Rating: 
Summary: A Masochist's Lolipop?
Review: I have read all of Clancy's books and am disappointed to find each new novel has slipped a notch below the previous one. He is concentrating less and less on the techno-thriller aspects (his forte) and more and more on inane dialogue (his Achilles heel). I just finished reading it (about a year later!) My wife was patiently waiting for me so she could start it. The ending was truly exciting, one of his best. But did he really have to make us plow through 750 pages of dreary start-up to get to the punch? If not for the ending, this might have been my last Clancy read.
Rating: 
Summary: Too long, otherwise entertaining
Review: Bottom line: not a great piece of literature but entertaining. Buy it for the last 400-500 pages.First the bad news: -- Clancy needs to hire a really good editor (if one was involved in this, he/she needs to be replaced). Too many errors stayed in and the first 600 pages should be the first 300 pages, too much repeated stuff and too many words to get the job done. -- If you can't figure out the major plot items 100+ pages in advance, then you're asleep or this is the first Clancy novel you've read. Ending is especially so. -- A few too many echoes of Red Storm Rising. -- If I "hear" Ryan whine about being President ever again it will be too soon. Very tiresome and needlessly so. The good news: -- The espionage stuff up front is generally excellent and sets up a complex situation. If this part were condensed down to be tighter it could stand up well with the last 1/3 of the book and give away less of what unfolds later. Some good ideas here. -- The war sequence at the end is classic Clancy. Full of cool toys, great detail and good storytelling. -- Despite the weaknesses, I found the book entertaining and I'd still rate it as one of the stronger of his more recent books.
Rating:
Summary: A Novel of the Failure of Diplomacy
Review: One would think that after 760 reviews that there would be little left to say about any book. That being said I will still add a few words after reading this thousand plus page opus. First of all, I am not a rabid Clancy fan. Yes, I did read some of his earlier works and found them to be thought provoking and exciting from a technical point of view. The Bear and the Dragon is not a technothriller in the usual sense of the word. It is a slow sometimes thought provoking read detailing the failure of conventional diplomacy. That being said, let me emphasise, the book rumbles along for about 800 pages before the real action for lovers of military fiction begins. In its premise we have multiple subplots that connect to bring about global disaster. There is an attempted assassination of a high ranking Russian official. The killing of a papal nuncio and a baptist minister during the midst of Chinese/American Trade Talks brings about a virtual collapse of the Chinese economy and a grand scale retaliation by the Chinese Politburo. The plot involves the invasion of Siberia by the Chinese army in hopes of revitalizing their economy. Into this mix comes the idea the Russia and the United States are now allies due to the fall of the Communist system. In fact, Russia is now a member of NATO for purposes of halting the Chinese aggression. Clany blends all of the above into a plot that is compelling at times but at others is a little hard to take seriously. At its best the action is a little far fetched and awkward. At its worst the plot is sheer folly. Clancy does in fact seem to know his hardware but his understanding of individual characterization and human emotion is far from genius. The characters at times are indistinguishable and seem little more than talking heads for Clancy's conservative preaching. The developing relationship between a spy and his agent feels as though it was ghost written by a teenager with over active hormones. All that said, The Bear and the Dragon is not a bad book but one which could have been much better had more attention been paid to the problems of diplomacy and cultural differences. These are the issues that needed to be addressed more than the outbreak of a "video game" type war that was easily resolved in the last 100 pages or so. Clancy has a great knack for dehumanizing war with technological advances. This is unfortunate in that it seems to make the characters little more than chess pieces on a board. No one really dies in Clancy's world but the bad guys. The result of this is that war becomes a fantastic game rather than the horror it really is. If I had been a true Clancy fan I might have been disappointed by this effort. In general the novel was fair but it could have been so much more.
Rating: 
Summary: Thinly disguised bigotry
Review: Though Tom Clancy is a prolific writer who can churn out terrific action scenes, I found this, his latest book, to contain distressingly racist undertones. Most conversations in "The Bear and the Dragon" were liberally sprinkled with racial epithets that were not only unnecessary, but extremely offensive. Of course, these taboo words are sometimes *meant* to provoke, but I was provoked once too often. The politicians and "heroes" in Clancy's latest novel are coarse and vulgar. The Chinese people are stereotyped and portrayed at their worst, coming across as "slant-eyed" buffoons. Though I am not Chinese myself, I feel offended enough for the Chinese people. To be fair, Clancy is a good writer. He may simply be trying to emphasize the feelings of his characters without even realizing that this is cause for offense. If not for the excessive racial slurs, I probably would have made it all the way through the book in a week or so, but by the time I got a third of the way through, I was sickened enough to throw the book away for good.
