{"id":378,"date":"2009-07-15T21:00:38","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T01:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=378"},"modified":"2010-03-29T11:29:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T15:29:51","slug":"fiction-tom-clancy-steve-pieczenik-and-steve-perry-state-of-war-tom-clancys-net-force-no-7-ny-berkley-books-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/fiction-tom-clancy-steve-pieczenik-and-steve-perry-state-of-war-tom-clancys-net-force-no-7-ny-berkley-books-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, and Steve Perry, State of War: Tom Clancy’s Net Force, No. 7 (NY: Berkley Books, 2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Not Quite the Cardinal of the Kremlin or The Sum of All Fears <\/strong>, by Kevin R. Kosar, May 15, 2007<\/p>\n

Yes, this book has Tom Clancy’s name splashed all over it. No, it’s not written by Clancy; rather, Steve Perry and Larry Segriff appear to have penned it. No doubt many readers are put off by this and do not understand just how Clancy could “create” the Net Force series books but not write them.<\/p>\n

That, though, is not my beef. My gripes are with the book itself. Where to begin?<\/p>\n

The book begins with an interesting premise- what if someone started a virtual nation-state, one that is not located on any landmass? What sort of havoc might this play with politics and governance? All sorts of mischief might arise. For example, a person living in, say, Chicago or Los Angeles, could ditch his U.S. citizenship and become a citizen of Cyber Nation, thereby avoiding taxes on his income.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the interesting possibilities are not played out. We get a predictable good guy vs. bad guys plot, the turns of which the reader can see coming far in advance.<\/p>\n

Moreover, I wasn’t expecting the The Brothers Karamazov<\/a>, but, gadzooks, this book’s characters are cardboard cut outs. Many of them are ludicrously over-achieving, like the lobbyist who graduated first in her class, is a scratch golfer, drop dead gorgeous, etc., etc., etc. The reader may find it really hard to care whether they lived or died or simply disappeared from the plot.<\/p>\n

Especially frustrating is the tempo of the book. It’s broken again and again by lengthy descriptions of the technical specifications of this or that gun or computer device. (Similarly, an enormous number of pages are squandered in the depiction of Jay Gridley, a computer sleuth, using absurdly far-fetched virtual reality scenarios as a vehicle for tracking down hackers and crooks.) This makes it a real struggle to keep from skipping the many pages globbed with gun-fetishising or geeky details.<\/p>\n

Finally, in places the book drops in brand names (like Veuve Clicquot) for no apparent reason.\u00a0 The reader gets the unsettling feeling that these are these paid product placements.<\/p>\n

In summation, then, this is not The Cardinal of the Kremlin<\/em> or The Sum of All Fears<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a second rate slap-dish techno-thriller that isn’t particularly thrilling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not Quite the Cardinal of the Kremlin or The Sum of All Fears , by Kevin R. Kosar, May 15, 2007 Yes, this book has Tom Clancy’s name splashed all over it. No, it’s not written by Clancy; rather, Steve Perry and Larry Segriff appear to have penned it. No doubt many readers are put […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[70],"tags":[120],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-fiction","tag-espionage-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-66","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}