Rating: 
Summary: No credibility
Review: Tom Clancy's recent book is not match compared to Red October. The Bear and the Dragon offers a political plot that is hardly convincing and a military story that cannot be believed.
Rating: 
Summary: Predictable, long, slow, and heavy
Review: I'm hooked on Clancy's Jack Ryan series, and I was happy to see a new installment published. However, after lifting this weighty tome once, I knew I was in for a long haul. The sheer size of this book, at 1000+ pages, makes it hard to carry on the train. Unfortunately, that wasn't my only problem.The Bear and the Dragon picks up after Rainbow Six; Ryan is still the Prez and Clark is still in England running his team of hotshots. The basic premise is that Russia, a starving, collapsing nation that is merely a shadow of its former self, suddenly has the good fortune to find not merely an enormous oil field in Siberia but also a gold mine. Poof! Russia is back on the map. Unfortunately for Mother Russia, their neighbors to the south---China---are short on money, short on land, and have ticked off the United States so badly that Ryan has ordered a trade embargo against them. Russia's new wealth looks mighty tempting. In addition to all this, an assassin misses his target---Golovko, the Russian head of intelligence and a key character in the Ryan series---and an American spy has seduced his way into Chinese intelligence headquarters. Russia needs American assistance, and the Americans have the military power and information to help as well as a President that the Russians can relate to. Very convenient. These tangled storylines are twisted further by the subplots---the lousy seduction scenes between the American spy and the Chinese secretary; the infighting among members of Chinese parliament; the detailed descriptions of how lousy and untrained Russia's military is; the manhunt for the assassin in Russia; the upgrading of American anti-missile technology; Ryan's unending whine about being President; US/China trade talks full of diplospeak; and the bizarre anti/pro abortion storyline that ends up with murdered clergy and goes into depth about how illegal newborns are killed in population-controlled China. The last drawback, and the biggest I imagine for any Chinese readers, is the profound quantity of ethnic slurs peppered throughout the book. Clancy has an obvious bias against Chinese (and perhaps all Asians, if you consider that Japan was the enemy in Debt of Honor) and his characters take this prejudice to the extreme. When reading this book in public, I was often embarrassed by things that were said and would look up to make certain no one else could see me reading such things. It is possible to make people enemies for the purposes of fiction without slandering them, regardless of your own opinions of their culture. In essence, this is a heavy, slow, convoluted book. It has always been my practice when reading Clancy to skip the pages and pages of excruciating detail about military movements, bomb-building, virus particles, etc and move on with the story. The problem here is that every aspect of the story is bogged down by such detail. It has the potential to be a great novel, but the lack of serious editing weighs it down.
Rating: 
Summary: What Happened???
Review: I am so disappointed. Meaningless pornographic sex, nedless swear words galore, endless preaching (literally, in some cases) and almost no action. Ugh. What happened to the story, the drama, the action? Almost no one does anything but whine and complain. Diplomats, president, field agent. Doesn't matter who the character is, no one is happy anymore and they've all lost their zest to do their jobs. I was very excited to get my hands on this book, and then it actually took several trys to get even a couple of chapters into it. I nearly stopped reading it several times. I just didn't expect to have to work that hard to get to the good stuff. Looks like Mr. Clancy is writing for the paycheck and getting paid by the word to do it. What a letdown.
Rating:
Summary: Very Slow read
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 had to really work to read this book. I must admit that I was not greatly impressed by "Rainbow Six" when I noticed an increased tendency for Clancy to include more foul language than he had in earlier works. One thing I miss is his clean concise 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. This book also delves into sexual encounters quite early. I greatly enjoy Clancy's other books, but this book is a very bad read. You may call the dialog in this book reality, but I can do without it in my pleasure reading.
Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy's worst
Review: I'm a big Tom Clancy fan and when I did see his latest book "The Bear and the Dragon" I couldn't wait to buy and read it. Looking back at it, this is my worst buy ever. I live myself in Asia (as a European) and really, Tom Clancy should have stayed out of Asia, because his views of Asia are biased, racist and simply WRONG. Besides this, the book is just never really starting of and very dreadful. I expected much better from Tom Clancy..
Rating:
Summary: Bear Up, He's Dragon This Out To A Thousand Pages
Review: In over 1000 pages Tom Clancy gives us a simplistic,an un- realistic view of international relations and conflict. As an entertainment it is first rate (although too long). Filled with action from the first page to the last, it is typical of what readers have come to expect from this revered author. Don't however expect this book to expand your understanding of international relations or American politics. In this respect the author has, very seriously, dropped the ball. Read it to be entertained, not educated.
Rating:
Summary: TC should go back to his old day job
Review: Long time TC fan here. I have to say his work has been slipping for some time. His latest book is not only boring, it is long and boring. TC needs let Jack Ryan and all of his friends die off and start a new setting w/ new characters... or go back to his old day job. Where will Jack be next if TC is allowed to continue, president of the world? Getting back to the story, it lacks the depth and intrigue of his earlier works like Red October, etc. The plot and characters are extremely transparent. I think at this point TC is putting out a poor story and living off his repuation from past works. I would not recommend this book to former or new TC readers. If you do want to read this book, save yourself some $$ and wait for people like me to dump our hardcover books off at the second hand book stores! -Lee (a former big time TC fan)
Rating:
Summary: Very slow up to page 300 or so
Review: Tom Clancy likes to write them thick (1028 pages) this one is very slow up to about page 350 or so then gets pretty good. The ending takes up only one short chapter though and I would like the excitement to last a little longer.
Rating: 
Summary: Slower moving than previous work, but good
Review: A well written, but somewhat slow moving book compared to past efforts. This one is far more concerned with the internal workings of power than with the trappings of a "techno-thriller" i.e. long descriptions of weapons and combat actions. Only twords the last thrid of the book does Clancy really get going, but it's still a very invloving story. Jack Ryan for president in 2004 folks, he's be better than the shlub's we have running now
Rating:
Summary: Clancy's Cosmology
Review: The line between Jack Ryan and Tom Clancy is becoming thinner and Ryan is the one who suffers. This is not a techno-thriller of the type Clancy invented. It is more like a tour of the Cosmos with the guide's observations about how things would be better if he and Jack were in charge. The Bear and the Dragon opens with 200 pages of set-up that a lean and mean Tom Clancy would have handled in a few muscular paragraphs. Aside from establishing that there is a lot of corruption and incompetence in Russia and that Chinese counterintelligence and technical security personnel are pushovers for the CIA, we have nothing to show for our first few hours of reading. The remainder of the book moves a little better, but I needed a lot less product placement by the producers of Jamaican coffee (so expensive that even POTUS and Tom Clancy dilute it with lesser varietals). As usual, you pick up some technical insights-- a ballistic missle travels faster than the shock wave from high explosives-- but Clancy needs to introduce us to some heroes so young and hungry that they dream of Folgers to wash down the snakes they eat.
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