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Book Title: Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Mirror Image
Author: Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik and Jeff Rovin
Genre: thriller
Rating: 3/5

Summary (from book cover): The Cold War is over. And chaos is setting in. The new president of Russia is trying to create a democratic regime. But there are strong elements within the country that are trying to stop him: the ruthless Russian mafia, the right-wing nationalists, and those nefarious forces that will do whatever it takes to return Russia to the days of the Czar.

Op-Center, the newly-founded but highly successful crisis management team, begins a race against the clock and against the hardliners. Their task is made even more difficult by the discovery of a Russian counterpart... but this one's controlled by those same repressive hardliners.

Two rival Op-Centers, virtual mirror images of each other. But if this mirror cracks, it'll be more than seven years of bad luck.

My thoughts: I was a bit sceptical towards this book as Tom Clancy is known by being the master of the techno-thriller genre, which is not my thing. I don't like much technological description, as it happens on Atlantis by David Gibbins. Fortunately the description of the electronic elements isn't extent, just the necessary to understand which use they have on the story.

I actually liked the story, though at the beginning I thought I would suffer from jet-lag. The chapters jump from a geographical point to another, where the actions is taking place, and since this points were on opposed sides of the globe, the chapter tell us when, where and the time in which the action is taking place. So you pass from an afternoon to a morning and then it's night. At first is tired a bit hence the jet-lag feeling, but then after getting into the rhythm it turns out to be agreeable.

We find ourselves in the eves of Russia setting a operations center fully operational, an exact mirror of another center set on the U.S., but this one isn't ruled by the Russian government but by a minister, who was defeated on elections and dreams of getting back to the golden age of the Soviet Union. To make sure the U.S. will not meddle in, they're threatened by terrorists' attacks. But of course the U.S. can't be without doing anything and the American Op-center gets into action.

The characters aren't much developed, only enough to let us know what is going through their minds, but we can't stay indifferent to what awaits them in their varied missions. It's easy to connect to them and fell we're part of the teams.

I think it would work as a movie, since it's a bit visual and it could work just like the adaptations of Bourne and Jack Ryan. As a book it entertains and it's not boring, it's actually a nice reading to lighten up.