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Tom Clancy's Power Plays #7
Zero Hour
Skywave Research is an international conglomerate and Uplink International's most successful competitor. On the surface, they specialise in creating artificial sapphires which are used in laser development. In actuality, a Pakistani terrorist is using the company as a front for his deadly plans.
352 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 2003
164 people are currently reading
673 people want to read
About the author
Jerome Preisler
64 books109 followersJerome Preisler is the prolific author of almost forty books of fiction and narrative nonfiction, including all eight novels in the New York Times bestselling TOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS series.
His latest book is NET FORCE:DARK WEB (November 2019), the first novel in a relaunch of the New York Times bestselling series co-created by Tom Clancy. Forthcoming in May 2020 is the enovella NET FORCE: EYE OF THE DRONE.
Among Jerome's recent works of narrative history are CODE NAME CAESAR: The Secret Hunt for U-boat 864 During World War Two, and FIRST TO JUMP: How the Band of Brothers Was Aided by the Brave Paratroopers of Pathfinders Company. His next book of nonfiction, CIVIL WAR COMMANDO: William Cushing's Daring Raid to Sink the Invincible Ironclad C.S.S. Albemarle,will be published by Regnery Books in October 2020.
Jerome lives in New York City and coastal Maine.
His latest book is NET FORCE:DARK WEB (November 2019), the first novel in a relaunch of the New York Times bestselling series co-created by Tom Clancy. Forthcoming in May 2020 is the enovella NET FORCE: EYE OF THE DRONE.
Among Jerome's recent works of narrative history are CODE NAME CAESAR: The Secret Hunt for U-boat 864 During World War Two, and FIRST TO JUMP: How the Band of Brothers Was Aided by the Brave Paratroopers of Pathfinders Company. His next book of nonfiction, CIVIL WAR COMMANDO: William Cushing's Daring Raid to Sink the Invincible Ironclad C.S.S. Albemarle,will be published by Regnery Books in October 2020.
Jerome lives in New York City and coastal Maine.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 2, 2026
⭐ A Book That Achieves Nothing Except Wasting Time
Zero Hour is not just a bad book. It is a void where plot, logic, storytelling, and basic narrative coherence go to die. I would give it zero stars if I could, because one star feels like an unearned reward. After slogging through six previous disasters in this series, I genuinely believed we had already reached the lowest possible point. Then I read this, and now I know rock bottom was only the beginning.
From start to finish, this book has no idea what story it is trying to tell. I spent nearly four hundred pages completely lost because the author never provides a central conflict, never explains the villains, never clarifies the threat, and never gives UpLink a coherent reason to be involved. Entire chapters pass without a single meaningful event, and when something finally does happen, it is disconnected nonsense that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. By the time the “big reveal” approaches, I still had no idea who was attacking America, why they were attacking America, or why I was supposed to care.
The plot is an incoherent mess of Pakistan, Belgium, New York, California, random surveillance teams, forgotten subplots, and characters who reappear from earlier books with new personalities, new jobs, and no explanation. Lathrop suddenly becomes a gemstone dealer. Noriko goes from field operative to corporate analyst to territorial, irrational mess who lashes out for no reason. Ricci displays signs of PTSD, which could have been the book’s one credible emotional thread, but the story immediately discards it like everything else. For a franchise that insists Roger Gordian cares deeply about his employees, the complete abandonment of Ricci’s struggle exposes that claim as empty branding.
And then there’s the pacing. It is astonishing how boring this book is. There is no tension. No action. No forward motion. I was so uninterested that I fell asleep multiple times while reading, which was honestly the most enjoyable part of the experience. When the ending finally arrives, it is rushed, meaningless, and devoid of anything resembling suspense. SWORD shows up, fires a few guns, neutralizes a villain who barely mattered, and the book calls it a day. The “mastermind” is barely written. The stakes never feel real. Nothing is resolved in a satisfying way.
The only thing I found remotely interesting was a small discussion about how gemstones are valued. That is the highest praise I can give this novel: a brief aside about rocks was the highlight.
I cannot overstate how much time this book wastes. It is a thriller without a heartbeat, a story without direction, and a novel without purpose. It is astonishing that anyone approved this manuscript, let alone published it under the Tom Clancy brand. If Zero Hour had been the first book in the series, there would never have been a second.
This series has been plumbing the depths of mediocrity for a long time, but Zero Hour blasts through mediocrity and finds something much worse. I have one book left before I can finally escape this mess, and finishing it feels like a chore I’m being punished with. I am angry at the hours of my life this book stole from me.
In short: Zero Hour achieves absolutely nothing except reminding me that time is precious, and this novel does not deserve a single second of it.
