Book:
Red Storm Rising (1986)
Author: Tom Clancy
Summary (5*): You all know it. The very best late-Cold-War imagining of what WW3 would have looked like if we fought the Soviets during the Reagan era, at the end of their empire. Unparalleled set-piece narration of interrelated land, sea, and air battles. Lots of settings, and both the broadest macro and squad-level micro hit hard and seem realistic. Still an amazing read 40 years (!!??!) after publication.
Plot (5*): World War 3 circa the late 80's, told from about 10 different perspectives. The kickoff was a terrorist attack on a Soviet refinery, causing the Politburo to target the Persian Gulf for energy security, but NATO needed to be neutralized prior to their taking of the oil fields. An invasion of Germany under false pretenses, an attack on Iceland to open the door for Atlantic Ocean ops, and bomber/submarine attacks on convoys are the prime areas of conflict. It's particularly interesting to read this in 2026 in some ways it feels totally current, and in others it feels closer to WW1 than now.
Characters (2*): The Soviet side of the story is told primarily through Alekseyev, a General in the Red Army; the American side is represented mostly by more junior fighters an Air Force weatherman, a sergeant of tanks in Germany, a Naval Reserve intel specialist, and a 688-class submarine captain. All work for what the book is trying to do. This is not in any way a character driven book, but there's enough inner dialogue to sympathize with all the characters at one time or another.
Re-readability (5*): Extreme. I've read this book probably 10 times since publication. It's like clockwork. Quite a few pages, but super-fast to get through. And the story is so well told, that it doesn't really matter that I can now recite whole passages without opening it up the reading is still enjoyable and engaging for me.
Who It's For: This should be required reading (and, in effect, it pretty much is) for anyone that enjoys military fiction. It's different than Clancy's other books. For all you millennials and younger that haven't yet read this one, do yourself a favor and dive in.
Post Script: Three other things about this book. First, I think it's one of the very best time capsules of the attitude it felt like we all had around 1986. It's hard to explain exactly, but there was a mix of optimism, confidence, and a feeling of invincibility that probably peaked around then. The Soviets weren't obviously on the decline quite yet, and definitely it was a multipolar world. I can't put a finger on it, but this book (and the best of Clancy's Ryan novels in general) still wakes that feeling up in me. I love it. Second, for me this is the absolute apex of technical thriller fictional novels, regardless of era. Before its publication, classics like
Run Silent, Run Deep and
Fields of Fire were the standard, but they lacked the scope and the "modern" feel of this; since 1986, there hasn't really been anything that approaches it in terms of scope, quality, and story (not all the fault of the books, it's harder to imagine something like this in a unipolar world). Third, I sometimes just look at the Table of Contents of
Red Storm Rising and smile to myself, because I know the stories already, and Clancy's chapter titles just bring those thoughts in waves.
Maskirovka?
The Frisbees of Dreamland?
Polar Glory?
The Race of Cripples? Come on. Those are spectacular titles, each one could have been its own techno-thriller, and they each paint a picture clear as day in my head.
