didn't know any better, but I thought Angels and Demons was actually pretty decent, although in retrospect the twist feels like it should have been obvious.
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Jun 1, 2013 18:38
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Its kind of funny how they did them completely backwards though since Angels and Demons was written before The Da Vinci Code.
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Jun 1, 2013 19:42
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It's been awhile since I've read the others, but I liked it the least of the three. Are there any good books in this genre that you guys can recommend?
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Jun 2, 2013 00:32
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Fun bits from Inferno: Langdon has a "split-second" thought of a lecture he once gave. [Cue half-page, dialogue-heavy flashback] There's mention of a "mechanical helicopter". As opposed to the biological sort, presumably.
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Jun 2, 2013 18:26
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Finished Debt Of Honor last night, started Executive Orders this morning. Quite the promotion, Dr. Ryan. The idea that Clancy wrote the ending of Debt Of Honor seven years before 9/11 is a little unsettling. Terrorist attack via airplane wasn't really a thing in the 90s, if memory serves.
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Jun 3, 2013 01:32
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Payndz posted:Fun bits from Inferno: Squid-Rotors! 
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Jun 3, 2013 01:40
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I give you a solid 6 Reillys, Payndz. Your stuff is awesome and insane but at least in the realm of possibility except for the stuff that obviously isn't (the main plot). To be honest, I thought I hadn't read much airport fiction in years (and I've certainly been actively avoiding the schlockiest of the schlock), certainly nothing on the Reilly Scale. However, if le Carre is out-of-bounds but Frederick Forsyth is seen at being the highest-allowable-brow of what's still in the genre, then I guess I'm still in the game (love me some le Carre too though). I've read Stieg Larsson and I think the Millennium series fits. On that note I sallied forth further into the thread and was pleased(?) to see late mentions of Olen Steinhauer and Robert B. Parker. I haven't read Parker in decades, but I recall liking the Spenser novels quite a bit. I'm reading Steinhauer's early stuff and liking it, before continuing with the Milo Weaver novels. Both are more in the mystery/crime camp than the military techno-thriller camp though. I am looking forward to seeing if I can find Payndz's stuff in a local shop; will definitely pick it up and give it a read. I think the last Clancy I read was The Hunt for Red October. I remember liking it, but again, decades ago. Not sure if I should try to wade through The Clance's 80s-era titles and give any a try, but consider this a solicitation for your best pitches. Shill for The Clance! The Clance we all remember and loved! Also, to the goon who suggested Alex Berenson, thanks. I think will give him a try as well. On another recommendations-requested note, has anyone here read any David Ignatius? After living in D.C. for some years, I began to feel as though I wasn't doing my part, what with being totally ignorant of the man's novels, especially given how much I see or hear his journalistic output in the area. I've been meaning to pick up one of his books and give it a spin. Anything I ought to start with? Are they self-contained, or do some (or all) follow a chronology I should be mindful of? minidracula fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 06:04
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mnd posted:Just read this whole thread through, and I have to say, I was starting to get worried that Dick Marcinko was going to go totally unmentioned until I chimed in. Luckily Humbug Scoolbus saved us all by at least putting him on the Reilly Scale. Surprised there's not been more coverage though. Anyone read any of his stuff and want to dish about it here? Be my guest! I liked Marcinko's co-authored stuff when I read it a while back. His initial Rogue Warrior autobiographical piece is decent as well, much more grounded and a little bit of a history lesson into the early Special Forces dudes who operated in Vietnam. The prose is easy to read without being tedious, the recurring characters are quirky enough for a little extra texture without it being an in-depth study, and the scenarios are a solid medium between Tom Clancy/WEB Griffin dryness and Matt Reilly !!!!!!s. Didn't like his solo authored stuff, but apparently he went back to the co-author thing and those pieces have generally been reviewed as a return to his past form.
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Jun 3, 2013 07:18
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Captain Trips posted:Finished Debt Of Honor last night, started Executive Orders this morning. Quite the promotion, Dr. Ryan. The only one smugger than Tom Clancy on 9/12 was Osama Bin Laden.
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Jun 4, 2013 01:34
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ArchangeI posted:The only one smugger than Tom Clancy on 9/12 was Osama Bin Laden. Tom Clancy:  Told you so.
