Good is relative. Finnegan’s Wake is a masterpiece, and it’s also deliberately obscure to the point you either need an education matching Joyce’s or a reading companion.

Is that good?

Is it bad if it is not approachable? Is it good if it is?

Red Storm Rising is one of the best modern military fictions according to a lot of fans of the genre, but that’s doesn’t mean you have to like it. I’ve got some straight up gunporn series I read when I’m in a mood for reading about automatic shotguns firing explosive shells into vampires, but I wouldn’t call them good at anything but that and objectifying women.

I couldn’t finish it because it was both so over the top American (I’m not American so it feels different) but also because at times it was weirdly boring.

Relax: Calm down, chill bro.

you’ll be pleased to know yours is a very reasonable opinion to have and you’re right for having it, too.

Instead of reading Clancy read Matthew Reilly. I suggest you start with Ice Station. It’s got everything you need, French Baddies, Spaceships, Hovercraft, and even killer Killer whales!

It’s not a great classical literature, for sure. The characters are almost entirely flat and forgettable, and even the handful that do grow (the young Soviet commander, the US destroyer captain) barely do so. Their experiences never almost never inform their later actions.

But among the techno-thriller/war-simulator genre, I found it more compelling than several more recent attempts (Ghost Fleet, Nuclear War: A Scenario, etc). Many of those seem to go out of their way to bend the plot to produce the author’s intended point, and while RSR wasn’t exactly innocent in that regard, I found it far less guilty than others - largely because Clancy was holding to the known or theorized-near-future capabilities.

Where I actually find it fascinating is how, in retrospect, we can see the biases of the era influencing how Clancy makes certain predictions:

• The Soviets place immense importance on taking Iceland to permit a “second Battle of the Atlantic” against US carrier groups. In retrospect, we know the Soviet Navy had no interest in this and intended to act as a cordon around northern Europe; specifically the Soviet SSBN bastions.

• While Clancy did loosely predict the nature, role, and value of Stealth aircraft, the design and air-to-air role he describes them in is actually too advanced for the 1980s setting. Essentially, Clancy bought the rumors, which were wrong.

• Land attack helicopters with ATGMs play relatively little role in the ground fighting. This was because the current generation (namely the AH-64) had just been introduced; their full capabilities and impact were not yet publicly available.

These mistakes, although understandable, provide an interesting insight into what the American defense establishment was thinking about in the early 80s.

I recall liking it, but I read it in like the 5th grade so my standards were low (before that I’d been reading my mom’s terrible ‘caterer turned detective’ novels).

I enjoyed Clancy for a long time after that but at this point I aim more towards militaristic speculative fiction.

Yes, you have pretty much perfectly described why most Tom Clancy books have pretty niche appeal. The literary value is all in the well researched military nerd stuff, and weirdly plausible hypothetical geopolitics

The thing I remember most about this book is the heroic American Mary Sue rescuing an Icelandic damsel in distress from a traumatic sexual assault by Soviet soldiers, and then immediately afterwards she falls in love with him and they have sex in a hot spring or something. Standard conservative male military-nerd wish-fulfillment pulp fantasy written by a guy whose main protagonists are all thinly-veiled self-insertions.

That said, as a fellow nerd, I love it when Clancy tells me all the little details about a submarine, and it’s a fun read. But I wouldn’t call it good.

I mean, it’s Tom Clancy. It’s a fun read, like Dan Brown or Brandon Sanderson, but it’s not literature or anything.

I don’t think it is generally considered a good book, but I’m sure it depends on who you ask. I thought it had some interesting ideas, but was pretty weak overall.

Yeah, lol no it isn’t, the whole submarine plot has been forced into it because Clancy can’t not write about submarines.

Similarly related, I remember reading The Hunt for Red October and enjoying it. But I can’t decide if I actually enjoyed it, or if I’m transposing a memory from my enjoyment of the film to my enjoyment of the book. I’m afraid to re-read it and find out, because I haven’t been a fan of much else that he’s written so I suspect I know the answer.