Rating: 
Summary: Too much?
Review: While I generally enjoyed the book, it WAS overly long. The numerous interwoven plots are becoming progressively more difficult for me (and perhaps only me) to keep track of. I was rather surprised to see the anti-choice and anti-Clinton flags waved. One minor item. I don't think that the Red Baron became a multiple ace flying a tri-motor! a tri-plane, perhaps, but not a tri-motor.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, Bloated Ballast in the Bilge Until the Final Bit
Review: 5 of 7 people found the following review helpful: Five Novels Stitched Into One -- Only One Is Interesting October 8, 2000 The Bear and The Dragon combines five novels -- one about a murder mystery in Moscow, one about espionage in Bejing, one about Chinese-American trade diplomacy, another about economic development in Siberia, and a final one about major power conflicts. Of the five, only the last bears any resemblance to a Tom Clancy novel of the calibre of The Hunt for Red October, but that final novel in the book still manages to fall short of the former standard of this author. The book is incredibly bloated, boring (until the last 256 pages), annoyingly repetitive, predictable, and full of gratuitous sexual and racist references.If you feel you must read this book, begin on page 773. You won't miss anything you need to know before then, if you do. That's the point at which the Clancy-like novel begins with the usual gee-whiz technology and action. That last novel is fair-to-middling for a Clancy effort. As to the bloat in this book, Clancy did not need to write the other four novels to write his usual one (the last one in this book). He simply padded the book to make this more like War and Peace. Well, it's not War and Peace. Clancy doesn't begin to show the skill to work in that direction. The story is simply so improbable on its face that it's hard to imagine anyone finding it interesting. He likes to develop everything around a theme of the evil Chinese leaders. He demonizes Chinese leaders in the PRC more than most people darken Hitler today. As to repetition, you will get references to the sex habits of fictional and former Chinese leaders many dozens of times more than you will care to read them. The word, puke, must appear more than 200 times in this book, as an example. As for bloat, there must be 150 uninteresting pages in this book about Ryan sneaking a cigarette when his wife isn't around and not liking being president. As for predictability, every single person and technology you read about in the book shows up in the later action in one of the two ways you would most have expected. I was very disappointed. I found it hard to imagine that I stuck it out to the end. I suspect that most people will not. If you do decide to read this book and decide you dislike it, like me, ask yourself why you did not pay attention to the hundreds of warnings from people who have read the book. That may help you to understand why you act impulsively against your own best interest. If you do read the book and like it, I suggest you consider why others may not have. Then, you will be better able to use reviews in the future to distinguish the books that you will like in the future that most other people do not. Find a new author to read!
Rating: 
Summary: Jingo Tom and the Magic Dragon
Review: Unbelievably I continued to read and finish this piece of garbage. Besides the incredible shallowness of the characters and the increase in profanity (I don't think Nixon swore this much) I continue to be deeply disturbed by the overt racism Jingo TC shows toward Asians (Chinese and Japanese in particular). Besides using "Chinks" and "slant eyes" as descriptive terms he tries to cover up by making nice talk toward African Americans...sorry can't buy the rich white Baptist Minister trading pulpits with Rev. Jackson in Mississippi...things haven't changed that much in the south...don't know where Tom does research but it isn't below the Mason Dixon. His making the Russians our good buddies now only reinforces the fact that caucasians of any flavor can be trusted and other races are demonic little yellow people. TC needs to grow up and get a new career...this one isn't working.
Rating:
Summary: Where is the real Jack Ryan?
Review: There's this one old guy who works at the gas station that I go to every morning for coffee before work. Every morning he's leaning against the counter; holding a lit cigarette with one hand, and stabbing away at the keyboard on his cash register with the other. And every morning, for about six months, he would just grunt at me when I asked him how his day was going. After about the second day of asking I didn't really care anymore, I just kept asking because I was kind of hoping for a real answer, and because my daily badgering seemed to annoy him a bit.
