The Clancy estate, and editor Tom Colgan, need to see the below review regarding Ryanverse continuity.

I stumbled across the review of Rules of Engagement by Wilson Cottonstone on Amazon Japan, and it stuck a chord deeply. I can’t say I agree with every single line of it, but the main thrust of it left me inwardly shouting “Yes, yes!”

It’s absolutely clear, reviewer Cottonstone is as passionate about the series as I am, and wants it to deliver the thrills we all know it can. But his review points out a snowballing fundamental flaw for Ryanverse continuity — that time has lost almost all meaning and the perpetuation of the old guard is doing them and the series a disservice.

I know there are rules in place that govern the series — Jack Ryan Sr. is the president (in perpetuity it would seem), and John Clark has to feature in each book — but series is killing itself (autolibrosuricide?) because of the very rules that may have once aimed to stop it losing the plot.

I know authors have tried to push back on the now apparent timelessness of Ryanverse continuity but there is resistance and risk aversion aplenty. However, now is the time to draw a line in the sand and write new “rules of engagement” for the Ryanverse, so it can once again move forward.

The review is reproduced in full below.

The Degradation of Continuity in the Ryanverse

One of the defining strengths of the original Tom Clancy Ryanverse was continuity. Not simply recurring characters, but the sense that time itself mattered. Characters aged. Injuries carried forward. Careers evolved. Institutions changed. Political decisions had consequences years later. The world accumulated history.

That continuity was not background flavor. It was the foundation of the realism.

John Terrence Kelly — later John Clark — is perhaps the clearest example. Clark was never written as an immortal action hero. He was a Vietnam-era covert operator whose body accumulated damage across decades. His credibility came not from invincibility, but from accumulated operational history, adaptation, and experience. Clark belonged to a very specific generation tied to Cold War covert operations, early special warfare culture, and Vietnam-era deniable missions.

This grounding matters because the early Ryanverse anchored itself to recognizable geopolitical reality. The events of The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Clear and Present Danger were not floating fantasy timelines. They were connected directly to late-Cold-War Soviet operations, US-Colombia counter-narcotics policy, and real-world military and intelligence structures. Clark was already a mature and highly experienced operator during those events.

The chronology therefore matters.

The USS Dallas swimmer extraction, Soviet operations, Colombia missions, Ryan’s progression through the CIA and White House, and the aging of Ryan’s children all reinforce the same idea: the original Ryanverse expected the reader to understand that time was passing.

Domingo Chavez followed a similarly grounded progression. Ding evolved from a young infantry and special operations soldier into a mature tactical leader, husband, father, graduate-level educated professional, and eventually a senior command figure within Rainbow. By the later books, Ding was already functioning more like a field-grade operational commander than a simple shooter.

This mattered because the original Ryanverse respected institutional progression. Jack Ryan moved from analyst to strategist to statesman. Clark transitioned from covert operator to mentor and planner. Chavez matured into leadership. The world felt inhabited by people living through actual time.

Importantly, Tom Clancy had already built a believable generational succession structure into the series itself:

• Ryan became the statesman.
• Clark became the elder strategist and mentor.
• Chavez became the operational commander.
• Jack Ryan Jr. emerged as the next-generation field operator.
• Katie and Kyle Ryan represented the next institutional generation.

The architecture for continuity already existed naturally within the story.

The newer continuation novels increasingly abandon that logic.

The breaking point for me came when the books openly acknowledged that Clark was old enough to be “the grandfather of a military-age male” — and then immediately continued deploying him as if he were still a peak operational assault leader. The latest novel literally opens with Clark leading an underwater assault operation against a Russian freighter alongside a roughly retirement-age Chavez.

At that point the continuity strain becomes impossible to ignore.

The issue is not that older characters remain relevant. In reality, highly experienced operators often transition into advisory, planning, mentoring, intelligence, and strategic leadership roles where accumulated judgment becomes more valuable than physical performance. Earlier Clancy novels understood this perfectly.

The issue is that the newer books increasingly preserve legacy characters as mythological action avatars rather than aging human beings operating within realistic institutional structures.

This shift affects the entire tone of the franchise.

Older Clancy novels derived tension from:

• logistics,
• incomplete information,
• institutional friction,
• political constraints,
• realistic limitations,
• and the possibility of catastrophic failure.

The newer novels increasingly feel structured like videogame campaigns or streaming-action scripts:

• briefing scene,
• tactical insertion,
• exposition cutscene,
• elite-unit action beat,
• technological McGuffin,
• crisis resolved.

Many chapters no longer feel like scenes inhabited by real people working inside systems. They feel like transitional cutscenes designed to move the reader to the next action sequence.

Even the technical detail has changed in texture. Classic Clancy used research to construct believable systems. The newer books often use technical terminology atmospherically, creating the appearance of realism without the deeper procedural immersion that once defined the series.

Most importantly, the sense of genuine risk has diminished. Earlier Ryanverse novels often created the feeling that events could spiral beyond anyone’s control. Political fallout, operational failure, and strategic uncertainty felt real. In the newer books, outcomes increasingly feel predetermined. The reader assumes some hidden capability, impossible operation, or last-minute intelligence breakthrough will inevitably resolve the crisis.

The result is not simply weaker realism. It is weaker suspense.

Ironically, the original Ryanverse became iconic precisely because it treated continuity, institutions, and consequence seriously. The newer books increasingly resemble franchise maintenance: recognizable characters moving through modular geopolitical action scenarios.

The problem is not that John Clark became old.

The problem is that the Ryanverse originally taught readers that age, injury, time, and consequence mattered — and then gradually stopped honoring its own rules.