New Tom Clancy Novel Announced

[Madam Broshkina]

Bestselling author Tom Clancy will deliver his first new book in seven years when his longtime publisher Penguin releases Dead or Alive December 7. Apparently it will feature many of his best-known characters from his last-quarter century of writing. Hopefully it will be better then his last couple of books.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/bo...CYTHR_BRF.html

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

Bestselling author Tom Clancy will deliver his first new book in seven years when his longtime publisher Penguin releases Dead or Alive December 7. Apparently it will feature many of his best-known characters from his last-quarter century of writing. Hopefully it will be better then his last couple of books.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/bo...CYTHR_BRF.html

That's great. I've actually been looking forward to it. But now I won't buy it, due to the cartel. Sorry, Tom.

[bbusybookworm]

I'm one of the people hoping that he's got his groove back.

While I Did get the Last couple of books, I found them nearly unreadable, and while I persevered, it was not a fun experience. I've found that books since Executive orders have really gone down in quality.

Lets see if he can get back to the levels of his best works (Red Storm, Hunt, etc)

[leebase]

Now that's a book I'd pay full hard back price to read -- even as an ebook

Lee

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

Hopefully it will be better then his last couple of books.

I don't have my hopes up. It's written by Grant Blackwood, not Clancy - and I can't say I was terribly enthused with the Splinter Cell novels that are probably by him. (Why they fired Raymond Benson after the first two is beyond me...)

[Worldwalker]

The problem is he got too big to edit. His writing took a flying leap over the shark somewhere in Executive Orders (a book sadly in need of a good editor to weedwhack out some of the "goes nowhere, does nothing" subplots). When either nobody dared tell him his work needed editing, or he didn't listen, the quality suffered badly. Compare Hunt for Red October with anything from Executive Orders and later. It's night and day. Red October has a crisp, clear, tight plot; recent books have wandered vaguely all over the map. Plus Jack Ryan has gotten so over the top I expect him to go shopping for a cape and a spandex leotard any time now. Jack Ryan the man was awesome; Jack Ryan the superbeing is predictable and boring.

Also, thinly-disguised political screeds rarely make good novels, particularly when they involve equally thinly-disguised copies of certain politicians. The fact that I strongly disliked a certain politician did not make his appearance as a prattling fool in Clancy's books any easier to take; if anything it doubled the dose, since I was now subjected to both the real one and Clancy's straw man (and one dose was already too much).

I half-remember some SF writer having said that some of the best advice he ever got, when he was stuck in writer's block due to being upset some politician, was from famed editor John W. Campbell. It was something like "Write a story about a man whose wife is meeting him at the bus station, and as his bus pulls in, he sees another man kiss her and hurry away. Write that story, and everyone will know how you feel about that meathead politician." What a writer feels strongly about, what they believe, will come through in any story. It doesn't have to be jammed down the readers' throats. And that's where recent Tom Clancy novels fail. Whether or not I agree with an author, I want to read the story, not some political diatribe disguised as a story. When I want my political diatribes of any stripe, there are blogs for that.

Hopefully the past seven years of cashing checks for books he hasn't written has given Tom Clancy time to regroup and start writing awesome books again.