4 reviews for Op Center
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Op Center
by Tom Clancy
Description:
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center is the beating heart of America’s defense, intelligence and crisis management technology. It is run by a crack team of operatives both within its own walls and out in the field. When a job is too dirty or too dangerous it’s the only place our government can turn. But nothing can prepare Director Paul Hood and his Op-Center crisis management team for what they’re about to uncover a very real, very frightening power play that could unleash new players in a new world order…
About The Author
Clancy, Jr. (April 12, 1947 October 1, 2013) was an American novelist and video game designer best known for his technically detailed espionage and military-science story lines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of his novels were bestsellers, and more than 100 million copies of his books are in print. His name was also used on movie scripts written by ghost writers, nonfiction books on military subjects, and video games. He was a part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles and vice-chairman of their community activities and public affairs committees.
Clancy’s literary career began in 1984 when he sold The Hunt for Red October for $5,000. His works, The Hunt for Red October (1984), Patriot Games (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991), have been turned into commercially successful films. Actors Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine have played Clancy’s most famous fictional character, Jack Ryan; his second-most famous character, John Clark, has been played by actors Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber. Clancy died on October 1, 2013, of an undisclosed illness.
Skryf Review
“Good reading”
Shrawan
Considering the boring title and the fact that Tom Clancy farmed it out to a ghostwriter, OP-CENTER is surprisingly excellent. It doesn’t feel all that dated either, except for the scenes in which characters play video games on their Sega Genesis or Atari Jaguar consoles. I was particularly interested in how Clancy & Co. handled the Korean setting, since I’ve been living in Seoul for the past several years. Clancy gets the geography right and has a few good insights into Korean society, but, overall, OP-CENTER fails to capture the unique flavor of Korea. For example, the descriptions of Seoul and the DMZ are completely generic, and the Korean characters all speak perfect English. On a nit-picky note, Clancy doesn’t fully understand how Korean surnames work, and the result is character names like Kim Lee–which, in English terms, would be like naming your character Jones Smith. I also smiled when one character, an American, could count to ten in Korean and say things like “Do me a favor” and “How long?” but didn’t know the Korean word for goodbye. Hmm…But these criticisms are very minor. OP-CENTER is a solid read, and I’d describe it as basically the TV show 24 minus the character of Jack Bauer. Sure it’s not as weighty as Clancy’s other work (i.e. the stuff he actually wrote himself), and I fully admit that the scene in which a guy uses his pipe to defeat a knife-wielding assailant was cheesy in the extreme, but I guarantee that, when all is said and done, techno-thriller fans will end up with more than their money’s worth.
Anupama
I love Tom Clancy’s books. They’re exciting page turners from the start, and this one was no exception. He definitely has the formula down for writing good suspense! I couldn’t help but think how relevant this book still is some 17 years after it’s publication in the N. Korea aspect. The only negative thing I can come up with is I had some trouble with the motive of the S. Korean rogue group that was at the center of the plot. Maybe it’s due to my lack of knowledge of Korean history and culture, but I would have liked a better feel for the reasons behind their actions.All in all, I liked how the authors sectioned the book and had multiple cliff-hangers. It kept me moving forward and I never felt like there was a slow part I had to plod through. Overall, great and entertaining read.
aashna
The story was good, but I found things confusing for a large portion of the book. It’s hard enough to start a new series where you have to introduce all of your main characters, but to have the main conflict occur in Korea, where the problem is between the north and south countries, was very confusing. It was hard to remember the acronyms for North and South Korea, plus all the names sounded the same and I had a hard time remembering who was from where.I liked the underlying story line of the family conflict, but I’m not sure I liked the additional layer of the press secretary’s unrequited love for her boss. It seems awfully demeaning. In fact all of the main female characters were rather stereotypical — the put-upon wife who’s only purpose in life seems to be her mostly-absent husband and sickly son, the power-hungry