I vaguely remember reading the book back in the 80's, I have seen and enjoyed the movie dozens of times but listening to the book was more fun than I ..Show More »anticipated. I'm not a purist when it comes to adapting books to movies and I appreciated the adaptions made in the translation of this title. The movie is fabulous in it's own right but listening to the book let my imagination visually soar. Scott Brick reading was phenomenal as ever. His inflections throughout the story are spot on - I have a bad habit of gasping at exciting points in the storyline while listening to a point my husband thinks something is wrong with me. The storyline is just one entertaining wild ride. Another very much enjoyed audiobook that I would recommend!

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I've always thought that "Cardinal" was the most interesting of Clancy's Jack Ryan books. And in terms of the quality of the story, I enjoyed the una..Show More »bridged version of this story even more than the abridgment that I bought many years ago. It felt like I was getting "bonus material" beyond the original version of the story that I knew. I've been waiting for a long time to see unabridged Audible versions of some of the Jack Ryan novels.


As far as the reading of the story was concerned, I was less impressed. Perhaps it's unfair to rate Michael Prichard's read when matched up against the masterful performance of the abridged version by David Ogden Stiers. Nonetheless, I did feel at times like the soul of this often-soulful story was drained in Prichard's read. In certain passages, such as the pivotal conversation between Felitov and his KGB interrogator, I sorely missed the intensity and well-defined character sense of David Ogden Stiers' performance of the dialog. Don't get me wrong-- Prichard is a fine reader of nonfiction. But a book like "Cardinal" loses a lot when it is read like the evening news instead of the emotional human drama that it is.

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When you listen to this book you want to check your tape player, and clean the head and rollers, but wait, you can't because it is a digital recording..Show More ». The quality of the recording is horrible. The person who produced this version of the recording needs to be fired along with the quality assurance people who you would expect to be checking the recording. This is not a Audible problem, the MP3 recordings from Brilliance are the same horrible clipped compression. I bought the Hunt for Red October on MP3 cd and it has the same flaws. Someone should have caught this.

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As a Company Representative covering a substantial part of Central Qld, I spend a lot of time in my Car!
Tom Clancy's Books not only deliver excel..Show More »lent stories but also good value in the Hours it takes to conclude them!
The Sum of All Fears has the usual Clancy ingredients, very precise descriptions & strong detail. I think that the Reader, Scott Brick, is perfectly suited to this style of narrative.
His voice & tone add an extra dimension to a long story which could easily become boring with a less accomplished Reader.
As with most long stories, I find it best digested in large chunks! Most of my journeys are 3 hours plus and this enables me to get really involved. I think a Book like this would be less satisfying if it were listened to in ten to twenty minute sessions. I will undoubtedly be working my way through all of Tom's work!

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I love Clancy books, but this Narrator is too robotic. Doesn't even sound human to me.

A monster of a book but worth every cent, this Jack Ryan tale is woven into a great tapestry. The charicters are sublime and they all work. His know..Show More »ledge on warfare, be it truth or fiction, is of the highest calibre. If you only get one Clancy, get this one but be warned, it is very hard to turn off. Ideal for when you have a week of painting the house or you are confined to quarters!

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Adictive and a delight to move outside of the Ryan tales. For anyone into Clancy make sure you 'do' the Ryan tales before you get this one....then ge..Show More »t this one!

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Ok, it starts out very slow, and I almost gave it up. If you can get past all the open deep political junk the book turns into something you will have..Show More » a hard time putting down. I loved it, another one of his books is referenced heavy in this one, but you don't have to know it to enjoy this book.

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Tom Clancy - writing about Jack Ryan and his 21st century swashbuckling and globe-trotting adventure/spy/drama books - must have been having a VERY ba..Show More »d day when he wrote this stinker of a book! Jack Ryan, now President, authorizes his OWN SON and NEPHEWS to become paid assasins for a government kill-team that targets 'suspected' 'bad guys' ??? Give me a break! The whole book was so implausible that I had a hard time in grasping the concept -- thinking that surely I was missing out on the IMPORTANT stuff.... and come to find out, there wasn't any of THAT, either!

To make matters even worse, the narrator sounds like he's reading poetry - not trying to enliven already dull characters and at least differentiate in voices or dialog, plus he has an annoying habit of ending all his long-winded sentences on a 'downturn' -- sounding like everything had a "Oh, poor thing, it's so sad....." sound -- that might be helpful in reading bedtime stories to not-very-sleepy kids -- but certainly not what was needed for an 'action' story.

And the reward for listening through a painful 16 hours of this nonsense? The story just ends.... as our unproven (to me) hero flies off into the blue - supposedly on his way to another adventure. If it's another adventure like this first one, I'll read a paragraph synopsis and feel like I came out ahead.

Tom Clancy may have 'hit it big' previously -- but this is a total bust! I only rated it ONE star because there was nothing LESS that would qualify as a rating!

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I've got every Tom Clancy book Audible has done, but they all suffer - BADLY - from Michael Pritchard's narration.

Lou Diamond Phillips d..Show More »oes a superb job of performing this latest Clancy thriller.

Don't be deceived by thinking the Lou Diamond Phillips, the actor you see in movies and on TV is the extent of his dramatic range. He is absolutely wonderful at capturing the characters, accents, genders, etc in this Audiobook

5 Stars +++





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This was the most intriguing Clancy novel in a long time. The very real threat of the Chinese, (see yesterday's headlines of Japan and China) and cybe..Show More »r warfare is as fascinating as it is threatening. No one researches better than Clancy and few know military operations and capabilities more than him.

Better still, the suspense in this novel is top rate, on the same level as his earlier novels. Lou Diamond Phillips is the perfect choice for this work. His characterizations are spot on.

In his recent works, Clancy has been criticized for his politics. This is not the case with this book at all.

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