Zero Hour is not just a bad book. It is a void where plot, logic, storytelling, and basic narrative coherence go to die. I would give it zero stars if I could, because one star feels like an unearned reward. After slogging through six previous disasters in this series, I genuinely believed we had already reached the lowest possible point. Then I read this, and now I know rock bottom was only the beginning.
From start to finish, this book has no idea what story it is trying to tell. I spent nearly four hundred pages completely lost because the author never provides a central conflict, never explains the villains, never clarifies the threat, and never gives UpLink a coherent reason to be involved. Entire chapters pass without a single meaningful event, and when something finally does happen, it is disconnected nonsense that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. By the time the “big reveal” approaches, I still had no idea who was attacking America, why they were attacking America, or why I was supposed to care.
The plot is an incoherent mess of Pakistan, Belgium, New York, California, random surveillance teams, forgotten subplots, and characters who reappear from earlier books with new personalities, new jobs, and no explanation. Lathrop suddenly becomes a gemstone dealer. Noriko goes from field operative to corporate analyst to territorial, irrational mess who lashes out for no reason. Ricci displays signs of PTSD, which could have been the book’s one credible emotional thread, but the story immediately discards it like everything else. For a franchise that insists Roger Gordian cares deeply about his employees, the complete abandonment of Ricci’s struggle exposes that claim as empty branding.
And then there’s the pacing. It is astonishing how boring this book is. There is no tension. No action. No forward motion. I was so uninterested that I fell asleep multiple times while reading, which was honestly the most enjoyable part of the experience. When the ending finally arrives, it is rushed, meaningless, and devoid of anything resembling suspense. SWORD shows up, fires a few guns, neutralizes a villain who barely mattered, and the book calls it a day. The “mastermind” is barely written. The stakes never feel real. Nothing is resolved in a satisfying way.
The only thing I found remotely interesting was a small discussion about how gemstones are valued. That is the highest praise I can give this novel: a brief aside about rocks was the highlight.
I cannot overstate how much time this book wastes. It is a thriller without a heartbeat, a story without direction, and a novel without purpose. It is astonishing that anyone approved this manuscript, let alone published it under the Tom Clancy brand. If Zero Hour had been the first book in the series, there would never have been a second.
This series has been plumbing the depths of mediocrity for a long time, but Zero Hour blasts through mediocrity and finds something much worse. I have one book left before I can finally escape this mess, and finishing it feels like a chore I’m being punished with. I am angry at the hours of my life this book stole from me.
In short: Zero Hour achieves absolutely nothing except reminding me that time is precious, and this novel does not deserve a single second of it.
July 8, 2017
A rather disjointed tale covering Sapphires (real or artificial?) and stolen high tech laser weapons and a plot to blow up storage tanks of Hydrogen fluoride. Lots of bouncing around between plots is distracting and only rates this one a 2 star rating.
March 26, 2020
Precious stones, secret technology, and black-market deals plus New York City makes for an interesting combination that slowly finds UpLink getting involved via an unexpected source. Zero Hour is the seventh book of Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series written by Jerome Preisler who brings together secondary characters from previous books to join the main cast.
Patrick Sullivan leaves his mistress’ apartment to meet his buyer of artificially created sapphires as well as plans for a laser gun codenamed Dragonfly but is killed by his buyer and becomes a missing person. Sullivan’s employer, a Pakistani national who doesn’t know Sullivan stole the plan, is planning to use the laser gun for a massive terrorist attack by releasing a deadly acid vapor cloud over New York City as well as sell the other prototype to Muslim freedom fighters in Kashmir. Sullivan’s wife goes to an UpLink employee who was his last meeting and asked for Sword’s help—thanks to newspaper reporting on UpLink’s help to find the Russian conspirators who attacked Time’s Square—to find her husband. The employee goes around the local Sword leader to Roger Gordian to ask for the favor forcing the new UpLink CEO to send Tom Ricci to New York to investigate the matter. Ricci and the local Sword leader discuss her investigation into Sullivan’s employer on what to do with the Sullivan matter then Ricci goes to upstate New York to spy on Sullivan’s employer and sees men packing things into a U-Haul that he tails to a nearby motel and has a local Sword operative observe it while learning where it was rented. Unfortunately, one of the terrorists make the lookout and arrange an escape, but Ricci meets with Sullivan’s murderer and learns about the Dragonfly that he connects with where the U-Haul was rented. Ricci leads a Sword team that intercepts that van just before the laser gun was powered up.
Honestly the above synopsis is leaving out two subplots that at the end of the book amounted to just taking up space even though one was entertaining and had potential to add to the overall story but fizzled to nothing. Upon ending this book it wasn’t hard to rate this the worst book of the Power Plays series as nothing really came together and Preisler focused on characters who in the end amounted to nothing in the overall scheme of things while a character study on Ricci was underwhelming. And as one of the shortest books in the series it really tells and exposes one of the biggest weaknesses of Preisler’s writing.
