The Bear and the Dragon

Rating:
Summary: Let's hope Clancy isn't getting lazy like King
Review: As an avid Clancy fan, I have to express great disappointment with his most recent release. Although the core of the story is quite entertaining, it proves impossible to ignore both his repetitive use of comments and attention catchers as well as the poor editing.

As I read the book, I kept feeling distracted by deja-vu, knowing that Clancy had used a particular zinger 100 pages back. I understand that it is common to reiterate facts and review conversations, especially in the genre, but Clancy has historically been known for executing review in such a way that it feels new as you read it.

I feel like he wrote half the book; took a hiatus, then wrote the second half while reusing a sheet of comments and notes he felt he had to include. There is an amnesia to the structure of the book that we should not expect to see in a work from an author of Clancy's skill and reputation; one that any competent editor would have both caught and corrected.

The book is also a disappointment in its conclusion. I will not give away the story line, but suffice it to say that I got the feeling that Clancy got bored or hit his page count objective and decided to wrap the book up quickly. After taking his characteristic time to provide well-developed characters, plots and subplots he takes a Hollywood approach to the conclusion and wraps everything up with some unbelievably QUICK strokes of the pen. I found the conclusion more far fetched than the ending of Patriot Games.

The book is definitely worth the read and would I would be less critical if I had not come to expect the highest of quality from Clancy. He misses on this one it that respect.

Let's hope that it is not indicative of the titles to come. I would hate to see him start releasing the first draft slop that other successful authors such as Stephen King have adopted over the past years. With fame and success comes an obligation to deliver on your reputation, not get lazy because everyone will buy your book just because of your name.

Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy the Nationalistic Xenophobe
Review: The entire first half of this book was offensive, infuriating, and, ultimately, extremely disappointing. I am an avid Clancy reader, having read all of his books. I love them, and I'm a huge fan of Jack Ryan. I'd been awaiting this book since Amazon began taking pre-orders months ago.

But in this book, Clancy's nationalism, xenophobia and arch-conservative politics spilled over the top and ruined an otherwise compelling plot. In each of Clancy's books, Clancy's conservative political views on domestic & international governmental policy are apparent. However, his politics are usually seamlessly woven into the story. And the knowledgeable Clancy reader understands that Jack Ryan, the messenger of these politics, is likely Clancy's alter ego. Even Clancy's lengthy political diatribes -- delivered through Jack Ryan -- are tolerable because they are so obtuse. It's Clancy's book. He has a right to use it as a soapbox.

Certainly, as Clancy sets up the United States's political and economic enemies for the big fall to come, he must compel the reader to feel enmity for those enemies. But need he pander to racial prejudice in doing so? What is my concern? The repeated, numerous and uniform derogatory racial epithets directed by every American character towards the Chinese people: "little," "yellow," etc. (Forget not the blatant references to Chinese genitalia).

While I can understand a demeaning reference or two as a literary tool to build the necessary hostility towards the Chinese protagonists in the book, Clancy went too far. It is one matter for one or two characters to make prejudiced remarks in the heat of the moment. It is quite another matter for VIRTUALLY EVERY American in the book to make the same prejudiced remarks repeatedly. I find it implausible within the flow of the story that the entire American government has racially-grounded prejudices against the Chinese. And for Jack Ryan to be the most conspicuous messenger of those sentiments was profoundly disappointing to this fan of Jack Ryan.

I hope that Clancy will stick to what he does best: Weave big, compelling plots that celebrate the strength of this country and develop the character of Jack Ryan et al. as American heroes. Leave the cheap xenophobia on the cutting room floor.

The second half of the book was redeeming, although the first half set-up detracted from it tremendously.

Rating:
Summary: Not Worth Reading...
Review: The Bear And The Dragon I felt was not worth reading. President Ryan is back in action, but this time instead of being the man that Clancy has shown to us in the past, we now get a complainer and someone who talks down to his staff like they are children. We then meet Chester Normani who is in Communist China to sneak into the governments secret through having sex with one of the Chinese interns.
Then in Russia, a pimp is killed thanks to a RPG in Moscow, and oil and gold is discovered in Siberia. Now as the Russians rush to Siberia, China then gets the idea for invading Russia because they have oil and gold and that is what China needs to get their economy booming again. So now as they go into war mode, we then get back to Ding and John Clark who then go to Moscow to train with the Russians. So now, China and Russia are at war, and of course America steps in and in shock only three F-14 Tomcats are lost to the Chinese. There are no American casulities which I found kind of strange. Then the war is over, and Jack Ryan retires the Presidency to Robby Jackson; his Vice-President who is assassinated because he is the first black man to reach that spot.

So why did I not like the book? I found this book very stupid, and too long. There is so much mention of sex I thought I was reading a bigger portion of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. Not worth reading, if you want to read something by Clancy, read Debt of Honor.

