Red Rabbit

Rating:
Summary: Good premise, weak book
Review: With "Red rabbit", Tom Clancy goes back to his most succesfull character, the young Jack Ryan. Set back in early 1982, this book is an attempt by the author to make ammends to his readers. Nobody wants to know about endless reunions in the Oval Office, or Jack complaining all the time about a job he didn't even want in the first place, or how he has to trust his secretary to smoke covertly. No, now Jack is back in his thirties, a promising analyst for CIA involved in a russian plot to murder the Pope, and the defection of a KGB agent.

The premise of the book is good. Although we know what happens to the Pope in the end, Clancy usually knows how to describe intrigue, and this time the political part plays an important role in the story. The problem is, "Red rabbit" is 300 pages too long. The good political plot and the defection part should be really interesting, but the endless dialogue, the repeated and sometimes amusingly idiotic opinions of the characters (stereothypes, most of them, like the "bloody" thing with the british), and the fact that NOTHING happens during most of the chapters made this book become a tiresome reading. It just dragged on. Take, for example, Forsyth's "The day of the Jackal". We also know what will happen at the end of the book, but Forsyth took the time to develop a great plot and two unforgettable characters, and constructed his excellent book around them. "Red rabbit" is nothing of the sort, although it has its moments (few of them). I only imagine what this book could have been if handed to a writer more concerned about his readers than about sales.

But, looking back, "Red rabbit" is not as disastrous as people say. It is certainly better than "The bear and the dragon" - and this is not praise, just a fact. This book should have deserved a 3-star rating, but there's one thing that bothered me during the reading, and left me scratching my head in amazement: at the beginning of one chapter, one of the characters is in Budapest, Hungary, and wakes up at dawn, thinking that in Moscow, his native city, he would still be asleep, because due to time-zone differences it would still be dark at the russian capital. I read the paragraph at least a dozen times, trying to see if I had understood it right. Something clearly was amiss. I looked in the maps, just to be sure, just to see if I was not crazy, and there it was: Moscow is WAY east of Budapest; the sun in fact rises first in Moscow than in the hungarian capital. I mean, if a mistake like that can pass edition, what further wrong information is given in the story? I know this is a work of fiction, but this kind of basic errors are simply unforgivable. That lack of respect to the reader is unforgivable.

Clancy's future books, only if I find them in used-books stores.

Grade 4.5/10


Rating:
Summary: "More amusing than his cabbage soup, certainly..."
Review: What an awful piece of crap!! Some of the dialogue was just atrocious. I mean, really, have you ever heard anyone actually talk like the character's in this novel? When disussing Cathy's profession with his English colleague, Simon, (Chap. 8), Jack gives a description of a procedure Cathy does. Simon supposedly shudders at the description, and responds, "I suppose it's better than being blind." To this Jack responds, "Yeah, I know what you mean. Like when Sally was in shock-trauma. The idea of somebody carving up my little girl didn't exactly thrill me." Whaaaaaaaa??? Okay, beyond the absolute shallowness of the dialogue, how does Clancy expect us to believe that two guys who evidently cannot stomach the thought of routine medical procedures are going to save the free world from the threat of global communism with their brilliant and objective analytical skills? And the absolute idiocy of the sterotypical English conversation. Do these people really go around saying "quite" and "bloody good" all the time? Quite the sterotypical view of the English, wouldn't you say old boy??

And when his characters engage in self-reflection. C'mon, a cypher clerk, who according to the storyline, had never given much thought to the messages he encrypted suddenly develops an instant conscience, and decides that the assassination plot on the pope is just too much. And the number given to the message sent to the Rezident in Bulgaria, 666? I mean puleeeeze. And in chapter 3, when Zaitzev is having dinner with his family and reflecting on his place within the hierarchy of the KGB, he thinks to himself that it is rather amusing that a lowly fuctionary like himself is entrusted with such great secrets. Here is the actual line from the novel. Are you ready for this??? Okay, here it is:

"More amusing than his cabbage soup, certainly, nutritious though it might be."

Once you stop laughing, you have got to ask yourself this question...is that the worst line ever written in a novel?? What the hell does that mean?? More amusing than his cabbage soup??? Anyhow you get my point. Bottom line, this is a really bad book!


