Would you recommend Tom Clancy to someone who has never read military/spy novels?

[nomesque]

I'm a sci fi and fantasy fan too. I'd tend to recommend Ken Follett's military books more than Tom Clancy. Entirely personal opinion, of course - I found Red October to be a harder read than, say, Lie Down With Lions.

[bill_mchale]

I liked Tom Clancy's early books. Later on, they seem to become more about Tom Clancy wanting to rule the world . My personal recommendation is reading up to and including Clear and Present Danger.

--
Bill

[DarthV]

Yep, his earlier stuff was great. Just read Red Rabbit and it was very boring.

[cmdahler]

Echo all the recommendations. Everything up to and including Without Remorse. You can stop with that one, though. When you look at the prose and storytelling of the books after Without Remorse, I'm convinced that Clancy basically had nothing to do with the later novels other than a broad approval of the story arc and process. At least, it certainly seems that way; the quality of the books after Without Remorse takes a huge plunge off a literary cliff and aren't worth the time. The earlier books are just about the best military/spy/war books ever written because their story arcs and the realism of the technical details included in them make the stories very believable and plausible.