Tag: book review

Comments on Book “Enemy Contact” by Tom Clancy

August 17, 2025

I read many of Clancy’s books, such as The Hunt for Red October, and enjoyed them. This book, Enemy Contact, entertained but frustrated me. Published in 2019 and written by Mike Maden under Clancy’s name, this book leads the reader through numerous locations around the world and has multiple plots. But it does not hang together and leaves many questions to the reader’s imagination.

The best thing about the book is that it has a lot of action, and it’s a page-turner. Many of the chapters contain complete short stories but with further reading in the book, one understands how these fit into the overall theme. For example, in chapter one, the action takes place in Argentina and is a complete story. The context of how it fits into the overall narrative becomes clear later on. This happens many times in the book. I found this truncated structure frustrating, but it may be a popular trick to draw the reader further into the book.

The story unfolds in numerous locations, including Luanda, Angola, Gdansk, Poland, Washington, DC and Berlin, Germany. I have no problem with different parts of the world described, except that each location includes description of its architecture and streetscape. I understand the author needs to provide background and context, but the amount of information seems overkill.

And it is not only the description of all the locations, but the politics of the region is also covered. If you are a news hawk, then you are aware of many of the situations described, such as those in Angola, where the Chinese are building their “road and infrastructure” program using Chinese labor that creates friction with available local labor in the country.

The major theme connecting all the local stories revolves around an international crime syndicate involved in the production and distribution of drugs. Another theme involves a super sleuth, who is utilizing data mining techniques on secret U.S. cloud storage sites to gather and sell this information. The connection between these two themes is tenuous and artificial but I read the book for its entertaining value and did not spend time on trying to follow the logic of the stories.

The characters in the book are all unique. They include brothers who served in the French Foreign Legion; a visionary who developed a world-leading security system used by the U.S. government, and his attractive wife, who oversees technical development for the company and recruits the best programmers in the world. Among these programmers is a Chinese individual who was raised in the U.S. and whose friend in Thailand is undergoing gender transition. I wondered why eeverybody in the book has to be a unique character, the best programmer, a good-looking woman techie, and ex-French Foreign Legionnaires. Couldn’t. there be average people accomplishing challenging tasks?

There are several loose ends in the story that feel unfinished to me. For instance, Jack Ryan, the main character in the book, and his his attrctive female assistant in Poland develop a close friendship. He visits her home for dinner and bonds with her toddler. This friendship hints at a potential future relationship between Jack and the assistant. However, when she is drowning, she asks Jack to care for her young son, but nothing further develops. I found this aspect of the story incomplete.

And then there are some situations that are hard to believe; that are not realistic. When Jack arrives in the high mountains of Peru to honor a commitment he made to a friend who died in action, he gets drunk in a local pub, still nursing his guilt, feeling responsible for the death of his Polish assistant. A group associated with the international crime syndicate beat him up in his sleep and rob him of everything. Still, when he wakes up, he scrounges some clothing and climbs another few thousand feet to the top of the mountain without food, water and proper shoes and clothing. I hiked Machu Pichu and let me tell you, the air is thin, and it is cold and it is hard to believe that Jack, beaten up and without supplies, could accomplish the feat described. But reading the story is good entertainment.

The ending of the narrative felt brief and disappointing. As expected, the criminals are killed or imprisoned. There are no excting chases, or long-drawn-out tracking of the bad guys. The ending is just twenty pages long and comes quickly of a four-hundred-sixty-page book. An example is the end of Jack’s archenemy, a former French Foreign Legionnaire. Once located in Benghazi, Jack travels to Libya and shoots the Legionnaire, and that’s it. This resolution unfolds over just a couple of pages, which to me was a quick and decisive action but did not include a leadup with Jack’s feeling towards this gangster and the satisfaction that he undoubtedly drew from fionishing him off.

Overall, I thought the book was entertaining. It contains numerous plots, an abundance of colorful characters, and happens over a wide range of global locations. Additionally, it addresses an excessive number of current topics—political, moral, and technical—that could each have been developed into a story of their own.

While reading the book provided instant excitement, it was ultimately forgettable. It does not hold up to Clancy’s earlier works, which were much more focused in terms of geography and subject matter.

Why The Martian Might Not Impress Everyone: A Reviewer’s Insight

February 12, 2025

The book enjoyed great popularity, and I may be in the minority when it comes to criticizing it. It was initially published as a series of blog posts, released one chapter at a time in 2011 before a publisher printed it as a book in 2014. It remained on the bestseller list for several weeks and has been translated into multiple languages. A 2015 film adaptation starring Matt Damon garnered significant success as well.

The author was a computer programmer interested in space travel before writing this book.

I reflected on my reaction to the book and concluded that while I enjoyed the plot, I found the detailed science somewhat tedious. Additionally, the stereotypical portrayal of NASA’s internal bureaucratic competition and the selection of a diverse Mars probe crew detracted from the narrative; for instance, having an Indian PhD as the chief scientist and a female team leader felt forced. The protagonist’s humor came across as artificial and more suited to a college setting, and the prose was somewhat clunky.

After landing the Ares probe on Mars in 2035, a sandstorm forced the team to leave quickly, leaving one team member behind, who they thought to be dead. However, he survives in the “hab,” the tent the team set up to stay for a week. The surviving astronaut, Mark Watney, uses his scientific ingenuity to make the “hab” a livable environment for a year and a half. The book details how Mark maintains the right balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide and grows potatoes to survive until he can travel to the site of the next probe to land on Mars.

Science fiction is not my favorite genre; I prefer more realistic books grounded on Earth. As a result, I found Mark Watney’s first-person, in-depth descriptions of the science he applied to survive to be tedious and overwhelming toward the end.

While the descriptions of life on Mars from the relatable Mark and his light-hearted humor were enjoyable, they lessened the impact of the hardships he experienced for me. For instance, I did not truly feel how cold and uninhabitable Mars is. And Mark seems quite comfortable reading books at night and sleeping in his cot. I did not think he genuinely starved or ever felt cold. Notably, he also never got sick, perhaps because there are no bacteria on Mars. In other words, if there was any personal pain, physical or psychological, Mark’s narrative did not convey it effectively.

Mark faced multiple life-threatening situations but relied on his scientific knowledge to survive. He once risked burning down the tent by setting a fire inside to produce water. Despite these risks, he always succeeded in surviving. Because of this, halfway through the book, I felt that the author diminished the sense of danger that an average person on Earth would likely face in similar circumstances.

Mark is not introspective but a positive individual who focuses on problem-solving. He never expresses self-doubt, which is disappointing, as it could have added a more human dimension to his experiences of perseverance and loneliness. Perhaps astronauts are chosen for their adaptability, reminiscent of the character MacGyver from the popular TV show in 1985.

Later in the book, we encounter the NASA team overseeing the Mars probe. Their conversations seem mundane, often revolving around budget concerns and disagreements about technology on how to rescue Mark. The portrayal of bureaucratic processes feels clichéd, and the dialogues with Mark feel forced: interacting with someone millions of miles away in an informal manner feels artificial.

I appreciated the book’s compelling plot and the buildup of events toward the end. I found myself reading quickly, primarily through the scientific details. The author conducted meticulous research on the scientific aspects, which I understood for the most part. However, I don’t think all the scientific explanations are necessary unless you’re deeply interested in science. If you’re an engineer or a scientist, this book is definitely for you. However, if you want to understand why we go to Mars or whether human settlements are possible there, you won’t find those answers in this book.