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Summary: The Eighth Book in the Series
Review: I have read all the Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy, and this is the one i liked most. The setting is not a common one in Clancy's books and this creates an interesting atmosphere. This is one of my favourite books by Clancy, followed by The Hunt For Red October and the Cardinal of the Kremlin. After having followed Jack Ryan throughout the series, it is a culminating book that shows the culmination of Jack Ryan's Carrier. I must say that the Character of Jack Ryan is one of the Characters i like best in all the books i have read, both Clancy's and others. In this book, Jack Ryan shows his maturity and sense of direction adn i wish that everybody was like him in real life!!
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Summary: Bloated, B-grade Pulp Fiction
Review: With 700+ reviewers before me, I have nothing new to say. The book was an utter waste of time for me.
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Summary: I managed to finish it, but man it was painful....
Review: I've been reading Clancy books for years. While many of his more recent books have been disappointing, this one is by far the worst yet. The Bear and the Dragon is the first Clancy book that I found hard to finish. My comments: First - give the political rhetoric a break - PLEASE. I don't mind opinions, but not page after page of unnecessary preaching on the topic. There were points when I forgot whether I was reading a book or some ultra-conservative propaganda. Of course, that may be why some people actually like this book... Second - Ryan is not God. Ryan is not God. Ryan is not God. Just like in his previous 1000+ page books, Clancy builds up this almost impossible situation, and then the main characters make a marvelous and heroic come back. In Clancy's world, the good guys never make mistakes, never die, and are the most moral people in the world. Get real. I liked the Ryan character in Red October and Cardinal, but he's now gone past the point of being tired. I really hope that in his next novel, Clancy dumps this character, since I just don't think he can take him any further. Third - There was way too much superfluous background information that didn't do anything to the story. I felt like this book was more background information than plot. I think you could have made this a decent 500-page book. But at over 1000, it was boring. There were only a couple 'tense' parts, but even then, you knew the outcome before it started. Fourth - Clancy really seems to have left the plane of reality here. For some authors, this isn't a big deal, but for Clancy, he's always tried to make the plot seem somewhat feasible. Not here. I don't know how many times I thought 'yeah right' while reading this book. Finally (there is lots more I could say, but this is enough for now) - the thing I've come to dislike most about this book (and some of Clancy's other works) is they're predictable. You know the good guys are always going to prevail. They never die or get harmed, no matter how impossible the task. It's always the other guy that dies. It's kind of like Star Trek - the main characters always live to fight another day, but if an unknown crewman is part of an away mission, you know they're toast. The same is true here. Not one of the 'good' main characters died. I was hoping that the ICBM would succeed since it would have made for an interesting ending, rather than the tired and predictable one that you knew was coming. In summary, don't bother with this book unless you have lots of free time on your hand and/or you fervently support the current president in the white house. For anyone else, you'll be disappointed.
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Summary: Stop with the Irrelenvant Domestic Civic's Lesson
Review: Tom Clancy books used to mean international intrigue, interesting expositions on foreign policy and liberal amounts of high tech military hardware. In Clancy's latest work, Bear and the Dragon, the author uses the character of Jack Ryan as a mouthpiece for (seemingly) Clancy's own critical view on every aspect of US domestic politics. This novel, which is 1,100 pages, is overburdened with long stretches of wooden dialogue between Ryan and his Chief of Staff, Arnie van Damm where Ryan, the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-type political neophyte, is given extended civics lessons designed to highlight the necessary evils of politics. This is done in a pseudo-Socratic dialogue which is numbingly boring The upshot is, Ryan is becoming unbearably whiny and annoyingly preachy. Second, are we actually supposed to believe that he could continue to be so naive after 15 months in the Presidency. Third, and most importantly, these poorly written dialogues (between Ryan and van Damm and other pairs of characters, such as Mary Pat Foley and Ed Foley) do not advance the story even a tiny bit. I had a very difficult time forcing myself to continue reading this book. Please, Mr. Clancy, next time stick to the story and save the civics lesson for some other forum.
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Summary: Oh brother.............
Review: ......I couldn't wait to finish this thing. Oops, I didn't finish it; I skipped to the end (that was a mistake too, as it was horrendous) after reading 800 plus pages of unbearable nonsense. Simply could not take it any more!... Where to begin, oh where to begin. Ok, 1000 plus pages? Easily could have been 600: enough said. Next, I became so sick of President Ryan crying every 40 pages about how much he hates his job. What a bore! And "Japanese sausage"? Is Mr. Clancy trying to appeal to 11 year old boys?... The title of the chapters, at times, had nothing to do with the content of the chapter. There were typos all over the place. I could go on and on, but enough is enough. I just want to put this memory behind me and reflect on the other books Mr. Clancy has turned out in the past. Why two stars? Parts of the story were riviting. I hope that Mr. Clancy reads these reviews and takes them to heart. Let's move on to something new. Please no more President Ryan, former super-spy. Oh well, maybe next time. That's all.
