The Bear and the Dragon

Rating:
Summary: Getting a little hokey
Review: Let me begin by saying that with the exception of Executive Orders, I find Tom Clancy's writing to be excellent. After a Japanese kamikaze in a jumbo jet elects Jack Ryan President a la Executive Orders, Clancy begins character development of Ryan's family which lends little to the whole SPY/Military/Political novel. This trend seems to worsen in B&D. Who cares about Ryan's kids? They aren't part of the story in B&D yet they keep on surfacing to detract from the real plot. Secondly, anything liberal in Clancy's world is wrong and misguided. Although I consider myself conservative, He is not fair to the liberal points of view in his portrayals of liberal characters. They are always sanctimonious and smug without any redeeming qualities. 1 or 2 characters of this ilk would be fine without painting ALL of them as such. Finally, there are a few serious historical errors. Example-Russian tanks being built in 1946 to fight the Germans. The main plot line was pretty good (if he could just stick to it) although it was somewhat of a... of Red Storm Rising. He has done better work for sure, I would have liked to edit this book (I doubt I'm the only reader who has had this thought).

Rating:
Summary: Too Long - Too Bad
Review: In all honesty, this book sucked. If you are a Clancy fan and have read several of his other books you can wade through this and will find parts of it interesting. As we fans know, his style of seperate story lines lends itself to skipping pages and that comes in handy here. When he finally gets down to doing the war stuff he has spent 900 pages setting up, it gets good but by that point any sane person would have long since thrown the book away. If you haven't read Clancy before, don't start here.

This book is an ungodly 1150 pages long! To paraphrase Mark Twain, Clancy obviously wrote a long book because he did not have time (or the will) to write a short one. This reads like he just picked up a tape recorder one day and started dictating then didn't have time to edit his work. One would assume that at 3 times the length of a typical novel it would have 3 times the meat but this story could have been told in about 200 pages and it actually would have been more interesting. Another problem is the Clancy's books have become self referential. He has tried to create ongoing characters. The problem is that as each book gets more and more outrageous the 'world' he has created is getting truly bizarre. I've read them all and I still can't keep track of what's going on. In the Clancy world, the US has suffered terrorist nuclear and biological attacks, had a president and most of congress assassinated, fought (now) 3 wars ' all in the past 3 years! What's next? I don't think I even want to know, no matter how cool the battle scenes are.

Clancy's best skill is his ability to describe military actions and technology. Admit it, us guys read this stuff for the blood and gore and the cool military technology. Unfortunately, there are more sex scenes in this book then there are new weapon systems. Reading a Clancy sex scene is about as interesting as it would be to read Nora Roberts describing a torpedo attack. I used to dish on my wife for reading all those Nora books but I have to admit that NR would not be stupid enough to try writing a techno thriller. I wish Clancy were that smart.

Rating:
Summary: PURE DRIVEL
Review: This is by far & away the worst book Tom Clancy has written. I couldn't even finish reading it. After 300 pages, I gave up. I tried to get into the story but there's way too many sub-plots and political rants instilled by the author. He also should find a new editor, this book could have been more enthralling if you throw out 500 pages of it. I guess I should be thankful Clancy used POTUS instead of actually writing out the full title, "President of the United States," otherwise this book might have been 1500 pages long.

Rating:
Summary: Good Read, But Clancy knows very little about China
Review: The Bear and the Dragon should have been the perfect combination. I am a huge Tom Clancy fan and I have a huge interest in Chinese politics and history. I am a Global History teacher who has made two trips to China and has participated in many conferences and workshops on the PRC.

Perhaps if I did not know anything about contemporary China, I would have really enjoyed this book. It is a fun book to read, it is a fast read, and has a good story. However, this book and Clancy's descriptions of China show a clear lack of any understanding of China outside of watching O'Reilly factor and listening to some of the phone callers to right wing talk radio.

Clancy has surprizingly incorporated every stereotype of modern day China. I was just very surprized at this. Clancy is an intelligent writer, who deals with very intelligent plots. But his views on China seem based on political sound bites and not on anything close to the way China really is.

I remember during the spy plane crisis a caller was on Fox news saying how they were doing their part to support our servicemen by boycotting not just Chinese made goods, but also Chinese food! Fortunately the Fox news anchor pointed out that the people running a Chinese restaurant had escaped communism and were not part of the PRC. However, this is the type of stuff Clancy based much of his plot on. He characters even make similiar references to this.

