The Bear and the Dragon

Rating:
Summary: Clancy Does It Again!
Review: Once again, Clancy thrills and amazes with technology and intrigue in The Bear and The Dragon. Clancy has written great techno-thrillers since the Hunt For Red October, and the continuity of the characters from ALL of his books is simply amazing. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE appears in The Bear and The Dragon, characters from almost every book he's written, and that's what makes his newest book so fun to read. I think that it will be interesting to see who becomes the next Jack Ryan in Clancy's novels. Could it be Chet Nomuri? I can't wait to see!

Rating:
Summary: Another rant...
Review: Another overwritten book of overdeveloped characters through which Clancy lectures the audience on his own political beliefs. Clancy's distaste for government, liberals, the media, politicians, anyone who doesn't subscribe to Clancy's belief system, etc., permeates his writing, interfering with Clancy's obvious mastery of the technical art of war (i.e., the real reason people buy his books). The quality of Clancy's writing, brought to such a fever pitch with his first five or six books, has steadily declined over the past three efforts.

Rating:
Summary: Diplomatic Espionage at it's finest
Review: One of the last communist countries in the world refuses the recognize the fact that they depend on trade with the United States to survive. The American President, Jack Ryan, decides he doesn't like their obtuseness, and decides it's time to play hard ball, Clancy style. Toss in familiar characters from Clancy's backlist, add borderline poetic descriptions of everything from worldwide economics to nuclear missile interception, and you've got a rocket of a book. Also, this is the first time Clancy really takes us inside the world of diplomatic negotiations, and how they can immediately effect the worldwide course of nations. We also hear from Cathy Ryan, John Clark, Ding Chavez, the Foleys, etc. This is a good read if you're looking for Vintage Clancy.

Rating:
Summary: Good, But Not His Best
Review: Like many of you out there, I am a true Clancy Fan. And, have waited for this book for a LONG while. Once again, Clancy has taken his true writing art of the action, suspense novel and given his readers a good ride. Fans, will not be dissappointed, but, to be honest, the book left me with something missing.

Maybe, my level of expection was too high. Maybe I have read and re-read many of the other Clancy novels too many times. But, to me, while this book was very good, it was not his best. By far, his best works to date were Debt of Honor and Executive Orders, to the true fan, reading those more than two thousand pages back to back is a very enjoyable experience.

DON'T READ ON IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE THIS BOOK.

In his current novel, the best parts are 1> making Robby his VP, imagine, friends become president and vice-president and him deciding to stay in D.C. when the missiles are flying.

So, to the new Clancy reader, I would start with his other books first - see above

Rating:
Summary: When Did Jack Ryan Turn Into Dirk Pitt???
Review: As referenced in the review title, I'm a big fan of both Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler. However, both authors have recently been demonstrating that it might be time ship some of their stars off into retirement. Overall, I did enjoy 'The Bear and The Dragon', it's your standard Clancy page-turner. There are minor complaints, mainly the feeling that dialogue has been cut & pasted at times (how many references to the 'new toilet paper joke', 'as long as the cat hunts', and other lines crop up several times in the book spoken by different characters). Whether it's done on purpose or by accident, it really gives some scenes a 'been there, done that' feel. I also feel that several new (or briefly glimpsed old) characters really needed more fleshing out. I was also annoyed that Clancy has obviously fallen so in love with his creations that he can't bear killing any of them off. Three books ago he wiped out most of the government and several minor characters as well. James Greer died so long ago, I can't even remember in what book it happened. Yet now, all of his characters (major or minor) seem to be invincible. Which brings me to my major problem with the book, the ending. After going through 900 pages of excellent reading, I'm left with an ending that seems tacked on in the worst way. It's almost as if Tom get's bored by the story and decides to wrap up everything in a single chapter. Not to give anything away, but it begins with on pretty improbable event, is compounded by any lack of surprise in the target (even a 1 in 10 chance didn't make it surprising), and finishes with a Jack Ryan performance that only Dirk Pitt and Al Giordiano could deliver convincingly (and it would be a longshot for them as well). The last 50 or so pages just got worse and worse as you went along. So once again, I'm faced with reading another great Clancy book, spoiled by the last two chapters (I hope I wasn't the only one who hated the hackneyed ending which had a passenger jet that destroyed half the U.S. government a few books ago). Clancy made his name by concentrating on detailed plotlines, which while played on the world's stage, featured minor players. Now that many of them have graduated to becoming major players, they seem to have lost what made them interesting in the first place. Putting them into a formulaic plot ripped from several other techno-thrillers just doesn't make sense. At least Tom hasn't taken a page from Dirk Pitt's creator, and started appearing as himself in the pages of his own novel.

Rating:
Summary: Clancy's best book yet
Review: What an incredible book. Even though this book was over 1000 pages it didn't have a dull moment. It also had an ending that will leave you breathless.

