Rating: 
Summary: Ghost Writer?
Review: I can't believe that Tom Clancy wrote this book. Whoever wrote it doesn't seem to know or love Clancy's marvelous characters. (Also, as an aside, Smokey Bear does not work for the Secretary of the Interior. He is in the Forest Service, which is part of the USDA.)
Rating: 
Summary: Still good even if repetive at times
Review: The overall plot of the book is very similar to Clancy¡¦s previous work, Red Storm Raising. The causes of the conflict are the same; the parts about wars are similar, with the side that has American in always have the air supremacy and better intelligence. Even the bad guys¡¦ desperate attempt at victory is similar, except in this book they get much closer than in Red Storm Raising. This conflict, however, only takes up the last quarter of the book. For the first 600+ pages, Clancy carefully construct events that will eventually lead to this conflict. This part of the book has the feeling of The Cardinal of Kremlin, but without the more detail part of the spy-operation. The book is good at both part, but both of these have been done in greater detail before. The book doesn¡¦t add much new things to these two major themes. The book is also filled with parts that describe the character in excess amount of detail. Some of the detail does have some importance later on, but most of them are just repeat of events that happened in other previous novel. This isn¡¦t necessary a bad thing for people who just start reading about Tom Clancy¡¦s novel, but it interrupt the tempo of the story for us who have read all other books that leading up to this one. Still, the book manages to be interesting in the first part and exciting in the second, so it¡¦s still worth the time of reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Big Disappointment
Review: Somewhere in this book there is a plot of about 100 pages, surrounded by 900 pages of the worst writing I have ever seen. I don't expect much in the way of characterization or poetry in a Clancy book, but I do expect at least some effort to put together a grammatical sentence. This reads like a first draft, and not a very good one at that. The tortured use of compound and complex sentences was very distracting. I finally got through this book by skipping all the long lectures and going right to the action. And I am neither a prude nor a follower of the cult of political correctness. Nonetheless, the last two words of this novel were as offensive as anything I have ever read. What a major disappointment!
Rating: 
Summary: Uff Da!
Review: Wanted: Editor and proofreader to work with noted thriller author. Possession of a nice thesaurus a plus. Tom Clancy is noted for his deep, labyrinthine plots and for taking his sweet time in moving his plots along. At his best, Clancy crafts long page turners with lots of juicy techno-speak and tons of subplots, and he's usually been good at tying all the strings together in a tidy knot at the end. I've found his earlier works a bit wordy, but for the most part enjoyable and gripping. Clancy's best works are like good action movies: not at all deep, but finely crafted and entertaining. This bloated, shallow book, is not Clancy at his best. Yes, it's long. Yes, it has a half dozen miniplots simmering alongside the main thread. The problem is, none of the plots is all that interesting, and they move along at the pace of a snail on strong antihistamines. Plus, it's becoming quite clear Clancy's being paid by the word (or perhaps the pound). It's clear no editor was shown this mess. I found myself almost groaning out loud in parts as entire earlier passages or conversations were repeated almost word for word. This is a novel that would benefit greatly from having a monkey rip out half the pages at random. No matter where it chose to tear, the result would be tighter and it's hard to believe much continuity or plot would be lost. In addition to the unnecessary and tedious word-bloat, there are other annoyances. Mr. Clancy seems to have discovered the four-letter word section in his Oxford English Dictionary. Crude and hollow-sounding profanity laces just about every sentence from every character. The president and his cabinet discuss national security matters mainly by stringing together cusswords and racial epithets. The dialogue comes across as wooden and contrived, like a 10th grader's attempt to write how "adults" speak. The characters, like always, are as flat as Clancy's beloved Chesapeake Bay on a windless day. They all sound and act so much alike that it's difficult to determine who's speaking most of the time. Clancy tries to make up for his inability to craft interesting characters by making them all superhuman. There is harldy a "good guy" in the book who doesn't have 2 Ph.D's, a personal fortune made on Wall Street between gigs at the CIA or FBI, a medal of honor or two, a trophy wife who's a world-class doctor or professor, and a son who's an all-American football player at Florida State who also is a 4.0 honors student in nuclear physics. I've rarely felt so inferior as a human being as when reading this novel. It's fine to have overachievers in your story, but come on. The Bad Guys, on the other hand, are invariably cartoon villians with no humanity. Many are portrayed as perverts. Such amateurish characterization might work better if the plot was non-stop action, but thanks to Clancy's plodding, corpulent page count, we're forced to spend way too much time listening to these ciphers speak wooden dialogue to one another, explaining what we already know for the fourth time. Other parts of the book are simply so strange they're amusing. A US CIA officer in Beijing's seduction of a Chinese secretary takes up a good chunk of the first 200 pages. This smooth operator of a spy buys the Chinese woman several hundred dollars worth of intimate lingerie at Victoria's Secret and presents it to her on their first date, whereupon this shrinking violet immediately models it for him with enthusiasm. This "love story" seems to have been written by the same people that produce porn films. Meet girl, ask her to dinner, give her crotchless panties as gift between the soup and the meat course, hop into bed. On a nitpicky note, there are at least a half dozen typos in the text, words that are spelled correctly but out of context. Obviously the entire proofreading operation consisted of running a spell checker before sending the manuscript off to Printing. This adds considerably to the feeling that the book was written in one draft, unedited, and rushed into publication. The big climax is an invasion by a Chinese army group into Siberia, and in this, Clancy seems to be in his element again, giving us 200 pages of combat and action. But by now we've even read this multiple times before. Pick up Red Storm Rising and reread almost any passage and you'll find the same stuff. The ending is abrupt and feels unfinished. The only release of tension one feels finishing the last page is a kind of relief that the ordeal is over. Clancy is slowly turning into a parody of himself. In fact, if someone wanted to write a first-rate Clancy parody, this book would be a good thing to plagiarize and would need only slight modification. Hopefully this novel is an aberration - something rushed out because Clancy's Sherman tank needed new treads or something. Let's hope his publisher finds a strong-willed editor to work with him next time.
