Rating: 
Summary: No More Honey-Bunny, Please!
Review: I'm still reading "The Bear and the Dragon," so my three stars are provisional. Still, I wanted to share some thoughts. I'm about 200 pages in, but unlike his previous books, I have yet to encounter any true suspense. In "Rainbow Six," we had the attempted hi-jacking that grabbed me and other readers right into the story. I'm sorry, but the attack on the Russian pimp just doesn't measure up in the suspense department. I think the problem here is that there is not much he can do with Jack Ryan as president. His previous Ryan books were much more spell-binding because Jack was involved in the action. Here, and in "Executive Orders," our hero is stuck in the Oval Office. I don't know how or if he'll be able to write his way out of this situation, but until Ryan is out of the White House, Clancy will continue to face the same problem. That's why I'm starting to enjoy the John Clark-themed books more. Clancy is able to do much more with Clark. One other thing. Tom, please, no more "honey, bunny" from MP. This is the CIA. We didn't have this kind of talk (at least, I don't remember it) between the Foleys in past books. It just doesn't resonate with me! Still, unlike others who have written here, I'm still enjoying this read, even with its shortcomings.
Rating:
Summary: Big Plots, Large Action, but little else
Review: What allows this to book to be 1000 pages is the simple quantity of the sub-plots happening. But after that the good guys are all good and the bad guys are all bad. The good guys have phantastic technology that always works, and the bad guys are stuck in the 50's. This leads to very one dimensional story reading. And there is very little of the fog of war syndrome. In previous books by Clancy such as the Cardinal of the Kremlim and Red Storm Rising the good guys suffered defeats and set backs. Here the plot is on auto pilot. After the shoot starts the ending is a forgone conclusion and too short. So now that all the major power's have fought each other in the Jack Ryan universe, can we get back to some simpler well thought-out, well developed stories?
Rating: 
Summary: Too long!
Review: As Mr. Clancy ages he seems to ramble...This book could have been much better with fewer words.
Rating:
Summary: Not his best
Review: While certainly entertaining, I felt the book was not up to previous standards. A number of times, I had "deja vu all over again" as he seems to repeat himself in explaining a number of devices (both plot and technical). The characters are more two-dimensional than in other stories. The Chinese almost cartoonish. I'd hate to read this book without having read the entire canon of Clancy's Jack Ryan and Rainbow Six novels. As to the end of the book -- definitely unsatisfying in tying up loose ends, perhaps setting the stage for a continuation of the venue.
Rating:
Summary: Another Disappointing Book From Tom Clancy
Review: Although better than his last book, Rainbow Six, I was still disappointed with Tom Clancy's latest effort. Next to Rainbow Six this is his weakest work to date. It appears that Tom Clancy is running out of plot ideas because the story line is basically a combination of Red Storm Rising and Debt of Honor with the Chinese as the villians this time around. The story itself is pretty predictable, any body who has read any of Tom Clancy's previous works will be able to figure out the ending early on. The book is 1028 pages which is about 500 pages too long for the story line. Tom Clancy could have easily eliminated 500 pages and I don't think it would have made a difference to the overall plot. A lot of the superfluous text is the result of Tom Clancy injecting his own polictical views in the story via President Jack Ryan. I have nothing againts Tom Clancy's political views, I even agree with some of them, but add nothing to the story line, and in fact if anythng, they detract from the storyline.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed with this effort...
Review: I have been an avid Tom Clancy fan since "The Hunt for Red October." I have read all of his single-author books and many of the earlier books for which he is a co-author, but I simply couldn't bring myself to finish this book (sigh). I must admit that I was not greatly impressed by "Rainbow Six" (Clancy's last book) when I noticed an increased tendency for Clancy to include more foul language than he had in earlier works. One thing I had REALLY enjoyed about Clancy's earlier books was the relative cleanliness of his language in writing and character action and development. I felt like I could read his books and enjoy their inherent complexities and character development without having to work my way through character after character swearing with and at each other (including the POTUS, at least leave me the luxury of hoping that a clean-mouthed man could be president...why not Ryan?). I was also depressed to wade into the deep pool of sexual encounters described early in this book. I managed to make it to only about page 130 before I called it quits. Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoy Clancy's other books, but not enough to wade through what he put together for this offering. Sorry Tom. But I thought that you and others deserved to at least hear my main criticism. Call the dialog in this book reality if you must, but it's a brand of reality I choose to avoid in the pleasure reading I do. I think that the main story line definitely had potential...but now I'll probably never know. Thus, only 3 stars. Alan Holyoak
Rating:
Summary: The Sum of All Formulas
Review: I have long been an admirer of TC as a plotter and writer, despite his occasional lapses. [But never an admirer of his "as told to, but written but someone else" Op-Center products.] With Bear-Dragon, TC has fully descended into Clavell's Disease - that syndrome which causes formerly creative and exciting writers to ACT like they're being paid by the word, which one should not do, even if one IS paid that way. Too many words (a fair-to-good 500-pager fluffed to 1 kilopage), too many subplots, too many characters, too many moral lessons. And the editing! Are TC's editors now afraid to point out to him that he's used the same phrase, metaphor, simile, or analogy several times before - a few hundred pages ago? It's distracting and it's unprofessional. Sure people will buy the book anyhow, because of TC's name, but those loyal readers are owed a better book - I suggest we are owed a better book with each outing. Bear-Dragon isn't it, Tom.
Rating:
Summary: The only character missing from this book is the editor.
Review: There is a four or five star thriller hiding within this opus, but unfortunately Mr. Clancy has once again occluded his considerable story telling ability with a fog of extraneous plot threads, gratuitous details, and unwelome sermonizing. Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction dean emeritus, who Clancy has credited with inspiring his own writing technique, once said that there was no book ever written that couldn't be improved by cutting 10,000 words. In the case of Tom Clancy's later works, it should be more like 200,000. I sense that Tom Clancy is so enamored with his own success that he won't let an editor touch his work. This is a shame because he still possesses a genius for crafting an exciting and original thriller, but weighs it down with way too much needless and distracting baggage. Is a techno-thriller really the place to discuss President Clancy's (er, I mean Ryan's) views on abortion rights? For the vast majority readers, I think not. Likewise how many times in a single novel must he use the pejorative "tree huggers" (I counted three)? Didn't he beat up on environmental extremists enough already in "Rainbow Six"? Also one reference to the Clinton sex scandal was more than enough for this reader, but apparently not to the author. Tom, you're certainly entitled to your opinions, but please put them in an op ed piece somewhere, not in a supposed vehicle of escapist entertainment. This not-so-hidden agenda on Clancy's part really detracted from my enjoyment of the clever and well plotted thriller that is buried in this book. A thriller not really coming to light until the last three hundred pages of this 1027 page novel. Too bad he didn't spend the effort on extending the thriller instead of the sermon. By the way, the juvenille locker room sexual innuendos get pretty tiresome too. A little of this may "season" the "reality" of the story, but here it's laid on so thick, especially at the White House and cabinet level, as to be totally unbelievable.
Rating: 
Summary: Stupid
Review: Starting at the end... (Careful, gives ending away...) Communist nuke ICBM land on Wash DC, but no-harm no-foul. Clancy then writes to justify how the the communist leadership is not responsible for this 'mistake', and everyone on 'our side' can be a hero, and feel good. Bad joke? This book is a bad joke right from the beginning. I agree with some of the other low ratings posted on Amazon.
Rating:
Summary: Clancy falls from ivory tower of fiction
Review: I was very disappointed in Clancy's latest book. I have all the others, but this one is difficult to read. Even after 300 pages, the plots lines have yet to intersect in a coherent story. Add to that problem the high frequency of profanity/vulgarity, and explicit sex scenes, and Clancy has changed both his style and ability to rivet the reader.
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