Rating:
Summary: Ugh -- why did I finish it?
Review: This book reminds me of some particularly gruesome c-rations I remember choking down. When I complained about how vile they were, the Gunny asked me why I ate them if they were so bad. "Well, they're chow" I replied.
Well, this was a Clancy book and it wasn't supposed to be this bad. I believe that Tom had a lot of spare text -- philosophizing about the roots of the USSR's dowbfall -- that his editors had begged him to take out of other novels; and he likely cobbled it all together for this offering. Needing a plot to tie it all together, I think he borrowed heavily on Claire Sterling's _The Pope Must Die_ as the skeleton to hang this offal on. And it is offal -- or something that sounds like it.
Will I read another Clancy novel? Probably. I have long flights coming up and -- well -- its chow.

Rating:
Summary: No more for me
Review: How the mighty have fallen! I thought Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" was perhaps the best US/commie cold war high tech thriller I have ever read, or ever will read. Red Rabbit, in contrast, was one of the most boring, repetitive, cliché-ridden unexciting books I've read in a long time, maybe ever. The basic premise was OK, and I liked the fact that the central story line weaves between real historical events (the attempted assassination of the pope in 1981) and fiction. As other reviewers have noted, the book is far too long, perhaps by 50 percent or more. Much of the extra length comes from the fact that minor background comments are repeated over and over, to the point where most readers will want to scream if they hear one more time that "Sir" Jack Ryan went through Marine basic training (U.S. Marines are the protectors of the free world, don't you know!), or that his wife worked for Johns Hopkins hospital (evidently the very best surgeons in the universe work there, and most of those who did not are nincompoops), or that Ryan hates flying but loves good coffee. Clancy's relentless American jingoism is worn prominently on his sleeve throughout, which may appeal to a subset of US readers but is like fingernails on a blackboard for most. Character development is quite spotty. Clancy does spend some time trying to develop the mindset of the central defector, Zaitev, but I wasn't convinced. After all his years in KGB communications knowing full well that murders were occasionally committed during the course of the cold war, why all of a sudden did he develop such a serious crisis of confidence that he would decide to defect, and betray his country, just because one more murder (the Pope) was being planned? The defector's wife's characterization was totally unconvincing - woken in the middle of the night to discover that her husband has decided to move their family unit to the USA, only to meekly go along without so much as a "what the hell???" And Ryan's wife Cathy is equally unconvincing: she becomes so irritated that her husband has to be away from home on business for a few nights, one wonders what century she thinks she's living in. I think we're seeing Tom Clancy in his twilight, struggling to get one more book out to pad his retirement account before too many people notice that he has lost the plot. No more for me.

Rating:
Summary: Great little story, too much book
Review: Another unnecessarily long [600+ pages] Clancy novel.
Always interesting, always fascinating, but nearly always long winded and opinionated. The subject matter is very interesting. The pope tries to influence events in his native Poland (Solidarity). Soon to be Soviet Premier decides this is too damaging to the Soviet domination in the Warsaw Pact and comes to the conclusion elimination is the best way to deal with the situation. Meanwhile a Soviet communications officer can't abide by the idea of killing an innocent man and defects. The details are fascinating. The slow, patient "romance" of the Rabbit by the Foleys is good reading.
But overall this book gets only 3 stars because it could have been written in 400 pages or even less. Lots of insight into each character's mind set. Lots of opinions, all in line with one Tom Clancy (and in many cases myself). Constant cuts to a character doing nothing but sitting and thinking (did I say all the good guys' opinions are the same as Clancy's?).
I'm all for cerebral books, and character development. I don't need action to keep me enthralled. Give me ambiance, give me action, give me well developed characters, but leave the knee jerk opinions about the coffee in London, the gray atmosphere of Russia etc... locked in the various players minds. Some is good, too much is bad, and makes a good story a tough read.

Rating:
Summary: still up there to compete with top package thrillers !!!!!!!
Review: a little so much of heart won't hurt tommy's intellectual-war saga reputation. Tom, I owe you a lot about reading books, and my little bookshelf is full of your books, 80% of it, 20% is being shared among Ludlums, Clyve Cussler's, and Charles Taylor's, but Tom, a little connection and entimacy between Ryan couple could have pushed the Red rabbit to its full throttle stardom.......