Rating:
Summary: It was a disappointment to wait two years for this
Review: I have to say that I am an immense Tom Clancy fan. Some people build cabinets for a hobby, I read Tom Clancy books. I was anticipating this as much as the next person, but my goodness was I disappointed. This was the most repetitive, drawn out book I have read by Clancy. The story was Executive Orders all over again. Just change the names. Instead of the UIR going into Saudi Arabia, it was China going into Russia. Both met a "roadblock" and the smaller army won. It was the exact same story and as a result it was predictable. The ending was rushed and there were only really two suspense scenes in the entire book. It seemed like he had to go answer the phone as he was ending the book and just decided on a paragraph to wrap it up. I expect more from this man, especially when we have to wait so long for a new one and presumably, if there is another Ryanverse book, we'll have to wait another two years.
Rating:
Summary: Longer isn't necessarily better
Review: For the first time, a Tom Clancy novel is dragging me as a reader. And, getting dragged over 1000-plus pages of mediocre story telling is really chafing. The spelling mistakes are annoying and all these knowing looks between Jack Ryan and his crowd is cloying. The good guys are too good and almost cartoonishly overdrawn; the bad guys are too bad and paper thin. The Bear and the Dragon doesn't measure up in terms of pace, suspense or character development with my Clancy favorites: Red October, Cardinal of the Kremlin, and Clear and Present Danger. Do I detect that Tom is tired of this line of novels? After reading The Bear and The Dragon, I'm thinking I will not be rushing out, as I did last week for this one, for the next Clancy novel. I'm disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Good storyline, but not as much as Jack Ryan's usual
Review: Well I was very happy to see Jack again, after that 5 years of leave...but the result is mixed. For hard Tom Clancy's fan, this is still a good book, but for the others, there is now some other authors that are taking the space. I was used to have something like 200 pages of story setup (the what & why), and then 500+ pages of action-packed story and this book is the complete opposite while there is some small action during the 700 pages of story setup. And what about the end... you have a big intrigue that last about 10 pages and whoops, the enemy's destroyed and we cut the story short with a 'dhuh?'. I also like, as some other reviewers, the fact that the Chinese have something like 3 divisions of tank and the Americans drops, with only one airstrike, smart bombs that destroys nearly all of them... Now, usually, TC would have explains this but in this case, you will just see a Chinese communique that they don't have any news from all their divisions anymore! That was the action part which could be reduce to 'we nailed them Mr. President, somehow and you are not on a need-to-know basis'. Beside that, the rest was mostly TC style and it was welcome but I would suggest taking a look at Balance of Power from James W. Huston.
Rating:
Summary: It's OK....but not one of his best
Review: Tom Clancy's fans will no doubt read this and enjoy it. It is, however, not one of his better efforts. While the plot is fast paced, the story did not grab me the way his previous books did. Sometimes, not churning books out so fast would be the better way to go.
Rating:
Summary: The Same Old Story, Over and Over Again
Review: I am an avid fan of Clancy's books, of Jack Ryan, John Clark, Ding Chavez, and his other recurring characters. I have read every one of his books (and RED STORM RISING was not my favorite). I agree with many who said that the story ended badly, but my biggest problem is that it is the SAME STORY. In DEBT OF HONOR he had the Chinese angling to take over the "Northern Resource Area" in Russia by conspiring with some Japanese business leaders and the Indians to weaken the US. In EXECUTIVE DECISION he had the Chinese angling to take over the "Northern Resource Area" in Russia by conspiring with the Iranians and the Indians to create religious instability in Russia and weaken the US. Now, in THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON, he has the Chinese simply attacking Russia to take over the Northern Resource area. At least in the other two books, Clancy had something original to say. In DEBT OF HONOR he demonstrate the vulnerability of US financial markets to enemy attack and the link between economic interests and national interests. In EXECUTIVE DECISION he gives his view of life at the top of the most powerful government on earth, and how that government makes its life and death decisions. But in THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON we get nothing new, not from the story line itself or even from the characters. At the end of this book all our favorite characters are in basically the same positions of responsibility as the were by the middle of EXECUTIVE DECISION (except Robbie Jackson). They faced no new challenges, and received no new development.
Rating: 
Summary: To another two years of waiting.......
Review: I have waited for this book since "Executive Orders" (even though "Rainbow Six" did refer to Ryan it wasn't altogether about him as "The Bear and the Dragon" is). And the book is definitely worth the wait. The only thing Clancy readers tend to forget is how long it takes for his stories to get set up. So the first 200 or so pages go pretty slowly as you know that the action to come will leave you breathless. I only found two things not completely satisfying. The first being how often Ryan gripes about being the President. He's now been there long enough to have come to terms with the job, one he chose to continue with. Face it and deal with it. The other was the ending. It had all the action you could want, you hold your breath a number of times and wonder what you might see if you look out the window. It is also emotionally powerful. You live each and every emotional moment through Clancy's masterful but not overly flowery description of thoughts and feelings. But in many ways, it leaves you right there holding your breath. It's like being on an extremely exciting rollercoaster that instead of finally winding down until it stops keeps going and going. And now I find myself back at square one looking at another two years of waiting. Not just to get into a new adventure but to find out how this was finally completely resolved. If your one of the lucky who still haven't read all of the books in the Ryan saga, go back to "The Hunt for the Red October" and read all the books in order so you can get a full understanding of who Jack Ryan is and how he got to where he is today. You won't be disappointed. If you are like me who already read the full story then my deepest sympathy. We have another very long wait.
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