It was a brilliant idea. A really well executed story. Hard not to enjoy it.
But... Tom Clancy is difficult to read.
There's nothing that can be said in 2 pages that he can't turn into 20 pages... whether it's the internal machinations of the Politboro in Moscow or the workings of the Red October itself with all the ranks and characters that are crucial but yet difficult to remember or distinguish between.
It has the rather dubious distinction of being the first book I enjoyed less than the film version. The film distilled Clancy's excellent idea into the bare essentials. The main difference is that in the film Ryan is the only person who thinks Ramius is going to defect. But this is established in the book fairly early on - in fact he writes a letter to let the Commies know.

Only other interesting point is that it harks on a fair bit at the end about how incredible America will be for the defecting Russians... it's height of the cold war stuff!