I am a conservative who is strongly anti-communist. But, having the little bit of knowledge that I do have of China ruined this book for me and has affected the way I view Clancy. I really like Tom Clancy books, I know a lot of people read his books, I know Clancy is an intelligent guy. However, this book really does a disservice. I know it is fiction, but still Clancy has a big readership and he should have done a better job on China.

For Asian Fiction read James Clavell, not Tom Clancy.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, but not surprising
Review: I find as I get older, my reading time is less and thus more valuable. So I'm pretty disappointed at this latest Clancy effort, which falls well below the mark set by the author himself. It's too bad; he's evidently too rich to care about plotting and keeping the reader's attention. There are plot lines in here which have absolutely no bearing on the main story, and the main plot has so many coincidences that it's just way too implausible. In other words, everybody knows everybody already. That's annoying as hell.

The book was also poorly written. The pace is uneven to the point of having 20 pages more of boring politics to wade through in the last 50 pages of the book. It's like, "come on, let's get to the point, the book will be over soon." Then the ridiculous ending is hurried in under the wire. What do I mean about ridiculous? China fires an ICBM at the US, and all the President does is get drunk? Then after an apology, it's back to normal relations. Give me a break.

The book is passable entertainment, if slightly insulting to the reader's intelligence. The decline continues.

The only thing worse than this book is the review. The reviewer is so clueless, it's hilarious.

Rating:
Summary: The bore and the draggin'
Review: Like all Clancy fans, I eagerly await the release dates of his new novels. The first day they become available, I own a copy. For the most part, Clancys' novels( particularly the first eight of them) have been compelling page-turners that cause his readers to find and create as much spare time as possible to be the first person on their block to finish the book.

So why did it take me nearly one year to finish the "bore and the draggin'"? Perhaps it was the sudden bouts of severe drowsiness that overtook me after just a few pages of inane and repetative character development. Maybe it was all of those periods of deja vu while reading the same filler material over and over agian. Perhaps it was my constantly stopping to wonder if Clancy really wrote this book at all.

This book is so noticably different, and is lacking in so many ways from other Clancy novels that it is a legitimate question as to who really wrote it. If it was Clancy, he must have been severly distracted over his reported divorce. (who wouldn't be?) He also seemed very angry and tempermental, as witnessed by his previously cool-headed characters outbursts and the far, far too frequent usage of profanity . It is way out of Clancy character and totally unnecessary to use the "F" word on just about every other page. Certainly way out of character for Jack Ryan.

The battle scenes where exciting at times, with flashes of the old Clancy brilliance, but more often than not they were highly predictable and somewhat repetative. The ending was an absolute rushed [waste] of the readers time and was a disgrace to the previous fine efforts of Clancy.

I will not go out and blindly buy a Clancy book again. It will take some effort on his part to earn my trust and money again.

So if you have a year to kill, try sailing around the world...And take a good book with you, but not this one.

