A Review of The Hunt for Red October

I recently finished The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. It was my first Clancy novel and overall I really enjoyed it. I have previous read some military-themed novels but this one was quite different in tone and especially in the pacing, though in a good way.

One of the most important aspects of a thriller is the tension and pacing, and I can commend the author for doing an excellent job in this regard. The tension is maintained throughout the novel mainly due to the secrecy of everything going on, and Clancy achieves this through clever narrative devices. The novel constantly switches perspectives between the Americans and the Russians which would make one assume that it would be quite clear what both sides are plotting, yet at no point was I particularly certain of what was going on right until the end. This is due to the fact that though the characters explain their decisions it is difficult to trust them. In western Cold War–era fiction the Russians are always the bad guys, but the men of the Red October are defecting which makes you think they’re actually the good guys. From the perspective of the Americans, this crew could be bluffing and actually have nefarious goals considering they carry nuclear warheads. From the perspective of the Russians, the crew could also be bluffing in a similar manner. From the perspective of the rest of the crew, even the command could be bluffing and hiding their real objective. This complicated reality, that is not revealed fully until the end, makes you constantly question what will happen next and never feel certain about your predictions.

Though the pacing is overall excellent, I think the novel ran out of steam towards the end. About ninety percent of the way through the novel there is a final action scene between the Red October and the Russian hunter submarine. This is meant to be a high-stakes scene because the hunter sub could destroy the defecting sub, and in turn kill a lot of the characters we have become familiar with. However, I felt no tension whilst reading this. Whilst it would have been theoretically possible for this book to end badly, popular works of fiction predominantly have good endings. This fact, combined with the successful manner in which previous tense situations were resolved throughout the book and the small amount remaining of the novel, gave me no doubt that this scene would play out identically, and hence I didn’t feel any tension. By placing this scene so close to the end of the novel Clancy made it almost useless as a narration device, and this scene could have been omitted entirely without changing the experience of this book.

Whilst I enjoyed the military theme I didn’t find it that active in the plot. The choice of focus on submarines is critical to realising the plot and the rest of the depicted Cold War–era military equipment fits well thematically, however, these things acted more as a backdrop for the plot than as a focal point and there were very few cool action moments presented in this novel. I don’t think that’s inherently bad since the novel did not present an actual war, but rather rising tensions between the two superpowers and a focus on slow paced development of the situation; nonetheless, I was expecting more military action based on military-themed novels I have previously read. The use of submarines as the main setting set the atmosphere perfectly—just like the crew were cut off from outside information for most of the time, you, the reader, are cut off from knowing the truth for most of the novel. As a side note, I found the use of military terminology to be both a nice touch but also somewhat annoying. It definitely increased my immersion into this historic world, however, I often found myself not fully sure what a certain word was referring to. Most of the time this didn’t matter much because the descriptions were not critical to understanding the plot, nevertheless, on the rare occasion I had to look something up in a dictionary¹ to refresh my memory and that drew me out of the story.

I found the American propaganda to be very strong with this novel. Especially in the later half of the novel when contact has been made with the defecting crew, I feel that the author didn’t let up any opportunity to remind the reader, through character to character conversations, just how good the USA is and just how bad the Soviet Union is. In a way I’m actually unsure about my own feelings on this since the author didn’t give out any obvious misinformation—life under communism was in fact quite bad compared to western standards. Nonetheless, the subtext did strike me as very over-the-top and intrusive at times. This is a problem I’ve had with numerous novels I’ve read; sometimes the author repeats and emphasizes his political views too much and it can really sour my opinion of them.

Overall, I found this novel to be a great work of military thriller. The excellent pacing throughout most of the novel, the constant switching of perspectives, the hinting of politics pulling the strings in the background, the secrecy of everything going on—all these factors made this novel a pleasure to read and kept me excited all the way through. I would definitely recommend this book if you are interested in a good thriller.