Rating: 
Summary: Clancy Trails Off
Review: An avid Clancy fan, I pre-ordered this book, waited patiently. The result, disappointment. This book does not seem like it was even written by Clancy. The prose is different from his other books. The plot is disjointed. Maybe Clancy is too busy. I hope the next one is better. Otherwise, the next one may be the last I read.
Rating: 
Summary: Bear and the Dragon just couldn't be the work of Clancy
Review: Having read all of Clancy's novels (Many several times over), I was sorely let down with The Bear and The Dragon. The crudeness displayed by my favorite author really knocked me out of the box. His previous efforts have always lent themselves to trying to explain the thought processes of "The enemy" (Soviets, Druggies, Eco-terrorists, the IRA, or radical Arab elements, etc.) and what America, in the guise of Jack Ryan or John Clark, should do to counter them. But other than stating outright that the Chinese just plain think different than we do, he simply denegrates the novel by resorting to name calling. "Joe Chink" and "Japanese Sausage"....please! This is the first of his novels that I would not recommend on any level. It appears to have been ghost written by a name-calling, racist and not the strategic thinking techno-novelist that I've long admired.
Rating: 
Summary: The Bear and The Dragon
Review: Yesterday, I finished "The Bear and The Dragon, " by Tom Clancy. I must say I was disappointed. Tom's Clancy's "Jack Ryan world" departs further from the world we live in with each passing book. Tom Clancy's first few books were masterpieces. But his last few novels have lost the original "Clancy spark." Where the "Red October" was a technically accurate masterpiece, "The Bear and The Dragon," takes extreme liberties with China's military capabilities. I know this only because I recently read a report on the subject by the Brookings Institute. Where "Red October" tells a detailed story in 450 pages, "The Bear and the Dragon" is over 1000 pages long, and that's in hard cover! In "The Bear and The Dragon," over three-fourths of the book are used to give background information and the setting. I would suggest that this could have been done more effectively (and certainly less boring) if the ratios were reversed, one-forth for the setting, and three-fourths for the conflict. "The Bear and The Dragon" also lacks originality as its plot is almost identical to "Debt of Honor." It has the same elements except that Japan is replaced with China. I sincerely wish that Tom Clancy would replace Jack Ryan with a new character and start the series over in today's world. He should go back to the 500-700 page spy novels and leave behind the outlandishly premised war books of 1000 pages or more. Its very difficult to write a book of such length and keep the reader glued the book all the way through. However I'm not sure if any of these suggestions will ever come to pass. By this time Tom Clancy has such a loyal following of readers, he could write a how-to manual about doing computer programming in Arabic and millions would undoubtedly line up to buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy gets worse by the day
Review: i have always been a fan of his earlier books but it seems that tom clancy is losing his touch. it seems that his vocabulary is limited to the few f words and those lousy, lousy really lousy sex stuff... if you want to read tom clancy read his earlier books. he should go sell his insurance instead of writing books that are full of stereotypes. had there been things such as -5 stars, i would think that he fully merits it. too bad the minimum bar is a star. i wonder who send it to the bestseller list. i must have been one of those blind fools.
Rating: 
Summary: Several shortcomings, but good fun nonetheless
Review: OK, so there are a lot of typos in the book (and many of my pages were printed crooked - what's with that?), the ending was not as detailed as it should have been, and that famous Clancy multi-threaded story line never quite developed as well as it has in the past. Still, it was great fun reading a book that had enough parallels to current events to occasionally cause me to confuse the two, if only for a minute. Besides, it was much easier to keep track of the Russian names than it was in Red Storm Rising (grin).While I can agree with many of the comments presented by earlier reviewers, 1's and 2's should be reserved for truly horrible books, which this is not. The Bear and the Dragon is obviously not Clancy's best effort from a detailed literary standpoint, but it still probably ranks as one of my three favorite Clancy reads because of its timeliness. Definitely worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: Romantic Japanese Sausages
Review: Clancy is known for his generous understanding of technology and unique ability to apply it to cool dramatic stories where Jack Ryan nearly always saves the world. Clancy is not known for his romance writing. During the romantic interludes between a Japanese/American CIA agent and a Chinese assistant to the People's Politboro, I found myself going eeeYhuuuuuu more times than not. Multiple references to Japanese sausage was nauseating and basically summed up the entire novel when reference to the sausage was the last line in the book. Clancy can do much better and should leave the romance to others. This is by far his worst novel to date. What happened?
