Rating: 
Summary: DON'T
Review: I read the first few pages: Russian pimp gets blown up by a rocket launcher right next he Kremlin. Yeah, lets buy it! Page 800: Chinese will invade Russia, America will help Russia and naturally just manage to win with their high tech stuff. Why did it take 800 long pages to get to that point. In Clear and Present Danger I didn't know how he was going to make the action last 600 pages, but an Introduction lasting 800? Waste of time. This is NOT the famous Clancy we know and love, but a shadow of his former self.
Rating: 
Summary: Editors are useful
Review: After slogging through Tom Clancy's Bear and Dragon, I feel sure that Mr. Clancy has thought himself above his editor's advice. My advice to Mr. Clancy would be to listen to your editor a lot more, and if you did, get a new one!
Rating:
Summary: The new Jack Ryan! Now with more Conservatism!
Review: It's been stated over and over again in these reviews, Clancy could not keep HIS politics out of this book. Maybe the divorce and embarassment of not having the money to buy the MN Vikings has turned Clancy a tad bit bitter and it is beginning to refect in his writing. Ryan doesn't like being President we are reminded over and over (we understood this in Executive Orders), we learn to sympathize with the woes of rich and powerful white males, teaching kids to use guns is fine and only liberal weenies and the Left media would object, no oogling at the White House interns and a good national economy has nothing to do with the President, it's all the Federal Reserve. Those are the things we read in the first 86 pages!! Hey Clancy, we know you love Ronald Reagan, please stop transforming Jack Ryan into the MYTH of Reagan. I would not tell anyone not to buy this book because if you can stomach the politics, it's still an adventure. Clancy's talent shines through his politics, buy this book, hold your nose and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Ugh.
Review: Has anyone else noticed that Mr. Clancy loses a half a star with each new book? And it seems each book gets many pages longer as well. And how can they not when there are so many references to Golokov holding a gun to Ryan's head and other inane self-promoting marketing jabs for his past books? Honestly, 1000 pages of lukewarm, mundane, blase storylines, Mr. Clancy's own interpretation of historical events, and finally 28 pages of a climax you could have predicted on page 792, but still had to read another 200 pages to get to. It wasn't enough in my eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Clancy in his twilight...
Review: If someone had attended a creative writing course and was given an assignment to write a 'Clancy-esque' military-thriller but had then decided to turn it into a parody or 'literary-caricature', they would have ended up with 'The Bear and the Dragon'. It was ponderous, predictable and way too long. It took me less than a week to finish my library copy but then I would speed read past the tedious sections (which was frequent). Eric Harry did a much better treatment of the subject in either 'Arc Light' or 'Protect and Defend' and he went so far as to actually take out DC with a nuke in the first one, something that I think most readers were rooting for especially after Ryan does his idiotic Clint Eastwood routine with the aegis cruiser as the warheads are falling. Also, Clancy has quite a set of double standards considering that he broke up his marriage through infidelity. I guess his Ryan universe is a 'do what I say, not what I do' kind of place.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Enough Credit Being Given Here
Review: Having read a number of reviews, I couldn't help but wonder if the people writing them read the same book that I did. Is this the best Clancy novel that I have read? No. However, it is a good read and continues the story. I agree with some other reviewers that we know that Jack is not into being the President and that is overstated in the book. Does Tom Clancy give us a believable plot in The Bear and the Dragon? Yes. Does he give us the bad guys that we love to see taken out? Yes. He also give us the delightful little sub-plots that make it work for me. You don't have to like the politics of Jack Ryan (Tom Clancy), but if your like me, you don't think there is much wrong with Jack's ideas! If you are looking for Cardinal in the Kremlin, this one may not be for you, but if you are looking to a logical extension of the Jack Ryan saga and a book that keeps you in it, this one fits the bill.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb, but not his best
