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Summary: "If I was president, I would...." , aka Tom Clancy's latest
Review: OK, let's start by pointing out the obvious here:Jack Ryan = Tom Clancy The guy can't get any more obvious. I suppose I'm one of those damned liberals that Tom always rages about in his books, but I've managed to ignore his increasingly bombastic political diatribes in most of his books until now. I realize that the guy is conservative to the core, but it is only through this book that I have come to realize that we disagree on almost every political issue he has chosen to express his viewpoint on. Normally this would not make me avoid his books- if a guy can write, a guy can write, right? But TC has made his viewpoints so ingrained in his writing that I can't manage to read a page without thinking "Where the hell is this guy coming from?" He casually slanders Asians, Asian Americans, Gays and Lesbians, and even Women- all in about 100 pages of the book. Call me easily offended, but I resent the repeated use of the word "chink" in this novel and the increased profanity and sex content. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but there is something to be said for using those types of passages sparingly. Clancy seems to have lost the knack for keeping a storyline interesting, and as a sideshow he has allowed his arch-conservative political beliefs to distort his characters so much as to make them unrecognizable to someone who has read all of his other novels. I will finish this book, but next time he puts one out I will not buy it, unless he manages to clean up his act and write a decent, honest and interesting ACTION-ADVENTURE novel, not a "What I would do if I were president" storybook full of ignorance and bigotry. In truth, this book would be wonderful if you took Jack Ryan out of it completely, (it would be about 3-400 pages shorter too!) but since that would be removing Tom's mouthpiece I doubt he'd ever do it. Just my 2 cents
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Summary: The Last Tom Clancy book I'll ever read...
Review: I was interested in seeing where Mr. Clancy would take Jack Ryan after the last installment of his adventures. While they were always highly improbable, they did have the whiff of realism and were highly entertaining. "The Bear and the Dragon" fails on multiple levels, the most damning of which is it's stultifying pace and the bigoted opinions of the author. It is essentially a vanity piece where Mr. Clancy allows his ego to recreate a world where everything is as it should be... according to his sophomoric intellect. All the cabinet officers have been to Jesuit colleges, except for "the Jew". All are adamantly antiabortion (he discourses at some length on this) and it is a testament to his laziness or lack of ability that all the characters keep using the same phrases and obscenities. The impression I got was that the novel generating software Mr. Clancy uses is not the latest upgrade. In comparison, while "The Hunt for Red October" was a taut lean thriller that was enjoyable and informative, "The Bear and the Dragon" was a bloated, lethargic and even offensive in its lack of regard for the readers intelligence and its author's indulgence of his own pathetic fantasies.
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Summary: Formulaic, yes, but *what* a formula!
Review: Another massive missive from TC. Sure, there are typos and grammatical pratfalls aplenty, but nothing excites like this master when he's cranking up WW III with a cast of no less than 85 characters. Grab your atlas, get online (the better to look up all those munitions), and let your palms get sweaty.
Rating: 
Summary: Back on Track
Review: With "Executive Orders," one wondered if Tom Clancy's future novels might continue to devolve into misguided political and economic preaching, but with "The Bear and the Dragon," Clancy is back on track with plenty of action and realism. When Clancy discusses espionage and military tactics and hardware, he speaks from knowledge and makes it interesting. Tom Clancy doesn't write great (literary) novels, but this one, like most of his, is great escape reading. It is probably more exciting for those of us who have read "The Sum of All Fears." I won't say why, but if you read "The Sum" before "Bear & Dragon," you will be glad you did. Nomuri and Ming are a charming pair I hope to read more about.
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Summary: What is this a comic book?
Review: Clancy's latest effort is disappointing to say the least. Jack Ryan, a character who has formerly shown the ability to act and think rationally has turned into a whining fool with absolutely no tact. The story was transparent from the beginning and the bad guys aka the Chinese, were portrayed as incredibly stupid, naive and arrogant. Now I know the west has a perception of asians as sneaky and often racist towards foreigners, but we have never been accused of being absolute idiots. I have been an avid Clancy reader since the Red October, and I have never been disappointed before. But this time around, he definitely let me down. In the past few novels, while the USA has come out on top, which is expected, at least the bad guys managed to get in a shot or two to keep things interesting. In this current effort the Chinese act as complete morons and the reasoning behind it is stereotypical and very thin at best. Bottom line: Tom Clancy took one of his best characters and turned him into a right-wing religious freak with no tolerance or respect for any non-anglo culture.
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Summary: Disapointed ....
Review: I would always look forward to the Clancy books but sadly, this is no longer true. Completely disjointed, shallow, simple plot with no real satisfying ending. Barely worth reading for die hard fans, but wait for paperback.
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Summary: Clancy goes for the Climax of the Jack Ryan series....Again
Review: I preface this this review to say that I have read all of TCs books (excepting opcenter or Netforce) and I have been and still am a big fan of the author. However I think the continuous story of Jack Ryan which started with Red October has grown stale. Honestly I figured TC to have given up the Jack Ryan series years ago. This could, or rather should have happened after either Sum of all fears, Debt of Honor, or Executive Orders. The book itself is entertaining enough but it sorely lacks two things. Originality, and more distressing, believability. The trend that has appeared over the last few books is TC keeping every significant character from his other works and including ALL of them in this one. This has made a pretty decent 500 page book into a 1000 page monstrosity. I even noticed the reintroduction of a character from Cardinal, and that book was written 12 years ago! This has made this book overly complex. Just keeping up with whos who makes this book less than really enjoyable. All in all I wish Jack Ryan would go away. TC should either create a new and unrelated series or split off with another character from an earlier book. Personally, I would like to see the story line of John Clark in the heyday of his early (1970s) CIA career.
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Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: "Bear" is a worthy addition to Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan epic. You can tell it's good when you find virtually all of the sub-plots in the book compelling and interesting. Clancy did an especially good job of connecting the big developments in the book to the ordinary lives of real people -- showing how ordinary people can sometimes change the course of history unknowingly. Clocking in at 1028 pages, "Bear" just flew by. If anything, it was too short. Of course, Clancy can be accused of sticking too close to the "formula" in this book. The prospect of major conflict between big powers, though titilating for most of the book's early section, quickly becomes blase in the Clancy universe. Didn't the same thing happen in Debt of Honor and Executive Orders? Though Clancy introduces fascinating new characters and leaves us wanting to know more at the end, I for one sure hope Clancy's next novel is not about the next "War of the Year" that Ryan has to deal with. Having taken a break from Clancy for a while (dropped Executive Orders midway through and skipped Rainbow), the first thing I will surely do is go back and read what I missed. This guy is still good!
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Summary: DULL......
Review: ...what the early Clancy books never were: Boring.
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Summary: The Bore and the Dreadful
Review: This not as much a review as it is a warning. The Bear and the Dragon is by far the worst book Clancy has ever written. Rainbow Six could be excused by being in reality a backstory for a computergame, but this is supposed to be a novel. Now Clancy has never been an expert user of metaphor, simile, charcterization or even grammar (I'm neither, but then I'm not a native speaker) but he's always been worth reading because of his knowledge of politics, technology, military and his intelligent plotting. This is sorely lacking in this novel. The Sum of all Fears was the best Ryan book - The Bear and the Dragon is the worst and hopefully last. 800 pages of boring build-up to 200 pages of predictable warfare. Throw in some old friends, some small twists and a bit of Rainbow Six and you have this book. If you enter all of Clancys books into a computer, and ask it to write a new Jack Ryan novel, The Bear and the Dragon would be the result. Consider yourself warned.
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