So I finished the last Jack Ryan books recently. Some will know that I have long been a fan of Tom Clancy and primarily the Jack Ryan series. I started reading Clancy books in High School, starting with Red Storm Rising (not a Jack Ryan book, but the one I wish most they'd made into a movie), and then The Hunt for Red October came out staring Alec Baldwin (Still the best Jack Ryan) which started me on those books. I liked them enough that I got my friend Chris involved in them too, and we spent many days analyzing each new book that would come out.
Now Clancy usually writes what would be considered Tomes. Which is to say I believe the average Jack Ryan novel runs over 800 pages. That's considerably larger than many others in the spy type novel genre, which usually top out at around 400 some pages. Granted Clancy wrote/ghost wrote several other series that were often shorter but they weren't really his in my opinion. In fact those were almost as much about cashing in on name recognition for sales, which several other authors in the action genre have done (See the Clive Cussler novels among others). They also don't involve he core characters/universe he developed and are generally not as good or well thought out.
This being said, until recently, it was a badge of honor for me to have an original hard cover edition of each novel. Since the last 3-4 yrs I moved to more digital editions, this was the first time this really changed.
For those not in the know, Jack Ryan starts out as an low level CIA Analyst, who then through various sets of key insights or right place/right time combinations manages to make a lot of money in the stock market, save the Duke of Buckingham from terrorists, stop a nuclear bomb in Denver's superbowl, get some high level Soviets to defect, makes peace in the Middle East, helps the drug war in Columbia, and then as he gets to the top of the chain in the CIA begins to move to full politics becoming President after being confirmed as a replacement VP (after getting the corrupt one put in jail) just before a plane smashes into the capital building during a State of the Union, which as you can imagine kills most of the political parties, so they all have to start over. Then misc challenges from other world powers trying to show the US up.
Anyways, Jack Ryan is almost always the smartest guy in the room, but becomes one along the way willing to do the hard thing, draw a line in the sand which nobody dare cross lest they deal with the Imperial might of the US, etc.
Along the way Jack becomes something of a caricature of an ideal conservative president. Which I think does him some injustice, especially based on some of the things he'd done in earlier books, but that is what it is. Tom Clancy was always a very conservative person politically speaking, and after he sort of wrote Jack Ryan into a corner (hard to do most of the same things as before when you're President) he just sort of wrote Jack as he'd want a president to be. Sort of the John Wayne/Charleston Heston as Commander in Chief role.
Anyways, along the way he developed another character that is probably his second favorite character, but one who could have a more free hand. John Clark starts out as a CIA Black Ops specialist as a character in several of the early books, but Clancy fell in love with him. He went so far as to write an entire book as backstory for Clark. That book is by itself actually very good, although somewhat formulaic. Clark shows up more often and longer until he basically becomes a core secondary character and involved in nearly everything going on as the hands/feet on the ground working to further US interests. Domingo Chavez is the younger impersonation of him, and Ding is a good story, but never able to own the scene like any others. eventually with Jack Ryan as president, Clancy suddenly realizes he needs some more characters and brings Jack Ryan Junior out of the wings, and turns him into a slightly more paramilitary version of his father. Still very bright analyst but also an operator type more than willing to get his hands wet in black ops work. Some of the later books take some liberties with this story line, and in fact they bring in a pair of the Ryan cousins who were never mentioned before, so it suddenly becomes a family affair. That I've thought was a crutch and a bad story choice. Surely they could find some other patriots who weren't Ryan family.
So this all being said, with Tom Clancy passing away, we will see no more books of this series, at least none by the master himself. There have been a variety of movies interpretations, but they're all basically flawed in some way or other. I actually refused to see the Sum of All Fears with Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan, because, well., Ben Affleck. They also recently had the one with Kevin Costner & Chris Pine, but I didn't have the opportunity to see that in the theater, so I'll check it out when it makes it to DVD.
I expect to see other movies come out over time, as Clancy himself was often a roadblock to the studios in the past, now that he's gone, I imagine the family will want to cash in on that avenue.
Anyways, I'll miss getting new books every couple of years, but who knows, hopefully someone else will be able to step up to the plate over time with something similar.
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