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Jun 4, 2013 02:59
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Captain Trips posted:Finished Debt Of Honor last night, started Executive Orders this morning. Quite the promotion, Dr. Ryan. No poo poo. I remember going into the book knowing what would eventually happen, then finding myself with 10 pages left in the book and thinking, "Okay, how the fu..." ne: Bold tags are not spoiler, dammit
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Jun 4, 2013 10:08
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Finished Dan Brown's Inferno, and... yeah, it's readable in a breathless 'what happens next?' way, but still terrible. Not the worst thing of his I've read (that would be Digital Fortress), but pretty awful all the same. Why so bad? For a start the travelogue sections are absolutely ludicrous - the chapter where Langdon is going around Venice in a boat genuinely reads like Brown copy-pasted chunks of a guidebook. He's supposedly in a hurry to reach some place in order to save the world, but he still finds time to think about recipes for squid (there was one in there after all!  ) or the construction techniques of gondolas. Even minor characters join in to tell him completely irrelevant tourist info along the way. And we get flat-footed things like this:Dan Brown posted:As Langdon continued on toward the elbow of the square, he could see, directly ahead in the distance, the shimmering blue glass dial of the St Mark's Clock Tower - the same astronomical clock through which James Bond had thrown a villain in the film Moonraker. And to cap it all off, everything Langdon does through the entire book is completely pointless. The virus he's trying to stop was actually released a week before the story even starts, almost everyone he encounters in the first half of the story is playing a role in a scenario just like in the film The Game (you like my Brown-style writing there?), and in the end all he accomplishes is that he gets his Mickey Mouse watch back. The way the ending is written even rather suggests that Langdon/Brown almost approves of what the villain did.  Oh, and there are more uses of '?!' to signify a shouted question (which I was always taught was a punctuation no-no) than in any other professionally published novel I've ever seen, even Reilly's.
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Jun 4, 2013 10:25
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So I perused the plot summary for Brown’s latest. I hope he hurries up writes the next one faster than his last couple. I have no intention of reading it but I am morbidly curious about how much more bizarre the Langdonverse is going to get. If the series continues on its current trajectory, it’s only a matter of time before we get Langdon fighting the actual devil or Lovecraftian monstrosities or the Possessed from Peter F Hamilton’s books in a Children of Men style dystopian future with telekinetic powers granted to him by the absolutely not at all bullshit science of noetics.
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Jun 5, 2013 01:00
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Captain Trips posted:Tom Clancy: On the other hand: Still no war with Japan.
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Jun 6, 2013 08:15
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 I was just gifted these. Does anyone have any recommendations? Is there any particular reading order? Should I post my reactions to each book on this thread so you can get a laugh at the airport fiction newbie?
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Jun 6, 2013 09:53
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Iced Cocoa posted:
You should probably just read them in the order they were released, so Red October > Patriot Games > Cardinal of the Kremlin > Clear and Present Danger > Sum of All Fears > Without Remorse > Debt of Honor > Executive Orders > Bear and the Dragon > Red Rabbit > Teeth of the Tiger. I've only read up to Bear and the Dragon, and Red Storm Rising takes place outside the Ryanverse. Personally, I really like them all up to Debt of Honor, the later ones get a bit loopy (Rainbow Six is good though). And hell yes, post your reactions as you read along, it's always fun to see people get introduced to Clancy's books.
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Jun 6, 2013 10:58
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In addition to what S-Alpha said, Red Storm Rising is also completely standalone and not part of the Ryanverse, so you can read that one whenever. Personally I'd recommend it first just because it's my favorite Clancy that I've read so far, but other than that follow S-Alpha, as far as I know all the others are connected.
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Jun 6, 2013 12:36
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I'm reading them in the order of the Ryanverse Timeline. Without Remorse > Patriot Games > Red Rabbit > Red October > Cardinal o/t Kremlin > Clear and Present Danger > Sum of all Fears > Debt of Honor > Executive Orders > Rainbow 6 > Bear & Dragon > Teeth o/t Tiger Then on top of those I've got Dead Or Alive, Locked On, and Threat Vector in that order. Though I believe those are Jack Jr books.
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Jun 6, 2013 16:48
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Just curious, what are the pros and cons with reading either in release order or the timeline order? I'm kind of leaning towards the timeline order, but I would want to hear everyone's opinion on which one they prefer. Though I think I'll start with Red Storm Rising since that's not part of this Ryanverse.
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Jun 6, 2013 20:24
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Clancy likes to throw small little references or callforwards in his books every now and again, and if you were to go in reading the series in the order of the timeline, it's probable you'll either miss these or, at the worst, spoil things for yourself. This is really bad in Without Remorse, but that's the worst offender by far.
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Jun 6, 2013 21:56
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Also the Clancy Crazy level rises in publication order, not timeline order. If you read in tineline order you'll be wondering why the gently caress an espionage novel has a sudden detail into the terrors of the national health service, as opposed to developing a gradual tolerance for the development of crazy. Clancy devolved from a conservatove writer where one of the major plot points and conflicts in a book is the danger of intelligence agencies and the executive branch acting unilaterally and without oversight to ending up with a group of protagonists who are a straight up insider trading private murder group. The first real inklings of conservative crazy town pop up in The Cardinal of the Kremlin but even there he has some highly sympathetic communist / Soviet characters. poo poo, one of Clancy's earliest minor characters is a gay liberal senator from Massachusetts who becomes involved in a CIA operation because the Soviet Union are such assholes towards gays. Tl:dr, read in publication order.
