Dead or Alive
A Jack Ryan Novel
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Dead or Alive
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Narrated by:
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Lou Diamond Phillips
About this listen
Don't Miss the Original Series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Starring John Krasinski!
Tom Clancy delivers a #1 New York Times bestselling Jack Ryan novel that will remind readers why he is the acknowledged master of international intrigue and nonstop military action.
It is The Campus. Secretly created under the administration of President Jack Ryan, its sole purpose is to eliminate terrorists and those who protect them. Officially, it has no connection to the American government - a necessity in a time when those in power consider themselves above such arcane ideals as loyalty, justice, and right or wrong.
Now covert intelligence expert Jack Ryan Jr. and his compatriots at The Campus - joined by black ops warriors John Clark and “Ding” Chavez - have come up against their greatest foe: a sadistic killer known as the Emir. Mastermind of countless horrific attacks, the Emir has eluded capture by every law enforcement agency in the world. But his greatest devastation is yet to be unleashed as he plans a monumental strike at the heart of America.
On the trail of the Emir, Jack Ryan Jr. will find himself following in his legendary father’s footsteps on a manhunt that will take him and his allies across the globe, into the shadowy arenas of political gamesmanship, and back onto U.S. soil in a race to prevent the possible fall of the West....
Take another thrill ride with Jack Ryan.©2010 by Rubicon, Inc. (P)2010 by Brilliance Audio, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
“Heart-stopping action...entertaining and eminently topical.” (The Washington Post)
“The best characters from all of Clancy’s previous novels are on the case.... For fans of the genre, Dead or Alive is likely to provide a long weekend’s pleasure.” (Los Angeles Times)
“Clancy is back at the top of his game.... In-depth research, continuous suspense, and scores of fascinating characters.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
Ok
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entertaing but a bit slow
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The story continues
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Great story and narration
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Great Fan left disappointed
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I have a bit of a soft spot for Lou Diamond Phillips, though I’ve always found his strongest on screen performances to be when he plays against type.
This performance was consistent throughout all 20+ hours of this book. I would have preferred a bit more life injected into the narration; the Ryan-verse is traditionally very heavily detailed and LDP’s voice was too soothing and the cadence unwavering for the events and stakes being described.
I wonder if a voice-actor would have approached it differently; my gut says his background in film and screen acting was what led to such a distinct focus on dialogue.
He gave some gravel and gravitas to my favourite character (Clark) and distinct personalities to the main players of “The Campus,” but I found one of the female characters to be Monty Pythonesque at times and too many of the incidental characters were difficult to differentiate from their countrymen (generic Russians, generic Americans, etc).
Similarly, I found that it wasn’t always clear to a listener that the story had switched to another location. This happens a lot and my momentary confusion was compounded by sudden gluts of unfamiliar names and places. In fairness, I always find that seeing non-English names, be they places or people, allows me to retain and differentiate between them far more easily.
Perhaps this may not have been a problem if I could have listened without distraction. In my case, that rather defeats the purpose of listening to audiobooks; if I had totally free time then I’d simply read the kindle version.
Story
The story itself is typical of the genre; good vs evil, ever increasing stakes, and extraordinarily unlikely strokes of luck/inhuman feats working in the goodies favour.
Some scenes and philosophical musings should have been, in my opinion, slimmed down or trimmed entirely in the name of brevity and pace. This is, after all, a thriller.
In fact I found some portions of text, particularly the thoughts/motivations of the various bad guys, recurred almost verbatim and with sufficient frequency to mildly irritate me, and disrupted my immersion within the story.
The character development is almost non-existent and this is underscored by the token nods given to it. To give a recurring example: Good-Guy is effortlessly capable > something bad happens > he acts out of character > his colleague asks if he’s ok > he is. Seriously. This happens more than once.
The likes of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher character don’t have these moments of humanity (and are arguably poorer and more psychotic for it) but the slivers of vulnerability shown in this book are so shallow and short as to be little more than a distraction. It might be richer and more realistic, for example, if the good guys persisted despite lingering injuries, doubts and nightmares about kills, close calls, and missed opportunities, and occasionally had to ask for help.
There’s some (token) effort to humanise the bad guys, which is unusual in this genre and is to the author’s credit. If only that could have been applied to the left-leaning US administration who are portrayed as cartoonishly sanctimonious ideologues who are out of their depth, indifferent to economic or military realities, and interested only in self-promotion and the accumulation of power.
Given that many of the actions of the fictional dysfunctional administration almost precisely mirror the events taking place in Trump’s White House, I found the liberal-bashing grated more than it might have a few short years ago when such outlandish incompetence would have been clearly fictional. As I said earlier, this genre is typically about escapism and these scenes were an unwelcome window back into reality.
The series was undeniably better when Clancy was alive and at the helm. The dip in quality and the number of books being churned out does smack of a cash grab by the publisher/rights holder. I doubt it will impact on sales too much for the time being, but that may change as new franchises with better editors are released.
Clancy this ain’t, but you could do worse
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Enjoyed It
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Dead or Alive
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The Ryan clan strike again
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Lou Diamond Phillips delivers again.
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