Rating:
Summary: Is It the Same Clancy as the One Who Wrote 'Red October'??
Review: I am (was?) a fan of Tom Clancy. Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games are superb books. But this.. Is it really written by Clancy? Is it so incredibly B-A-D. And the China portrayed in this book is right out of the 70s. People don't call themselves 'comrade' anymore Mr Clancy. Don't buy this boring book, it just drags on and on, it took me forever to finsih it. Reading the Sears catalog or TV Guide is far more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Jack Ryan does friend Robby Jackson no favor here
Review: Two books back in "Role Of Honor", doomed Prez Roger Durling threw Jack a curve: "Be my new veep-the old one made an a-hole outa himself." Jack said; "Aw come on, Mr. President", but he gave in anyway. In this book, Jack tosses his best friend the same sort of spitball and both beneficiaries should have told their benefactors where to stuff this "great honor". If you read "Role" and its successor "Executive Decisions", you will know that Robby found getting kicked upstairs to Admiral a very dubious honor indeed-the man was a Navy flyboy and loved it. A vice president I don't remember the name of once commented that each of his predecessors had historically left office a better golfer than when he was sworn in. That's the fate of Top Gun Jackson, whose Secret Service codename is now TOMCAT. Name him after his jet fighter-thanks a heap, Mr. President! Jack himself remains a truly off-balance Leader Of the Free World in this book, so one saving grace of this effort is that a lot more of it is focused on the front line troops like John Clark and Ding Chavez (co-stars of sidestream tale "Rainbow Six"), Russian luminaries Sergey Golovko and Gen. Gennady Bondarenko, and our old friend Chet Nomuri from "Role Of Honor". Also, "offscreen" character Rev. Hosiah Jackson (we only knew him through son Robby's anecdotes about his childhood) gets a speaking role here through his congregation's outreach aid to a Chinese Baptist preacher. Clancy does sort of recycle one of his old plot premises here-that of "Red Storm Rising", Clancy's second novel written at a time when he might yet not have had plans for a Ryan series. In that book, the pre-perestroika Soviet Union suffers an oil field disaster that collapses their economy and this moves them to mount an invasion of Western Europe. In this book, a diplomatic atrocity on the part of China, coupled with a refusal by nationalists in Beijing to admit wrong, results in an embargo on trade, which destabilizes their economy. At the same time, Russia becomes the beneficiary of a mineral bonanza in Siberia. The reaction of Beijing to that-"hmmmm". You know, I'm reading a lot of attempts in other reviews to paint Clancy's work as right-wing manifesto masquerading as entertainment, more specifically the demonization of an enemy nation. The ancient bromide "They don't think the way we do" has been used as a way to avoid understanding the other folks as people for millennia, but in this book BOTH sides use it--and actually they're both right to a very real extent. Clancy takes another opportunity here to trot out his old aphorism about war being a humongous armed robbery, but that's only one theory. Military historian Gwynne Dyer defines it as one nation imposing its will upon another by use of force--that's another. But when you get right down to it, war is also the collision of cultures who don't think alike. And I can't help but see many of the objections here as being an aftereffect of the 1960s/ '70s Peace Movement which I was part of myself back then. After we had accurately spotted the irony that the noisy love-it-or-leave-it bunch seemed to be more nationalists than they were patriots, we fell into the hubris that we could social-engineer that flaw out of the entire human species in a few semesters. A lot of us outgrew that brand of undergrad arrogance but I'm afraid those of us who did can't speak for everyone. Especially when the issue is entertainment, which is first and foremost what Tom Clancy does for his bread and butter. There isn't a damn thing created by anyone that doesn't offend someone. I don't read Tom Clancy for his poli-sci expertise-I've never been particularly impressed with that. Clancy's value to me is as a storyteller. Period. There are products sold here that I wouldn't want if they paid me to take them. So that stuff doesn't wind up on my "wish list" or in my "shopping cart". I vote with my mouse-it's that simple. Come on, gang--every dime we spend here is for FUN.

Rating:
Summary: Clancy Needs A Break!
Review: TBATD continues Clancy's downward spiral towards mediocrity. Starting with Rainbow 6, Clancy's novels have become nothing but platforms for his own political ramblings and ethnocentric (borderline racist) feelings. Where have the politically-hip, technically-detailed, and tightly-plotted yarns gone? Here are the major (but not only) problems in this book:

1. Plot: Or rather, a lack of it. It's 1000+ pages of rising and falling action that lack any believable or even interesting connection. Simple-minded and too predictable.

2. Characters: Ryan is too old, and maybe Clancy is too, because he needs a new, fresh character with a new, LESS RIGHT-WING, and less cynical attitude on life and international relations.

3. Language & Size: The grammar is unacceptable. Spelling errors abound and grammatical mistakes make sentences hard to understand. Long-winded paragraphs and Clancy's typical (although this time he goes overboard) technical descriptions turn a mediocre 500 pages story into a horrible 1000 page exercise in torture. Also, the audience does not need to hear the F-word or the word "chink" a thousand times, nor raunchy, immature references to "Japanese sausage".

4. Bias: Perhaps Clancy is a racist; his description of anything non-American is appalling! We all know his beliefs on cultures: Americans - moral, right and heoric, Rats - anything non-American; but his latest diatribe is just embarassing.

5. Research: Gathering from the reviews I've read, I've only recently realized that maybe some of the technical (not to mention cultural) information is just plain wrong.

Clancy needs a break from writing. He may have been the master of his genre, but now he's writing like one of his villians: a politically-crazed, cynical madman.

Rating:
Summary: A farce
Review: THis book has a scenario that is so unreal, it borders on bad military science fiction. RUssian in NATO, China invading Russia. Right. What's next, flying saucers come to the rescue in part 2, where the secrets of Area 51 are finally revealed by Clancy. THere was once a time when Clancy wrote good books, but his latest, if indeed he does write them himself, are getting worse and worse. Which is apparently okay, becasue somehow they still end up on the best seller lists.