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Jun 6, 2013 22:06
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Vince Flynn died 
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Jun 19, 2013 16:36
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Scotsman posted:Vince Flynn died Well poo poo.
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Jun 19, 2013 19:45
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Scotsman posted:Vince Flynn died
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Jun 19, 2013 20:17
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FlamingLiberal posted:His politics were hideous, but dying of prostate cancer at 47 is awful. Used to read his stuff when I was younger and his political commentary in his books were a little less overt. Yeah a couple of his books really got bogged down in it, but nowhere near the extend that Brad Thor does. I think it was around the middle of the series - the last books in particular really stayed away from it. Really sucks he didn't at least survive to see American Assassin made into a movie. In brighter news - my new favourite character in the spy thriller genre is Spider Shepherd. The first of the series was selling at Amazon for $1 so I picked it up, and have just been tearing through them since. Highly recommended for anyone who likes that genre. Kind of a weird setup as each book usually has 2 separate storylines(1 is Spider undercover, and 1 is the overlying OMG evil terrorists stuff) but it manages to flow well.
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Jun 19, 2013 21:28
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FlamingLiberal posted:His politics were hideous, but dying of prostate cancer at 47 is awful. Used to read his stuff when I was younger and his political commentary in his books were a little less overt. He was a rightwing flagwaver of the highest order, but wrote quite entertaining stories about MURRICA and Teh Lie-berals that got me through many a bad flight. Dying of cancer at 47 is some bullshit. I feel terrible for his family. BrosephofArimathea fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Jun 20, 2013 |
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Jun 20, 2013 04:03
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drat man. I wasn't a big fan of his, but still, dying at 47 from prostate cancer is just hosed up. Wondering if there are going to be any  people thinking it was cancer caused by the NSA because of his "too true to life" books about government, etc, etc.
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Jun 20, 2013 12:02
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Scotsman posted:
I'll put these on my list for sure. I'm currently binging on the Charlie Parker series from John Connolly. Not the greatest books in the world, but for some reason I can't put them down. Spent a few nights staying up past 3AM to finish one.
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Jun 20, 2013 19:31
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New Jack Reacher book in early September, Never Go Back: Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. The old stone building is the closest thing to a home he ever had. Reacher is there to meet—in person—the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, so far just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone. But it isn’t Turner behind the CO’s desk. And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news, one with serious criminal consequences, and one too personal even to think about.
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Jul 8, 2013 16:40
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Smiling Jack posted:Also the Clancy Crazy level rises in publication order, not timeline order. If you read in tineline order you'll be wondering why the gently caress an espionage novel has a sudden detail into the terrors of the national health service, as opposed to developing a gradual tolerance for the development of crazy. This. As the Ryan timeline progresses, you learn (in no particular order) that Japanese fuel efficent cars are evil, Arabs are evil, Chinese are evil (and have small penises), environmentalists are evil, Native Americans hate the US, abortion is evil, but the Catholic Church and Jews are good. In later books, there are basically entire chapters devoted to whatever Clancy's right wing talking point for that book is and seemingly random subplots are added to further beat it into your skull that (thing/ethnic group conservatives hate) is REALLY REALLY BAD. The continuous promotions of Jack Ryan also get a bit silly, to the point where I'm wondering when Clancy is going to promote him to Catholic Space Emperor of the universe. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 05:51
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azflyboy posted:In later books, there are basically entire chapters devoted to whatever Clancy's right wing talking point for that book is and seemingly random subplots are added to further beat it into your skull that (thing/ethnic group conservatives hate) is REALLY REALLY BAD. There's one part of Executive Orders where Jack Ryan is doing a news interview arguing *against* progressive taxation and *for* a flat percentage tax like it's totally fair.
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Jul 10, 2013 12:05
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Please never read Teeth of the Tiger, I got it on a whim because I wanted some airport fiction and it was ridiculously bad.
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Jul 10, 2013 19:32
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I got part way through that book years ago, and I'd forgotten how terrible it was. The only (semi) decent thing about the book is that it's shorter than the ones that precede it, so the crazy political ranting is limited to just a few paragraphs here and there instead of being entire chapters.
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Jul 11, 2013 09:00
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azflyboy posted:This. Man, to add to the weird Japanese hate that book had a scene that talked about how bestiality is something most Japanese are into. What the hell, Tom Clancy. Srice fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 17:27
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Matthew Reilly explains the premise of his new book. It’s so much crazier than you can possibly imagine.
High Warlord Zog fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jul 18, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 22:23
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azflyboy posted:
This would be a fine plot to a Jack Ryan Novel
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Jul 18, 2013 04:40
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Agentdark posted:This would be a fine plot to a Jack Ryan Novel Jack Ryan 40k
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Jul 18, 2013 05:50
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