Rating:
Summary: Clancy's Parallel (and breathtaking) Universe
Review: It's impossible to read all 700+ customer reviews, but I see the point of many of the folks slamming Clancy over this one. My take on this book, is that it is highly entertaining, how Clancy has continued the saga of Jack Ryan & Company through his series of books. There are numerous references to previous Clancy books that are substantial enough to create a parallel Clancyian universe. President Ryan speaks of the Fair Trade Act as history, and it takes some sorting out to remember, "no that's just previous fiction." Ryan semi-mutates into President Bush, with references to the previous corrupt president (Clinton?). Clancy's world is populated by military and ex-military types, so the insensitive acpects of their world-view that was not appreciated by other reviewers comes from that culture (Joe Ch--k, the swearing, the smoking) When facing enemy fire on the battlefield, one certainly does not care about the ill effects of second-hand smoke, or any other issue not related to immediate survival on the field of fire.

It's important to realize that Clancy is fashioning his own version of Planet Earth, which definitely departs from the reality we know. Unlike this book, the Chinese in real life recently demonstrated restraint in the Hunan reconaissance plance incident (as did President Bush). It certainly does not seem today, that the Chinese are headed toward a military confrontation with us or the Russians.

I think the real way to appreciate Clancy is to recognize that his world is a fiction, and then enjoy the ride. The details of the Siberian War, and of the air war, especially relating to the Dark Star technology, were breathtaking. This book accelerates as you read it, from a stroll in Dzherzhinskii Square to the 14,000 fps speed of the ICBM at the book's climax. The war turns what was a page-turner, into a page-riper... Once I got to the war at page 870, I had to continue nonstop until the end (1000+ pages). The book was breath-taking, and way too large-scale for a 2 hour movie to do it justice. Clancy in Bear & Dragon underscores why there is no substitute for reading a great book.

Rating:
Summary: Unremarkable in every way possible
Review: Numerous plot lines come together too easily, others go completely negelected. Racism and sexism abound. Clancy show complete ignorance of prenatal care and testing, which makes me question his mastery of other, more complex, issues. What a waste of 1,000 pages. Too bad, I really wanted to like this story.

Rating:
Summary: Profanity Detracts
Review: I was a Clancy fan up until this book. There is too much profanity, repeated and unnecessary. Sometimes a point can be made by it, but its excessive use caused me to begin just skimming the book after 300 pages.
A good page-length for this book would have been 450, not 1000+.

Rating:
Summary: Red Storm Rising clone, except boring and annoying
Review: 1½ stars

In three of his last four books, Clancy is getting an awful lot of mileage out two sources - plagiarizing his early [and best] novel Red Storm Rising, and the fertile manure pile of his person political philosophy. The former, in moderation combined with a bit of new material, makes for somewhat interesting reading, especially for those who have not read RSR, Executive Orders or Debt of Honor. The latter source makes for painfully boring, annoying prattle.

The Bear and the Dragon is over 1,000 pages long, which is easily double or triple the length that it should be given the plot that Clancy has developed. The crux of the first 800 or so pages could easily fit within 100 pages. It probably became an impossible task to pare down the vast expanse of irrelevant text in the editing process (I'm guessing Clancy has voice recognition software and just dictates hour after hour of free-form verbiage), resulting in endless loads of filler text.

Cons:

First and foremost, Clancy thinks he is omnisciently clever in his personal moral and political beliefs and has decided to share..... actually, force those beliefs on his readers time after time after time. He does this through the soliloquies his characters spout page after page after page. By the time you get through the first 50 pages of this book, anytime you see a paragraph of more than four lines that starts with a character who "believed," "thought," "reflected," "remembered," "pondered," "considered," etc... you should immediately skip to the next short paragraph containing action verbs. Absolutely nothing of any consequence to the story occupies the hundreds of pages of soliloquies Clancy has spewed in this book. In Clancy's books, there are only two sorts of characters - the silly/radical/imbecilic/evil/foolish/dangerous antagonists and the protagonists. For protagonists, substitute the words: "Tom Clancy." All of the pondering his characters do is either Clancy spouting off his own beliefs or him bitterly and melodramatically satirizing those with whom he disagrees. In the good old days, Clancy wrote exciting, interesting military thrillers that appealed to both the spec-and-tech fans and the action fans. Nowadays, his primary goal is demagoguery. Clancy's world is black and white - there is his opinion and then everything else is stupidly wrong.

Certainly it is important for America to have well-trained, well-equipped armed forces - 95% of us Clancy readers are military buffs to some extent and we can all point to Chamberlain as an example of how pacifist appeasement and lack of adequate military preparation are foolish policies in a contentious world. However, I really don't need my military thrillers to shriek dogma at me about Thomas Clancy's views on religion in public or abortion. If I wanted that, I'd flip to one of the evangelical cable channels. We don't need to have dozens of explanations about the obvious, that pacifism and communism are bad things. I also don't need some pompous jerk claiming that smoking cigarettes and cigars is actually a good thing and anyone that disagrees is a wuss/momma's boy. Even for those who agree with some or all of Clancy's various beliefs, Clancy's proselytizing is excessive by a factor of ten, clumsy, sophomoric and boring. Since almost all of Clancy's characters are either himself or that stupid, evil antagonist, he's not actually developing any "character" for any of the characters in his books by these "musings."