A couple of weeks ago I'm standing in line, and I notice the old guy glancing over at a patch of ice that has formed in front of the gas station door. He seems transfixed by it, and every time someone traverses the patch, and makes it safely inside, he takes a nervous drag on his cigarette and trys to turn his attention back to the register, and the longer then usual line that's waiting for his monosyllabic banter. "Slippery Ice" I say, when it was my turn to pay. He looks at me as if I was exposing a dark family secret. "You have salt?" I ask, not waiting for him to respond to my first comment. He reflexively glances over towards the door, and there lies a half-empty yellow and white rolled up bag sitting next to the newspaper rack. "I'll give you a hand with that," I say as I walk towards the door. I grab the bag, and scatter its remains like chickenfeed around the front. I give him a quick hand wave, and head for my truck. "Thanks Chief" he says, and as I look back, it appears to me that he's smiling at me through the dirt and salt encrusted windows. Well from that day forward I became "Chief", and now every morning it takes me forever to get out of there cause he wants to talk my ear off. The points I am trying to make by telling this story are: 1) Be careful what you wish for
2) Too much of anything can be a good thing Both of these maxims could be applied to Tom Clancy's new book. How could anyone get enough of Jack Ryan? Well perhaps when Jack is turned into a boring, foul-mouthed, right wing whiner. By the time I got half way through the book, I truly regretted the fact that Jack himself was not amongst those present at the 747 crash that wiped out Congress. Buy hey, it's not his fault. The reason Harrison Ford worked better then Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan was that Jack was an everyman, a father, an outsider who worked within, but usually against the system , and he never showed signs of becoming the rather disagreeable individual he has apparently turned into. Ford brought an earnestness to the roll, and I think many of us truly believed he would have been just as happy to stay a simple CIA analyst, and live in his 2 million dollar house (see Patriot Games) with his opthalmologist wife and two children. No wonder Harrison Ford has decided not to reprise the roll. There is also way too much of everything in this book; too many pages, too many characters, too many repeated phrases and themes. He must have said that he hated being president 100 times. I am surmising that Clancy is involved in too many projects at once, he probably does not have the same burning desire to prove himself, as he did as a new author, and success has made him think that he is right about everything; including all the social and political issues he feels he can now have Jack lecture us about. That being said, it is his character, he is the one who has sold millions of books, and with his money he has, he could probably buy, and outfit a small right-wing junta. I for one will no longer feel the need to contribute to his cause. For those 6 of you out there who have never read a Clancy book, don't start with this one. Go back to his first couple of books, and hit this one at the end. This one's like Grandma coming to visit, and never leaving. You still love her, but you wish she'd never made the decision to stay.
Rating: 
Summary: He continues to impress me...
Review: I've been a big fan of Tom Clancy for years, and a big fan of Jack Ryan. It's great to see them both back. I found Bear & Dragon to be one of his finest. I thought it was well written, with more humor and not overwhelmed with "techno-babble" as some of his things can be. Fantastic work Mr. Clancy. Keep them coming... :-)
Rating:
Summary: TERRIBLE
Review: I have read all of Tom Claney's books and really have enjoyed them. I did feel that he was giving too much detail, but I managed to get passed that. The Bear and the Dragon was just terrible. Entirely too much detail and too many people to remember. 1200 pages, he could have written a book with half that amount of text and it probably would have been better. I won't rush out to buy another hard cover first edition of Claney's until I have read some reviews.
