The Bear and the Dragon

Rating:
Summary: The introduction is much too long
Review: I like the books of Tom Clancy a lot. Thus far I've read all his books and would rate them 5 stars.
However, in Rainbow Six, the introduction took about 300 pages. Since there were plenty of pages left, this is no problem.
In the bear and the dragon the introduction (the endless talking) takes 800 pages! It was hard to keep on reading.
The real action takes place in the remaining pages and ends very quickly. In this part it was hard to stop reading. This is the Tom Clancy I like.

Rating:
Summary: What a shame!
Review: What a shame, what a pitty!
As a huge fan of all Tom Clancy wrote (fictional), I longed to get my hands on his latest work (I had to wait quit some time for it in the Netherlands). Well, I have it now, and what a disappointment it is!
To be brief: Mr. Clancy is getting old and grumpy and uses his writing to express his rather boring, old fashioned and conservative political ideas. This must even be a bore for any US reader, but for an international reader it's like reading a 1100 page column in a local small town USA newspaper.
Oh, by the way, this book actually features a story somewhere between the lines. And yes, all our favourite characters are in it. It's a shame they are used as background figures.

Rating:
Summary: Bear & Dragon Cliffs Notes
Review: China invades Russia. Russia joins NATO. NATO kicks China's [butt]. Clancy loves a strong military. Clancy hates career politicians. Clancy hates abortion. Clancy takes your money without delivering the quality of his first few books.

Rating:
Summary: Prophetic descriptions of American air power
Review: A few days after Sept. 11, I bought Tom Clancy's novel from 2000, The Bear and the Dragon, as a relatively painless way to learn the current state of American war-fighting technology. It ends with a detailed description of how 21st Century American air power pulverizes a Chinese armored invasion of Siberia. I finished it and said, "Okay, we're obviously going to crush the Taliban from the air. No problemo. (My biggest worry then became that the Taliban would hand over Osama to us before we could devastate them, which we had to do in order to encourage the other regimes to not allow anti-American terrorists to operate from their territories.) I was incredulous when so many pundits decided around Nov. 1st that the Taliban were winning. "Don't they know anything about our current air power? Don't they read Tom Clancy novels?" A week later, of course, the fearsome Taliban threw down their weapons and ran into the hills, screaming like little girls. The answer to both questions about our commentariat I realize now is "No. They didn't know anything about military technology and a big reason was because they hold Clancy in contempt." Well, now the joke's on them. - Steve Sailer

Rating:
Summary: A decent author gone south
Review: Having read most of Tom Clancy's earlier works, I was sorely disappointed by this effort. In fact, I felt cheated. Where in the past Tom Clancy has written books with a good plot and exciting action, this book spends a great amount of time on Clancy's sexist, xenophobic and otherwise unecessary political views. This large tome (1000+ pages) could have been toned down to a few hundred if these distracting comments had been omitted. I would not recommend this book for anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Yuck!
Review: Too long by half. Wooden. Repetitive. Un-fun. Other reviewers have said it all before me.

I've decided that Clancy must've made a New Year's Resolution to crank out some number of pages per day on this one. Or, maybe he had a bet going with Stephen King to see who could make the most money with the least effort. Whoever won that bet, I know I lost by reading The Bear And The Dragon.

Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy
Review: The Bear and the Dragon, like many of Tom Clancy's books, holds the reader from cover to cover. While the detail that Clancy uses is not appreciated by many readers, I found it to be valuable in forming a story which held my interest from the first time I'd opened it to the closing.