Zero Hour is short and devoid of coherence in the various narrative threads while focusing on characters that in the end did not having anything to do with the endgame. Jerome Preisler has written some good installments of this series, but all the things he’s done wrong in the so-so installments were on display making for a disappointing book.
Patrick Sullivan leaves his mistress’ apartment to meet his buyer of artificially created sapphires as well as plans for a laser gun codenamed Dragonfly but is killed by his buyer and becomes a missing person. Sullivan’s employer, a Pakistani national who doesn’t know Sullivan stole the plan, is planning to use the laser gun for a massive terrorist attack by releasing a deadly acid vapor cloud over New York City as well as sell the other prototype to Muslim freedom fighters in Kashmir. Sullivan’s wife goes to an UpLink employee who was his last meeting and asked for Sword’s help—thanks to newspaper reporting on UpLink’s help to find the Russian conspirators who attacked Time’s Square—to find her husband. The employee goes around the local Sword leader to Roger Gordian to ask for the favor forcing the new UpLink CEO to send Tom Ricci to New York to investigate the matter. Ricci and the local Sword leader discuss her investigation into Sullivan’s employer on what to do with the Sullivan matter then Ricci goes to upstate New York to spy on Sullivan’s employer and sees men packing things into a U-Haul that he tails to a nearby motel and has a local Sword operative observe it while learning where it was rented. Unfortunately, one of the terrorists make the lookout and arrange an escape, but Ricci meets with Sullivan’s murderer and learns about the Dragonfly that he connects with where the U-Haul was rented. Ricci leads a Sword team that intercepts that van just before the laser gun was powered up.
Honestly the above synopsis is leaving out two subplots that at the end of the book amounted to just taking up space even though one was entertaining and had potential to add to the overall story but fizzled to nothing. Upon ending this book it wasn’t hard to rate this the worst book of the Power Plays series as nothing really came together and Preisler focused on characters who in the end amounted to nothing in the overall scheme of things while a character study on Ricci was underwhelming. And as one of the shortest books in the series it really tells and exposes one of the biggest weaknesses of Preisler’s writing.
Zero Hour is short and devoid of coherence in the various narrative threads while focusing on characters that in the end did not having anything to do with the endgame. Jerome Preisler has written some good installments of this series, but all the things he’s done wrong in the so-so installments were on display making for a disappointing book.
March 24, 2018
Very fast read with a believable plot. Good action genre book.
November 13, 2018
Artificial gems, laser technology and a missing salesman add up to a potential terrorist attack that members of a telecommunication company race to stop.
I normally love the Tom Clancy series, but not this one. Too many characters, poor character development and disjointed plot.
I normally love the Tom Clancy series, but not this one. Too many characters, poor character development and disjointed plot.
December 7, 2025
Even though Tom Clancy did not write this book, the author did a great job The. It was hard to believe that it was a Tom Clancy riding it. He picked up all of the nuances and the inflections in his writing that really made it seem the same I enjoyed a tremendously terrific plot, terrific plot, well done by the reader and the author.
July 10, 2017
Not my favorite Tom Clancy book, I thought the book ran out of story or they just decided to end it... or maybe the plot was just weak.
September 25, 2018
Chilling
Riveting but a bit hard to follow. Too many characters with unfamiliar names. The outcome was kind of predictab!e but still shocking.
Riveting but a bit hard to follow. Too many characters with unfamiliar names. The outcome was kind of predictab!e but still shocking.
May 15, 2020
Power Plays Good
March 22, 2021
Average at best - so many of the key characters get so little air time and in some cases are taking disappointing turns. Glad there is only 1 book left in the series.
July 1, 2022
Loved it
December 7, 2022
Don't bother reading this one. It has to be the worst Tom Clancy novel I have ever read; and I have read 25 or more.
September 13, 2023
Somehow this made the earlier books look so much better. Politka, Ruthless.com and Cold War remain the best.
August 2, 2022
A nice book. The Power Plays series tends the most to turn mundane conversations to meaningful dialogue, and Zero Hour ain't no exception. The requisite investigations and thrills are there too. I suppose the topic is a bit meh to me, thus the book is an average Power Plays entry for me, hence four stars.
Currently reading
September 21, 2011I liked this book very much. This is because I like reading science fiction books and watching science fiction shows. Zero Hour was action filled and very interesting. I have read some of Tom Clancy's books before but this one was the best. I especially liked this book because it relates to the book we are reading during team. It is almost the same but this is fiction and has talk about a attack on the United States, while the one in team is non-fiction and is not in the US. I would recommend this book to other people to read.
May 10, 2010
Did not finish. Never got going
July 25, 2013
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12077597
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12077597
January 28, 2016
Bad. Don't read books by Jerome Preisler
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews