Rating: 
Summary: TOO MANY PAGES - TOO LITTLE WAR
Review: Tom Clancy is in dire need of a Book Editor. This novel reads like an Unedited first draft - needlessly overlong, overwritten, with too few incidents occuring and a sluggish plot that never rises to the occasion (not even in the end). It's simply not worth 1,028 pages - and your time. It could easily lose 400 or so. It seems Clancy did a lot of research and dang! if he isn't going to include each & every thing he learned. Back off, Tom! I loved his previous novels - but with this one, he shows that he's rapidly losing sight of simple, good story-telling. This is not a worthy successor to his previous novels. It's slow, excessively wordy, and too thin.
Rating:
Summary: There is more than spell check
Review: This could have been a great book, but unfortunately it isn't. I got very confused several times when I had to go back and figure out what he said because of the use of the wrong word. I think I found at least 15-25 instances of the wrong word being used, example week for weak. Come on didn't anyone read it before it went to the printer!! I hope the next one is better or its on to Dale Brown or Stephen Coonts.
Rating: 
Summary: CHING CHONG CHEY
Review: I am normally a huge Clancy fan, but this book truly sucked the big one. The characters were all weak and over simple. They were either satan incarnate or a perfect little angel. I've come to expect little from Clancy's characters and it has never really bothered me, but this was attrocious. And the story line. My God it was totally unbelievable. So we go to war with China; I can accept that, but to then destroy what seemed like 700 Billion chinese troops, tanks, and planes while managing to only lose 30 Russians and an American airman or two! Come on! It was awful. My favorite part was where a US plane drops a bomb which turns into 5000 little guided rocket bombs which then proceed to wipe out half the Chinese tanks. PLEASE! It was so unbelievable. We only hit something like 30% of our targets in Desert Storm despite the media showing nice little bunker explosions. And in the balkans it was still just as bad, even worse. Are we to believe that we suddenly posess the ability to bomb w/ a 95% kill rate? Save yourself the trouble and don't by this book. If you already have then burn the book. It'll save you money on firewood and you'll get more out of it by burning it than reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Once, and Never Again
Review: This was my first Clancy novel and I am glad I got it at the public library. As it was, I had to pay a library fine for the extra days to finish it. It is 1028 pages of slow predictability, laced with too many facilitating coincidences for me to sustain believability, and loaded with characters straight out of Hollywood--pure good guys and irredemable bad guys. I believe that only a 19yr old ring-in-the-nose patriot could stay high on this novel, and then, only if he read it while waiting in line at the recruiter's office. Despite Clancy's incessant asides, attacking one or another facet of American politics or our social mileau, his American characters are all apple-pie. And, interestingly, all the Russian officials in it are positively portrayed, now that Red Oktober's evil empire has disbanded and Russia has knelt before Clancy's altar. Clancy even condesends to to Russia's needs. This book sends America's best to school Speznatz in the ways of counter-terrorism and even gives its blessing to Russia's reconquest of Chechnia. But this book does not let one positive comment about China slip into its thousand pages. Example: of Chinese liquor, "--too vile to contemplate," p302. Mau-tai is "like drinking flavored lighter fluid," p310, while munching "fried panda penis," p321. Compared to Clancy's portrayals, the Temple of Doom served up a burger and fries. Clancy allows his characters to freely use racially pejorative terms, and on one occasion allowed the author's voice to do the same. He beats the dying communist horse tautologically while failing to give credit to the exploding capitalist initiative surging in China. He correctly, but repetitively, suggests that China is tending toward National Socialism, but fails to understand the power of this political development in his portrayal of China and its leaders. His simplism for the sake of creating a bogyman is mirrored in his use of the word "Klingons" as a way of saying Chinese are inscrutably belligerent. They are not Klingons Mr. Clancy. They are Romulans. They have not yet sucked up to the Federation and intend to maintain a fierce sense of cultural independance. Simplifying China into Ming the Mercless is the worst sin of this book. Like all propaganda, it makes its readership underestimate the potential enemy. Speaking of Ming, a key character in this book is a secretary of that name holding a job as sensitive to China as that of President Ryan's cigarette-dispensing protector. But, while it would be inconceivable to read of Ryan's secretary betraying her country, Clancy would have us believe that subversion of those holding China's highest secrets is a piece-of-cake, and penetration of their most classified info. system is a hacker's evening. When the expected war begins on p780, the Chinese are as blunderingly overconfident as a bull in the stemware dept. Many contrived large strategic moves, and small tactical happenings lead inexoarably to China's defeat, but in a very unsatisfying way designed to showcase both America's advanced weaponry and China's supposed total ignorance of it. Can we believe a wartime enemy to be that unaware? That dumb? And that manipulable? Here, Clancy doesn't get it at all, in the way he has the Chinese people respond to Ryan's Naval shelling of the Chinese coast. He has no idea how that would galvanize the Chinese with memories of British gunboats shelling, at will, up and down Chinese waterways in the 19th century. They would not, as in this book, respond with anger toward their government. Other readers have faulted this book on military and technical grounds. My criticism is with its plodding predictability and banal social/historical treatment. I suggest Mr. Clancy read Gary Friedman's treatment of NRA: the novel, "Gun Men." I put "The Bear and the Dragon" in the same Chicago basement box.
Rating:
Summary: This can't be Clancy, can it?
Review: I've been a fan of the Ryan series of Clancy's books for years and eagerly anticipate each new release. Loved the majority of them, including the recent 'Debt of Honor' and 'Rainbow Six'. I don't know what the heck happened here, but B&D falls so far short of the previous work that I can't believe it's Clancy's writing. I mean, do Mary Pat and Ed Foley really need to call each other 'honey bunny' 50 times throughout the book? Do I need to be continually reminded that Mao screwed 12 year olds? I think not. An RPG assassination and then nothing but boring diatribe on the Chinese and repetitive nonsense for the next 700 pages until the action begins. And then it's the usual 'Americans are invincible' Hollywood nonsense. No, I can't believe this is Clancy. I'm sure the next one will be better (right Tom?)
Rating:
Summary: disappointing and in bad need of a editor
Review: If you're expecting a "Ryan as President" novel to stand with the first two, you're going to be mistaken. The good start is thrown away as the next 300+ pages ramble exhaustively - and pointlessly as tho Clancey gets paid by the page. Where were the editors?? Do we REALLY need to read page after page of Ryan's thoughts on why he hates being President or Noumouri's thoughts on seducing a secretary? No. 19th century novels are models of concision by comparison. He also much have discovered the word "f**k" since he uses it at every opportunity. As Clancey's vocabulary atrophied along with his creativity? It appears so. Bottom line: don't waste your money. If you MUST HAVE this novel, it should be on the clearance tables by Christmas.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good read
Review: I've read all of Clancy's books, and liked all of them with the exception of "Rainbow Six", which was totally unbelievable, and almost enough to turn me off Clancy forever. This one is a big step back for Clancy: enjoyable, entertaining, interesting. Sure, there's a lot of repetition (referring to someone as a 'puke' is the best example of this fault), but the story held my interest. Gerry
Rating:
Summary: From someone who hasn't...er...won't read the book
Review: This is depressing and a little silly to have to do, but I'm going to write an Amazon.com for a book that I have not and will not read. TC has lost me as a reader. I can already feel the disappointment welling up inside of me as I thumb through the negative reviews -- all of which I expected. When TC made an airplane crash into the Capitol Building, I thought he'd lost it. His subsequent novels proved it, and I disliked each successive work more and more. Whatever happened to the strategy and suspense of Red Storm Rising (my first TC read) and Hunt for Red October? TC, are you just an angry conservative now? Using your publisher to express your views? Have you picked up on the fact that, DUH -- no one has turned one of your novels into a movie since Patriot Games? Do you visit Amazon.com and READ the reviews by real people? Sounds like readers are suggesting you go out and stand by the water like you do in your book photograph. Take off the hat and bomber jacket. Jump in. Take Jack Ryan with you. While you're drowning in the depths of your failing career, I'll find a better book to buy.
Rating:
Summary: finally finished it
Review: Clancy has taken a medeocre 300 paged novel and expanded it into a horrendous novel of over 1000 pages. This is his worst to date and is the last of the hard cover editions of his books I will buy. He is still an interesting read but the development is so slow you start losing interest. Just think back to the hunt for red october or red storm rising. This was clancy at his best. Now he has used up the genre and should develop new and interesting characters not the same cast of characters that can do no wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Looks like this dragon lost its fire
Review: I had waited the two years necessary for the next installment of Clancy's writing with baited breath, eager to find out what had happened since I last had an opportunity to spend time in his novels. Unfortunately, I will not be waiting so eagerly next time. This book stunk. Clancy was terribly unfocused. Characters would state a single line of text, only to go into 2-3 pages of retrospect about what that person thought or background on that person's reason for existence. It got so long and uninteresting that I actually read three other books (Preston/Lincoln novels - very good!) while in the middle of "The Bear and the Dragon". Another reason I felt this book was horrible was the action didn't really start until around page 780 (of a >1,000 page book). And even then, the war scenes that so impressed me in Clancy's last books were dry, unimaginative and very slow moving. Hardly worth the wait! Finally, I don't remember Clancy's other books being so foul mouthed and lacking in morals. Hardly a page goes by without multiple uses of the "F" word, and to top it off, the last sentence of the book brought rather disgusting imagery to mind. For Clancy's next book, please do something original. I am tired of how much Ryan hates the presidency. Do something original - this series is DONE!
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