Return to the Clancyverse

 

I’ve written several times in these here electronic pages how I devoured Tom Clancy’s work way back in the 90s, how the books were completely different from anything I had read up to that point (classic science fiction, King, and Koontz, mostly), how technically intelligent they read, how they reflected competent, heroic, patriotic men and women. As well as real evil in the world. They were eye-opening to young me, and I burned through nine of them from 1994 to 2001, with the majority in the first three years.

Anyway, I had such a blast reading The Bear and the Dragon this time last year. I bought it for my stepfather for his birthday. It was such a change of pace from the heady, hefty readings I was immersed in at that time. I spotted two Clancy hardcovers, Patriot Games and Without Remorse, at a library book sale and picked them up for two bucks apiece.

Then, an idea came to me.

Why not read through the entire Jack Ryan series again? After all, it’s been, wow, nearly thirty years, and I enjoyed Bear and Dragon so much. After a little thought decided to jump headfirst back in to the Clancyverse, but in a unique way this time.

Now I would read the books in chronological order. Not the order the books were published, because Clancy messed around with the timeline of his main character. No, I’d read it in the chronologic order of the internal story. Start off with young Jack Ryan, then middle-aged Jack Ryan, then elder statesman Jack Ryan. It sounded quite interesting and appealing to me.

Here is the order of the books in the story’s internal chronology. The parentheses are the year of publication:

 

Without Remorse (1993)

Patriot Games (1987)

Red Rabbit (2002)

The Hunt for Red October (1984)

The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988)

Clear and Present Danger (1989)

The Sum of All Fears (1991)

Debt of Honor (1994)

Executive Orders (1996)

Rainbow Six (1998)

The Bear and the Dragon (2000)

 

In Without Remorse, Jack is a teen and it’s his father, Emmett Ryan, a detective in Baltimore, who’s more of a character, though even he is a secondary character. The novel is basically the origin story of CIA agent John Clark, played by Willem Dafoe in the Harrison Ford movies. It takes place in the late-60s / early 70s. Then the timeline skips in Patriot Games to 1983 / 1984. The final books, Executive Orders and Rainbox Six, take place in the late 90s and catch-up to the publication dates.

So excluding Bear and Dragon, that gives me ten books to read. Each is a doorstop to be honest; anywhere from 500 to 800 pages. That gives me about 7,000 pages to read, but that’s okay, because they are still page-turners for me. I imagine finishing them sometime in the late summer, and that’s acceptable because I am enjoying them immensely so far. I may post later how different they now appear to me.

I’m currently on the third book, Red Rabbit, the one and only book I have not read during the original go-round. The first two, Without Remorse and Patriot Games, each took 12 days to read this past month. This one’s taking a little longer because I am reading nonfiction alongside it. But I’m not looking at it as a race.

Red Rabbit has Jack beginning his career in the CIA. He is a rising star but hasn’t yet proven himself, which happens in The Hunt for Red October. I’m a little over halfway through, and the powers-that-be are aligning Jack to play an important role at a decisive plot point. This book’s more spycraft and espionage than Bear, Remorse, and Patriot Games were, more like a Robert Ludlum novel, which is interesting in and of itself. Kinda like an introductory course to a John Le Carre novel (whose works are on my bucket list). The first half has been slow and steadily building, with real-life figures such as Yuri Andropov as characters. I sense an action-packed climax coming though.

Anyway, that’s where I stand on my fiction reading. Professor Tolkien is still lurking about in the distance, in the mud in the mire with his boots on, smoking a pipe looking over the green be-sheeped countryside, patiently waiting for Hopper to get his act together. Hopper is thick in a nostalgia binge right now, but hopes to visit Middle-earth in the fall and winter.

Happy readings!