Rating:
Summary: From Bad to Worse
Review: Tom Clancy is one of the few authors I will buy in hardback; that is how much I enjoyed "The Hunt For Red October," "Red Storm Rising," "Patriot Games," and his other early works. Unfortunately, I can't say I've enjoyed any of his recent works. I couldn't believe the plot of "Rainbow Six," reworking the ebola virus angle of "Executive Orders," and the IRA terrorists of "Patriot Games" both in the same story. I suffered through that book and "The Bear and the Dragon." I must have known it would be bad; I waited a year after I bought it to start it. It had very poor, simplistic dialog. Every time the book turned back to Jack Ryan, a man we want to like, we had to listen to him whine about being "POTUS." Every damn time. We suffered through too many pages to count of a trade negotiation, when it could have been summarized in two. We only got about two pages of a U.S. submarine engaging Chinese submarines. Clancy has me by the wallet, I'll probably always buy his hardcovers. Do yourself a favor and wait for his paperbacks.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Extraneous Material
Review: First of all, I am not a Tom Clancy fanatic. The only one of his previous books that I have read is "Red Storm Rising", which I did enjoy. Part of my problem with "The Bear and the Dragon" begins with that. A few important plot points to this novel revolve around previous events in the Jack Ryan series. I am only privy to those events by inference in this novel and was sometimes left shaking my head at certain lines of dialogue or supposed rationales for action dependent upon some unknown history.

That being said, "The Bear and the Dragon" deals with the advent of war between China (the dragon) and Russia (the bear). The Russians have luckily struck upon the largest gold mine and oilfield in the world. The location of these finds is Far East Siberia, which is due north of the Russia-China border. China has been pushed to the brink of economic collapse by American insistence that they open their market to American exports or face the enactment of trade barriers to Chinese goods in the US. China sees as their only means of avoiding economic ruin the invasion of Russia and securing of the gold mine and oilfield.

Had this been the only plot revolution it may have been a better story. Instead, Clancy also brings in an assassination attempt on the head of the Russian Federal Security Service, the fatal shootings of the Papal Nuncio to China and a Chinese Baptist minister by Chinese policemen, the pregnancy of one of President Jack Ryan's Secret Service agents, etc, etc, etc. There are too many subplots and sideplots that create a too complicated story structure. In this particular case, simplicity would have been a far better route to take.

Also, many of Clancy's plot points in this story are just too unrealistic. The main what that comes to my mind is the American peoples' reaction to the death of the Papal Nuncio and the Baptist minister. The American people react by boycotting Chinese manufactured products and companies that do business with China. This is what ultimately precipitates China's decision to invade Siberia. There is no way in the world that Americans would even bother looking at the label of the product they're purchasing, much less boycott any country's goods, just because two people were killed by that country's police force. It just wouldn't happen. This unfortunately negates all events in the story that Clancy has predicated upon this action.

While I don't think anyone would mistake Clancy's writing for John Steinbeck or Charles Dickens, I think even the level in this novel is below something you would expect from such a well known author. Clancy breaks one of the cardinal rules of character development by telling us too many times what the characters are thinking and feeling. Do not tell how they feel or what they think, show it. Clancy just doesn't seem to have an ability to do so.

"The Bear and the Dragon" is not even good during the part you would expect: the actual war. Clancy spends too much time telling us how awful the characters think this is, the killing of enemy soldiers. No duh! Like we're supposed to expect they like to kill people. Clancy's attempt at moralizing just makes you feel guilty for reading a book which is plotted around a war.

"The Bear and the Dragon" was a let down from what I expected it to be. I anticipated another book like "Red Storm Rising"; but, "The Bear and the Dragon" is definitely not "Red Storm Rising."

As a side note: as someone who lives inside the Capital Beltway, I can only say that I'm appalled that Clancy would refer to that highway as Interstate 695, when anyone with a map or access to the internet could easily find out that the Capital Beltway is Interstate 495. Interstate 695 is the Baltimore Beltway, which is maybe why Clancy got that wrong, since he's from Baltimore.

Rating:
Summary: A huge disappointment
Review: This has got to be Clancy's literary version of color-by-numbers. The plot is far-fetched, while at the same time too thin. The characters are so well-developed from previous books that all we're left with is Jack Ryan's whining about how he's not right/adequate/suited for the job of president. And while I like Clancy's books, Ryan's philosophizing on subjects ranging from abortion to religion to government smack of the arrogance that Clancy often puts across in personal appearances. Puh-leeze, keep your views to yourself, willya? On top of that, the book was poorly edited, with typos (excusable) and recurring dialogue (inexcusable). To be fair, I read the first edition hard-cover, so maybe this has been corrected in the subsequent editions, but I doubt it. The author's and publisher's philosophy seem to be "ah what the hell, throw it out there, it'll make money". Come on, Clancy, you know you can do better.