Rating: 
Summary: The Tradition Continues
Review: Tom Clancy shines again in this masterful, realistic spin on the world of "what-ifs" that we live in. One of Tom's biggest assets is to combine both present technologies and current theories and weave them into a plot that I have to continually remind myself is fiction. Tom Clancy is known in his past works not only for his immense grasp for technical details but also for his serially written novels. After reading several previous reviews, I can only guess that some people made a mistake in attempting to grasp this fine piece of literature. I have personally read all of Tom Clancy's novels, in order, and I awaited the day that this book hit the shelves; as I remember, it was near my 16th birthday. Here I am, just 16, and I am engrossed in Clancy's works. If I can grasp his plot schemes and technical details, others can too. Otherwise, close the book, and return it to the store so others like myself can enjoy this fusion of past, present, and future military suspense.
Rating:
Summary: Warfare, or is it advertisment?
Review: 1028 pages total, 600 pages with no substance. It would have been a good read if the book is thinner. There is nothing much to anticipate given the author portray of the competency of the Chinese armed forces. The battle described feels more like some US military hardware advertisment. I hope Mr Clancy can do better next time.
Rating:
Summary: ... another embarrassing work from a former rising star.
Review: .... As many reviewers have described, this novel consists of 750 pages of mind-numbingly repetitive and simple-minded set-up and 250 pages of action. The ratio in his excellent books "The Hunt for Red October", "Without Remorse", and even "Red Storm Rising" is reversed. Mr. Clancy should stick with the horse that got him this far. An as is becoming all to common with Mr. Clancy's work, he ends the novel with none of the attention to detail that he became famous for, but with the brevity and thoughtlessness of a freshman reaching the minimum word limit on a creative writing term paper. In a bizarre vein, Clancy continues to try to expand his use of romantic scenes in this book. His description of intimate encounters parallels his description of the detonation of a thermonuclear device or the operation of a submarines trailed antenna array. Hire a ghost writer for this stuff! On a less humorous note, the level of vulgarity has risen dramatically in this book. Jack Ryan (POTUS, for you acronym wienies), the leader of the free world and hero to all right thinking Americans, can't utter a sentence without including some vulgar reference (either sexual, racial, cultural, ... whatever). Neither can his Vice President. Nor his Chief of Staff. Nor any other character in this book. I understand that talk gets salty amongst military types, ... or amongst most any type. But why rachet the level of vulgarity to such a level that it becomes the feature of most conversations, rather than a literary condiment? Stay away from this book unless you are the most die-hard Clancy fan. I used to fall into that category, but he's lost me for good now. His work has degraded to mere slop, particularly with the last two efforts (this one and "Rainbow Six"). Dave Carter Carmel, IN
Rating:
Summary: Wish I had read the other reviews before wasting my money
Review: I bought this book with great anticipation as I am (or was) a great Clancy fan, having bought ALL of his previous books. What a let down! Clancy is trying to be something that he obviously isn't. He tries to over-build his characters (one whole page of a character's thought processes is not uncommon - of course, liberally laced with vulgarities. he should leave the pseudo-literature work to the experts). I am appalled at his blatant stereotyping of China (fried panda penises? People in Mao suits roaming the streets? pleassseee...have you, Mr Clancy, visited China lately?). His writing borders on bigotry and perhaps crosses the line into racism. Ahh...the quintessential American right-wing cheer-leader, advocating hegemony; unabashedly ethnocentric. George W. would have been proud.
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