Tom Cancy's Net Force

ISBN: 978-0425161722

Net Force is Clancy’s answer to the Matrix if the Matrix were to meet a Federal law enforcement branch constituted by human beings instead of machines. Put another way, imagine an intelligence agency and a counter-intelligence agency squaring off against one another, except the counter-intelligence agency is a web company with a specific vision for the technology future of the world.

The ensuing game is played between, predominately, Net Force Agents, and Cybernation adherents who are somewhat like pirates that cause internet problems to offer their service as a solution to the outage they caused–all without getting caught.

There is also a layer of martial artists that work in various capacities on both sides of the spectrum, and hackers who enter a kind of virtual space where they project a given reality around them while searching for the files they desire.

When digital hi-jinks, assassination, and espionage is not happening, there is a lot of sex going on. Straight sex, gay sex, casual sex, affair sex, BDSM sex–you name it, it is probably happening here.

Actually, there is too much sex, even for a spy thriller which came as a surprise since Clancy novels are not something strongly associated with gratuitous amounts of sex–at least not on the big screen. (Fisher in Splinter Cell had far too many other things to do)

The pacing of the writing, though, is designed to keep the reader interested, and one supposes the target audience reading Clancy novels at this point probably found sex motivating. It reminds one that humanity is motivated by two “F’s”. One of them is fighting, and the other one is–well–better left to your imagination.

Speaking of fighting, there is a ton of that here too. An excellent job is done by the writers discussing differing martial arts styles and how they play against each other and what might run through the minds of people using them.

There is a problem in transitioning between scenes in that the reader often has to remember some fragment from before and for awhile it is hard to deduce which people are on what side. Likewise, it difficult to ascertain as a reader which side to cheer for. Neither side is especially righteous or likable. Both of them have their views on life and technology, but neither of them has a great ideal for what that means. This makes the novel more realistic, and puts the reader in a more objective frame of mind. It also creates some emotional distance to all the main characters which might hurt the work as a whole since if any of them pop out during the novel the reader is not going to be especially jarred by their absence.

While this Clancy novel is an interesting read, it probably is not an excellent read. It does what it is designed to do–entertains the reader for awhile and then presents a solution to the problems posed in the narrative. There are no lasting lessons here, and one could probably punch “delete” in their memory files that they ever read it and not miss anything over the course of their life that might make it feel less complete. This is not to say that the work is a “bad work”–but it is more like junk food. A little bit goes a long way. Oh, and by the way, there is some sex in there…