Rating:
Summary: Too Wordy
Review: Being an avid Tom Clancy fan, I will always read his books. He is the greatest plot weaver ever! I am addicted to the action and suspense, when there is some. However, as the years go by, his novels have increased in length, but not in excitement. I am sad to say I could put this book down anytime and did on many occasions. It took me more than three weeks to complete it. I read Rainbow Six in less than a week, and I thought at times it was wordy. I love his characters Jack Ryan, Clark and Domingo and the Rainbow Six Team, the CIA members, even Golovkov etc. However, it seemed they were just a side story in this book weaved into a history lesson of weapons and battle strategies. I don't ever remember skimming over so many endless details, descriptions, and redundancies. Paragraphs and paragraphs of useless (to the story) information about equipment and peoples' lives. I don't have to know everything there is to know about every single piece of equipment or character in the book! I think he should stick to one name per person too. Do I need to know their given names, code names, Russian names, nicknames, pet names...? Or at the very least, don't interchange them throughout the book, it is confusing trying to remember who everyone was. I think even with Ryan in the white house there could be hope for his character, with classic Clancy imagination, and who knows in maybe even less than 1,000 pages. I was excited when he mentioned Rainbow Six, but they were never utilized to their potential. To say the least, I was dissapointed. I think the plot had potential, but got lost somewhere along the way. I usually feel like joining the CIA when I finish one of his books. This time, I just wanted to finish. I should say, TC is still my favorite author. I just think if he wants to write books about historical fiction, then so be it. Don't confuse us into thinking that the books are his suspense novels with our favorite characters. If you are a TC fan then this book is a must read, just so you can keep up with your favorite characters' lives, because I think he manages to mention every character he has ever written about. If you are not an avid Tom Clancy fan, don't start with this one, start with his early works and learn how good he really can be.
Rating:
Summary: Another Thriller by the Master!!!
Review: Either you are a fan of Tom Clancy or you are not. Those who enjoy Clancy are not going to be able to put this book down, as President Jack Ryan faces his biggest crisis as President. The Chinese government is stirring up trouble, in Russia and in trade talks with the United States. An international incident erupts when the Beijing police kill 2 clergymen live on CNN, then are seen again by an international audience oppressing religious freedom. The Chinese go to war against the Soviet Union, not thinking the United States will do anything. The United States, though, goes to the aid of the Soviet Union, who had just been invited into NATO. Two old enemies of the Cold War are now on the same side, trying to avert a Third World War, and then, the book tenses up for an explosive climax. Although a lot of the readers' reviews of this are negative, at best, this book is typical Tom Clancy, and to Clancy fans, it's exactly what the doctor ordered!!
Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy must be getting tired of writing about Jack Ryan.
Review: I was looking forward to this book just like the rest of the reviewers. Unfortunately I was diappointed as well, it took me about six months to finish this book, when I could normally finish a Tom Clancy book in about a week. You just had the feeling the Mr. Clancy was not having fun with this, and that he was just writing another Jack Ryan book just to keep his fans happy. The last good Jack Ryan book was Debt of Honor. I also had the feeling that he was on a soap box, with pages exposing his political views. This is not meant to be critical, I am just about as conservative as Mr. Clancy,but it seemed to detract from the book. I think he did this because he never did write a book he was planning to write,"Reality Check" several years ago. I can only hope that his next book he enjoys more, I have heard that he is planning on writing another Jack Ryan novel, but it is supposed to be different. After that lets hope he puts the Ryan series to rest, unless there will be more books with him after he leaves the White House. But I think it will be best if he invents new characters, and it will be better if we as his readers allow him to write something other that a Ryan book, it is not really not fair for us to constrain in that way.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but not Clancy's best
Review: I am a loyal Clancy reader and I count the days(or should I say years) between each book. This book follows in the basic Clancy mold. However I felt that this was not his best work.There was very little in the way of action, the bad guys did not do much of anything until the very end, and even then it was not much at all. It was mostly one sided,would of been nice to see a bit of action. We all know that Clancy is quite capable of that(Red Storn Rising for example). The worst part by far was the ending, what the heck was that with Ryan? This was a fairly big letdown from his previous book, Rainbow Six. I hope the next novel will have more of the Rainbow crew. Fans of Clancy will find this one to be a decent book, but will know that it is not one of his best.
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