Review: The new Jack Ryan novel by Mr. Clancy delivers on every level, but still falls short of his best novels, because, by now, his books become just a little bit predictable. Dear Mr. Clancy, you may want to consider restructuring your next Jack Ryan novel, otherwise the reader will always stay one step ahead too much. So, in this novel, you get the usual following: 1. Dozens of characters and sub-plots are introduced, which seem to have no connection at all. 2. At about the half-point, the reader gets a picture of what it is all about. 3. In the last third, a millitary conflict erupts. Yes, that sounds familiar. Yes, that's the same structure as in DEBT OF HONOUR and EXECUTIVE ORDERS. Now the good news: This book is better than the two I just mentioned. Although more than 1000 pages long, the book moves at a swift pace, you have characters you care about and the sub-plots and locations feel REAL and interesting. I cannot agree with many readers that there are too many sub-plots which are not important to the novel. Although this is perfectly true, it is the "spice" of the novel. Sure, you could condense the whole novel to 300-400 pages, but then you would lose a lot, you would lose to much. It you're only interested in the bare bones, read a non-fiction book. As Ray Bradbury said: Digression is the soul of the wit. Now, three notes: 1. One reader said that the sub-plot involving a chinese girl and a japanese guy is "leeringly written and offensive". I strongly disagree with that. Even a Tom Clancy book should have and does have the room, between all the tanks and figher-planes, for stories about what is going on between (a) man and (a) woman. If you can't stand such stories, buy a military non-fiction book. 2. Another (this time Chinese) reader pointed out that this book is offensive and racist against the Chinese people. Well, if you don't want to write science-fiction novels all the time, you have to pick a villain. And if you write a global spy/military thriller, the villain has to be a country. So, yes, Japanese people can complain about DEBT OF HONOUR, Iranians can complain about EXECUTIVE ORDERS and Chinese people can complain about this one. But this is beside the point. Again: If you don't want to pick Klingons all the time, someone has to play the villain. AND, the novel doesn't portray the Chinese people as a whole as evil and stupid, but just some members of their government. And who can, Chinese or not, argue with that?!? Every government on Earth has evil and stupid people in their ranks. So, please, whether your Chinese or not, couldn't you put your (politically correct) complaints aside and relax a little bit? Look, I'm German and am very, very used to German villains and I wouldn't mind Clancy picking the Germans as the villains in his next book. 3. Last note to Mr. Clancy himself or one of his agents: Mr. Clancy, you have the great talent to describe even the most ridiculous events in a way that they seem realistic. You do that my showing us not only the government-level but also the events from the view of ordinary people, switching places and locations every so often. You also employ this technique in this book, but in the end, you just show us a war and only that, without showing us the effect on the TV-news, the people or anything else. This has the undesired effect that the reader places those events in the realm of fantasy because you do not root them (by showing us what normal people think about this) in reality anymore. The more you leave the realstic world, the more you have to suspend the disbelief of the reader. You did a great job here in the first two thirds of the book, but not in the last. Ok, let me close now, I can highly recommend this book, it is Clancy's third best after CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and THE SUM OF ALL FEARS.
Rating:
Summary: Page 460! I give up! I can't make it any farther!
Review: At about page 150 or so, thinking I could never get through the thing, I put the book aside. But, sadly, a couple of weeks later, I picked it up again. Now, I'm sorry I did. I've slogged through to page 460, a few pages, a few chapters, a night. But I can't stand any more punishment. I quit! Anyway, it's getting dangerous. I keep falling asleep under this huge, heavy book and I'm afraid it will fall on my face one night and break my nose.I had read and liked Clancy's novels up to Rainbow Six which was bad. But this is much worse. Repetitious, meandering, and filled with so much military jock-sniffing and political bloviating that it seems more like a parody of Clancy than Clancy himself. In a word -- boring. Make that three words -- boring, boring, boring. Unless you are completely in agreement with Clancy's politics and worldview and you have an absolutely insatiable appetite for having them shoved down your throat over and over again in every possible permutation do not even consider buying this terrible book.
Rating:
Summary: Rainbow Six Wasn't the Detour, It Was the New Direction
Review: With this effort, Tom Clancy has dropped from my "automatic hardback purchase" list; the sneering, soulless _Rainbow Six_ has given way to the appalling excesses of _The Bear and the Dragon_. The primary plot line, as usual, is aggressive and intriguing, but the villains' brains in Clancyland have apparently not paid their oxygen bill for a couple of books now. Even worse, one of the subplots -- the one which closes the book down -- is leeringly written and utterly offensive. There's a decent story in here somewhere, but only an editor with a red (pen) army could have salvaged this book's feng shui.
Rating:
Summary: Who wrote this mess and who edited it?
Review: I've read every other real Clancy book multiple times. (Real as opposed to those "Op Center" rip-offs) His latest is going to stay in like new condition. By the time I finished it I wanted my money back ...and my copy was a gift. The most racist, chauvinist, gratuitously profane and schizophrenic mess I have ever waded through. The good news is that it worked better than Sominex or Nytol.
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