Debt of Honor
The Cold War is now fading into memory, and everyone thinks the nuclear threat is over. The American economy is booming, and aside from a few foreign hotspots, the world looks pretty good.
From an American point of view, at least.
Unfortunately, India, China, and even the Japanese are all being directed by a single mastermind with grudge left over from the second World War into creating a new dominant sphere of influence in the Far East, and America will be forced to team up with its former enemy to stop and enemy that wants to permanently cripple them both.
No matter the cost.
This book is the first in a new Myth Arc Clancy started writing after The Sum of All Fears, in which he started trying to find new antagonists for his heroes to contend with post-Cold War.
Tropes used in Debt of Honor include:
- Actual Pacifist: Prime Minister Koga. It's partially because of this his political enemies temporarily oust him around the start of the book, because he'd screw up their own plans. By the end of the book, though, he comes to accept violence, while distasteful, is reluctantly necessary to serve the cause of peace and justice, especially when American CIA officers use it rescue him from unlawful imprisonment and possibly being murdered at a later date.
- Deconstruction: Of Michael Crichton's Rising Sun. Both feature similar plot lines and characters, even a few similar plot twists, but differ in regards to the question of whether Japanese and American business interests are compatible. While Crichton cast doubt on the topic, Clancy takes the "mutual misunderstandings of the other side make that an easy conclusion to reach" perspective.
- And in a theme that continues from The Sum of All Fears, he also deconstructs the conceit that the end of the Cold War would be better for all parties concerned, with Clancy taking extra time to explain multiple times this is dangerously naive to believe at best throughout the book.
- Kaiju Defense Force: Given an extremely sympathetic perspective, given their antagonist role. Most are portrayed as patriots of one sort or another, and while only a few are portrayed as having truly malicious intentions in the short and long term, most are merely motivated by their national and personal pride.
- Heel Realization: Towards the end of the book, one of Yamata's allies realizes he bet on the losing horse and pissed off the wrong enemy when a retaliatory American strike by stealth aircraft nearly assassinates him.
- My Country, Right or Wrong; The mass majority of the Japanese characters who are remotely sympathetic do what they do, even if it means killing people, with this in mind, though a few of the villains driven by personal or less honorable reasons are shown to profess this publicly while having other motivations.
- Non-Lethal KO: Clark and Chavez use a souped up flashlight that induces a non lethal incapacitatory effect several times throughout the book.[1]
- It proves to be not so lethal when it's used to blind pilots flying into a Japanese airport, which causes them to fatally crash. Clark and Chavez both note the grim irony in this at the time.
- Putting on the Reich: The usage of this trope is noted by Clark and Chavez when they observe Goto having a political rally that disturbingly reminds both of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
- Shown Their Work: In universe, despite being really rusty at the trading business and never having been a big name Wall Street trader (he worked as a trade consultant for one of the firms represented on the Street at most), Jack Ryan himself gets this reaction when he desribes how the stock markets went to hell around the midpoint of the book, even from people who know how it all works on paper.
- Unreliable Narrator: We get a big look inside Raizo Yamata's mind throughout the book, and while he publicly tries to come off as harmless, in private he comes off like a Well-Intentioned Extremist patriot of his country with a tinge of Wide Eyed Idealism. His internal monologue, on the other hand, reveals he's really satisfying a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and is using his privately expressed motivations as a very convenient excuse for his actions, given they dovetail nicely with his own actual goals.
- Unwitting Pawn: Hiroshi Goto is essentially an idiot used as a front man to make Japan an extension of Raizo Yamata's plans. Most of the way through the book, many of Yamata's supporters come to the conclusion they have become this themselves, with varying degrees of self realization.