Clancy is a blatant racist. If accused of racism in his book, he'd just say that he was trying to portray realistically what average military or ex-military personnel might say. Bull. There are dozens of references spewed throughout this novel to "Chinks," "Joe Chinaman," "Gooks" and "Ragheads," so many that it is not just a colorful depiction of colorful characters. If he didn't mean to imply support for those racist terms, he would not have mentioned them in the first place.

Next, given that the PRC is on the brink of bankruptcy, had always coveted Siberia and now there are huge discoveries of gold and oil deposits right on their doorstep, why is the invasion a surprise? Weren't any of them forewarned by the exact same thing happening with the USSR in Red Storm Rising? Oops, I guess that's not part of their fictional world. Why has the new Russian Federation so ridiculously ignored Russia's fiercest, traditional enemy to the south - that's not realistic at all.

Another really annoying part of this book is the way that all of the American military and intelligence figures spew ridiculous quantities of slang, jargon and colloquialisms at all of the foreign characters. It would all be incomprehensible. Presidents and generals just don't repeatedly call their counterparts from foreign countries "buddy" or "pal."

Funny how the American losses for the conflict total only three F-14 flyers.

How many times will Ryan whine he does not want to be President?

Pros:

The last 200 pages, once war actually breaks out, are pretty exciting. Very derivative of Red Storm Rising, but nonetheless interesting reading.

Clancy does possess more knowledge of military equipment than practically any other writer in the genre.

Finally, I disagree with some of the other reviewers' criticisms, which I don't think are fully justified. Clancy's use of slang about the Chinese is racist, but not his characterization of the Chinese as a whole. Clancy's China behaves very much how the real PRC behaves, not because of how the Chinese people think and act, but because of the politburo's totalitarian control of the country. Please folks, remember a few years back to the spy plane incident? China claimed the large, slow lumbering U.S. plane had deliberately knocked the Chinese fighter out of the sky - absurd. The trade imbalance situation is also fairly accurate. Remember the ridiculous outcry that the U.S. deliberately targeted the Chinese embassy in Sarajevo? The PRC has 30,000 state security personnel monitoring and censoring the Chinese access to and use of the internet - reasonable governments do not do that. Clancy is criticizing the PRC government, not the Chinese people.

Rating:
Summary: His best work or not, the man's still a pro
Review: I can't believe that this book is scoring so poorly here; I think it's his best work in years. Clancy mixes in humor, tension and action into a novel about a conflict that could happen any day. What more could you ask for?

It's my belief that Clancy is being punished by some reviewers for some of the ghostwritten garbage that comes out under his name. This book, however, is a REAL Clancy novel and more than met my expectations. Give it a try and it should meet yours, as well.

Rating:
Summary: Love This Book
Review: This was a great book. I have now read it twice, however i am disappointed to find the reports from other people who did not like this book, even people who have read the other books in this series, this book is as good if not better than the rest. Rainbow Six is by far my favorite, with all the detail that he builds into battle sequence and the caracter backround, from what the sniper sees as he looks through his scope to see the damage he has done to his target to where the Rainbow Six team thinks about its objective, etc.

As for Frank Owen from Chicago, IL who wrote a earlier review, he says "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."

Hey Frank welcome to the real world where real people speak real words, not high educated harvard english. A Special Ops team member might speak more vulgarities than 5 ordinary gangbangers in a day, let alone during a operation

Rating:
Summary: Earth to Clancy: Return to What Made Your Books Fun
Review: You have to admire the scope of the story and how he does such a good job of tying the many pieces together. I especially admire how he builds the story from lengthy serials to rapid-fire cuts from storyline to storyline as the book progresses. The military lingo can get a little geeky, but most of the time hits just the right "that sounds pretty cool" note. And it's fun to have Ryan as the Prez (although you do start to wonder what Americans in Clancyland are feeling, what with global crises erupting every year or so).
But ...
the story really suffers from all the indoctrination that infuses even something as simple as a character taking a sip of coffee (which prompts the drinking character to go on and on about the evils of Communism, etc., etc.). You can almost detect 'em coming, after a while you get good enough that you know when to turn on NPR to have your antidote. This sets up interesting duels between the part of your brain that processes Clancy using some minor character doing some minor thing to make a point about lily-livered liberals and the part of your brain that gets hooked by a profile of an underpaid inner city teacher who bicycles to work.
Ahem. Back to the review. The problem with the fixes the US gets into in Clancy's books is that the resolution always seems just a little too easy. This one takes the cake, and doesn't overcome the "yeah, but"s that you keep thinking as you get to the end. For the investment of time necessary to finish this behemoth, I'd have to say you'd be better off re-reading Executive Orders or Debt of Honor.