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Summary: I THOUGHT IT WAS GREAT!
Review: If your a fan of the Jack Ryan books you will like this one. I would guess this is the last of the series. I hope Tom Clancy contiues to write about Mr. Clark & Co. Alot of people dissed this book but I thought it was a great story.
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Summary: Great Ending -pity about the first 700 pages...
Review: Not Mr Clancy's best work. Until 3/4 of the way through the book it felt like a first draft. Then he got to the bit that he was interested in (the tech war), and the old 'Clancy Magic' began to take hold. I just can't work out how the novel in its present state ever made it to the printers. Maybe Tom couldn't be bothered to re-read and edit it, but surely an editor or sub-editor somewhere must have read it through once -mustn't they? Maybe they just skipped the boring, long-winded, poorly-written bits. Maybe I should have too! If this was the first Clancy I'd read, I wouldn't have persisted past the first 200 pages, and I certainly wouldn't have bothered with his earlier work-which would've been my loss. On a technical note, I don't believe that the C5 has ever been known to its crews as the 'Aluminum Cloud' (I think that was the B-36 from WWII) Isn't it an 'Aluminum Overcast'? If that little factoid is wrong, how much bother did he go to researching anything else. (Certainly his descriptions of Sydney in RAINBOW-6 were mistake-ridden and vague) This book is not the worst I've read -but it falls a long way short of the best. I couldn't recommend it to anyone. Please Tom! Bigger is not better! Better is better.
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Summary: Clancy Trails Off
Review: An avid Clancy fan, I pre-ordered this book, waited patiently. The result, disappointment. This book does not seem like it was even written by Clancy. The prose is different from his other books. The plot is disjointed. Maybe Clancy is too busy. I hope the next one is better. Otherwise, the next one may be the last I read.
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Summary: Bear and the Dragon just couldn't be the work of Clancy
Review: Having read all of Clancy's novels (Many several times over), I was sorely let down with The Bear and The Dragon. The crudeness displayed by my favorite author really knocked me out of the box. His previous efforts have always lent themselves to trying to explain the thought processes of "The enemy" (Soviets, Druggies, Eco-terrorists, the IRA, or radical Arab elements, etc.) and what America, in the guise of Jack Ryan or John Clark, should do to counter them. But other than stating outright that the Chinese just plain think different than we do, he simply denegrates the novel by resorting to name calling. "Joe Chink" and "Japanese Sausage"....please! This is the first of his novels that I would not recommend on any level. It appears to have been ghost written by a name-calling, racist and not the strategic thinking techno-novelist that I've long admired.
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Summary: The Bear and The Dragon
Review: Yesterday, I finished "The Bear and The Dragon, " by Tom Clancy. I must say I was disappointed. Tom's Clancy's "Jack Ryan world" departs further from the world we live in with each passing book. Tom Clancy's first few books were masterpieces. But his last few novels have lost the original "Clancy spark." Where the "Red October" was a technically accurate masterpiece, "The Bear and The Dragon," takes extreme liberties with China's military capabilities. I know this only because I recently read a report on the subject by the Brookings Institute. Where "Red October" tells a detailed story in 450 pages, "The Bear and the Dragon" is over 1000 pages long, and that's in hard cover! In "The Bear and The Dragon," over three-fourths of the book are used to give background information and the setting. I would suggest that this could have been done more effectively (and certainly less boring) if the ratios were reversed, one-forth for the setting, and three-fourths for the conflict. "The Bear and The Dragon" also lacks originality as its plot is almost identical to "Debt of Honor." It has the same elements except that Japan is replaced with China. I sincerely wish that Tom Clancy would replace Jack Ryan with a new character and start the series over in today's world. He should go back to the 500-700 page spy novels and leave behind the outlandishly premised war books of 1000 pages or more. Its very difficult to write a book of such length and keep the reader glued the book all the way through. However I'm not sure if any of these suggestions will ever come to pass. By this time Tom Clancy has such a loyal following of readers, he could write a how-to manual about doing computer programming in Arabic and millions would undoubtedly line up to buy it.
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