Rating:
Summary: Not on par for Clancy, but still a great book...
Review: I have read all of Clancy's novels, and while I did enjoy this book, I think it was probably not his best. I feel that the Jack Ryan character has become a sort of "cardboard-cutout," kind of 2 dimensional, flat hero figure. I think that the Ryan character has not really developed in the past few books written about him. However, despite that, the book is action-packed, and is as much fun to read as his other books. Clancy excells at depicting both close-quarters and battlefield combat, and his realism has never been better. It is great that he can also bring the Rainbow group into the novels, so it is not just all Jack Ryan. While I would have given his other novels 5 stars, I must give this one 4, which is not bad at all...
Rating: 
Summary: Clancy Writes Another Great Book
Review: Full of what you expect of Clancy. Main plot, subplot after subplot. Very technical book as you would expect. Builds up his characters well. Very way out impossible settings and circumstances. If you have a dense mind, don't read it but if you enjoy good writing and fiction this book is for you.
Rating:
Summary: Worst of the lot, but still better than others work
Review: I have just finished this book and suffice it to say, I am somewhat disappointed. Maybe the Jack Ryan story line is wearing thin, but this is the first book from Clancy which disappointed me. The ending seemed rushed.. (did anyone else get the feeling that at one time, the nuke actually took out D.C. with Ryan, only to have TC change his mind into the book?) What disappointed me the most was the overly excessive use of profanity. It added absolutely NOTHING to the book. I got the feeling that he was being payed for every "F" word and vulgar human anatomy term that he used....
Rating:
Summary: Picky, picky, picky
Review: I read with interest all of the reviews trashing Clancy's most recent effort. Come on people, it is a Clancy book. You are going to get lots of techno babble and endless descriptions of people, their motives, weapons, guns, etc. If you buy a John Grisham book, you expect a book on the law. With Clancy you know what you are gettting, and I for one thought it was excellent. While I did find this book relatively predictable, I think most of that comes from being an experienced Clancy reader. While we may not have known what was coming in his earlier books, experence allows us to better predict what is coming. I found the book a wonderful read. I recently took a trip with my family to Hawaii, and found the book to be a wonderful diversion to the mindless movies the airlines show. I was not wild about the language used, but it did add an edgyness to the book. Hearing Jack Ryan cuss within earshot of VP Jackson's minister father did not seem overly realistic, but other than that I thought it was outstanding. The addition of the CIA agent using Victoria's Secret merchandise to infiltrate the inner circle of the Chinese politboro was an interesting twist. This is typical Clancy, which for some of us is exactly what we want and expect. When does his next book come out?
Rating:
Summary: Clancy rules - OKAY?
Review: I went on holiday to relax, took The Bear and The Dragon with me and spent most of the holiday in a state or nervous exhaustion! How does Clancy do it time after time? What's his secret? His understanding of wars and fighting machines is unsurpassable, his understanding of the different cultures is a bonus. You should read The Bear and the Dragon, just to get an understanding of world politics. Top marks for Tom Clancy for pulling another thriller out of the bag.
Rating:
Summary: Tom - Get an editor
Review: I just finished reading The Bear and the Dragon. This is the fifth Tom Clancy novel I have read, and it will probably be my last. It reads as if Mr. Clancy dashed off an outline and a list of characters, sat down at his word processor and churned out as many words as he could, ran a quick spell check, and sent it to the printer. For example, when Jack Ryan spends a page musing to himself about having the Secret Service to keep the boys dating his daughter in line, then later repeats the entire page almost verbatim in a conversation with another character, that is just filling up space. When Mr. Clancy describes, in detail, the sequence that Mary Pat Foley goes through to check her secure e-mail, EVERY TIME SHE CHECKS HER E-MAIL, that is just filling up space. Another peeve: when characters use profanity in dialogue, that is excusable as character development. When the author uses profanity in his narration of the story line, that is an inexcusably cheap attempt at impact. Throw in several mis-spellings that got past the computer spell check, but should have been caught by a real editor (e.g. "soldering" for "soldiering") and it all adds up to a novel long on word count but short on actual story. Tom, for your next attempt, PLEASE get an editor!
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