Unfortunately, that whole aspect of the book still comes across as ridiculous. I appreciate the amount of effort and creativity Perry put into trying to make his notion of VR believable. That's more than I can say for a lot of Steve Perry's work. Overall NET FORCE is no great shakes, but it did manage to keep me engaged all the way through. So you see, it all depends on how you look at it.
Is it one of the better Steve Perry (the actual writer) novels? Yes. Is it one of the great Tom Clancy (the credited writer) novels? No. In all fairness, though, being unrealistic doesn't necessarily qualify a book as "bad." Those willing to accept NET FORCE as mere techno-fantasy will be rewarded with a pretty decent story. Did I mention she does her ninja training in the nude? In a pulp novel or a comic book I wouldn't have any problem with her, but she's way too over-the-top to be inhabiting a Tom Clancy novel. The book also features a young, beautiful female assassin who will greatly strain your suspension of disbelief. What would be the work of a few minutes on Windows 10 seems to take half an hour in VR Land. Not only is Clancy's idea of VR not even remotely feasible, in all practicality it would be more cumbersome and time-consuming than actually useful. This whole virtual reality thing might have seemed cool in 1998, back when relatively few people were computer literate, but these days even a child can readily see how nonsensical and technologically impossible it all is. Just as BACK TO THE FUTURE 2 was overly optimistic in portraying 2016 America as a land of flying cars and hoverboards, NET FORCE goes overboard in positing a near-future in which people surf the internet via customizable virtual reality "skins" rather than Google or Firefox. And, in terms of getting things right, it fails utterly.
Written back in 1998, NET FORCE attempts to predict what life might be like in 2010. NET FORCE is a tremendous letdown on both these fronts. There are two primary reasons people read Tom Clancy: (1.) for his hyper-realistic storytelling, and (2.) for his ingeniously complicated plot lines.
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