Also recomended: Blood Covenant By Douglas De Bono. If you like Clancy You'll love De Bono

Rating:
Summary: Good, But Not Great, Clancy
Review: Overall, better than Rainbow Six (by a long shot), but I actually liked Executive Orders better. No matter, it's still decent Clancy, which means intricate plotting, lots of modern high tech, good action (when it finally gets going), and politics that will annoy the liberals. Don't let the 1000 pages fool you; it's a pretty quick read, and a lot more satisfying than most of the other thick tomes out there.

Rating:
Summary: Continuing Clancy Decline
Review: I have read most everything that Clancy has written and am a big fan of his earlier works: Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Cardinal of the Kremlin, etc.

Unfortunately, the last few editions of the Ryan/Clark saga have started to lose their edge.

Clark/Klerk is still a great character that makes for great reading and plot development. Ryan is still a regular (albeit smart) guy in extraordinary circumstances. The most obvious changes I have seen are (1) a steady decline in the technical details and (2) far less realistic dialogue between characters.

I imagine that these are two of the most difficult things to do successfully when writing, but I think that both Clancy and his editor were just focused on getting another book out the door than making sure it was a good one.

Now, for some perspective, my eyes *never* glaze over at page after page of analysis of water flow across a turbine (October) or the intricate process of building a (fictional) nuclear weapon (Sum of All Fears). These are the details that make the Clancy books fascinating for me. And well written dialouge is something that makes my heart skip (Hurly Burly, Glengarry Glenross, Usual Suspects). Additionally, I am disappointed by the increasingly frequent usage of vulgarity in Clancy's books (especially Rainbow Six) as it does not seem necessary and certainly reduces the number of people to whom I would reccomend the book. I'm sure that seems a contradiction given that the examples of good dialogue listed are all notoriously vulgar movies, but the impact of vulgarity in the books has a much harsher impact and also seems more out of place.

Overall, I can't say that I didn't enjoy the read, but I was hoping for higher quality work.

Rating:
Summary: Not his greatest
Review: Tom Clancy has produced another weighty tome (1028 pages) this time around, and I definately enjoyed the story.

I do, however, have a few gripes about this book:

1) Mr. Clancy spends rather a lot of time ramming his political views down his readers' throats--for example, we are told (at some length) that he's anti-abortion, pro-Taiwan, pro-military, anti-environmentalist, etc. There are also some barely-concealed barbs about the Lewinsky scandal. Personally, if I want a political commentary, I'll buy one--I don't want it foisted on me when I'm just reading a fun story.

This political commentary is a fairly radical change from previous books--while you do get some ideas about Mr. Clancy's political views in other books, it's nowhere near as blatant as in this one.

2) This book reads as if it was rushed to press. There are several disconcerting repetitions (i.e. using the same quote or example to illustrate the same point just a few pages apart). For example, we are told at least twice that the White House Military Office is referred to as "Wham-O" by the people who work there. There are also several typos (so-and-so "faxed over" a docunment, he didn't have it "taxed over"). All in all, it could have done with another fairly heavy-handed editing.

3) The characters, especially the women, come across as very wooden. While Clancy's characters have never been all that amazing, they're really pretty bad in this book--you never get a true feeling for any of the players in the cast. For example, Mary Pat Foley (in this book Deputy Director-Operations of the CIA) ends nearly every sentence addressed to her husband, Ed Foley (the Director of the CIA), with the words "honey-bunny." It ends up coming across as very stilted and rather annoying. The only character that I really identified with throughout the whole thing was Chester Nomuri, a CIA field agent.

All in all, this book is definitely worth reading if you're a Clancy fan, but it's not one that I'd recommend to a friend that I wanted to introduce to his work. (I'd probably use Patriot Games or maybe The Hunt for Red October for that purpose.) If you're not a hard-core Clancy fan--as I am-I have first editions of all his fiction--you very well may want to wait for the paperback edition and save yourself a few bucks.

Rating:
Summary: Bear and the Dragon and Boring??
Review: If your like me, you've read every Clancy book out there and so have I. But unfortunately he has set a standard that is hard for even him to meet every time. And this time he has not met it. The basic plot is interesting (the Chinese are the predicable bad guys here), but this being his longest book ever, I found little character development here. What I mean is that what I enjoyed in the Jack Ryan series is that each book went further to explore Ryan and all the central characters (to include are favorites: Clark and Chavze). But not this time. I did not find myself interested in the characters, they even introduced some new one, then hey...where did they go? All in all, if you are loyal you'll read this one and his next. I just hope it has the excitement of Debt of Honor or Rainbow 6. This one was more like Sum of all fear, but not that good. Sorry Tom, time for new blood (i.e., maybe little Jack joins the Marines to follow his old mans foot steps or something like that).