- In the much earlier book "Locked on", Jack Ryan decides to run for president for the second time. His third child, Katie, is reported as being 10 years old and his fourth, Kyle, is aged 8.
- In "Act of defiance", Ryan is still president and his cabinet is still composed of the same characters. Yet Katie is now a Lieutentant Commander (select) in the U.S. Navy and Kyle is a Lieutenant, USN. Obviously they've aged some fourteen years overnight.
- Katie and Kyle are now twins (they've been referred to as twins in other books as well).
- In the list of principal characters, Dr Sally Ryan (the first born) is an opthalmic surgeon (as is her mother). Yet in chapter one, a few pages on, we read that "Like her older sister, Sally, who loved her work as a pediatric surgeon ...." Bad editing.
- John Clark is still going strong. I suppose that if we are still in Jack Ryan's second term as president, then John Clark too has not aged.
Once one gets past these errors, the book is very good. The plot is very reminiscent of Tom Clancy's first novel, "The hunt for Red October", echoing it to no small amount. Even several characters in the book are aware of the parallels! This makes for a very interesting, and dare I say it, exciting read.
Fortunately or not, all of Katie Ryan's ideas, suppositions and guesses turn out to be correct, echoing those of her father's. As in Stella Rimington's books, KR is always right. As someone wrote about Rimington's character Liz Carlyle1 : What I hate most is that Liz Carlyle is portrayed as being completely omniscient. Every hunch she has, every deduction she makes, any inferences she makes from questioning people - they're always right! This feeling that MI5 could function effectively with only one member of staff - superwoman Liz - spoils it for me. She's the one who could tell you what the train driver had for lunch just knowing his shoe size. Shame - because otherwise a good read. No wonder that KR gets up some characters' noses. Being the daughter of the president doesn't help, either.
The use of acronyms, especially those that are not explained, gets tedious, although I imagine that spelling them out in full would be even worse. The most egregious example is the SCIF - there is no explanation of what this might mean, although it's probably something that starts "secret command" or "secret communication" -it's actually Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. I was taught that before using an acronym, one should spell it out in full then show the acronym in brackets. If there is a list of principal characters, then there could easily be a list of acronyms.
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