Rating: 
Summary: Shame, shame, shame, Mr. Clancy!
Review: Okay, so the plotline was decent. I learned a lot about the theory behind the ill-fated attempt on the pope's life. However, that's ALL I enjoyed.I'm angry about paying [dollar amount] for a sloppy piece of work. I feel like I've been ripped off. I'm disappointed with the poor sentence structure, the lack of continuity of facts, and the repeated attempts at humor, "My wife cuts into eyeballs." And the lawyer jokes. Please, Mr. Clancy! Find something else from which to extract black humor! And the "thought dialogue" Clancy uses to paint a picture of what men and women think about under stress doesn't take the reader anywhere important. At one point, Ryan is wondering, "why people arise early on Saturday and sleep in on Sunday." What does THAT have to do with the plot to kill the pope? Toward the end, Ryan is among a group of British agents who need Secret Service-type radio communications. Clancy has the characters practicing with the radios the day before. Good call. So WHY IS IT on the morning of the "big event" that we read an entire PARAGRAPH about one of the agents providing intricate detail for Ryan on how to operate the device? DIDN'T THEY DO THAT THE DAY BEFORE? And what about Ed and Mary Pat? They're the hero and heroines. Why didn't we see THEM celebrate or get a big pat on the back? Gosh, Mr. Clancy, I've always loved your stuff -- even the techno-details I might not understand. Your plots, your story line, your dialog -- all put your readers in a place we've never been before but, when something like 9-11 happens, we feel like we have a decent grasp of what's going on behind the scenes in the real world. That's because we trust your research and your understanding of black ops. I suggest that, if you're not willing to work hard anymore at being a writer, you quit cranking out sloppy fiction and stick with non-fiction. At least then you'll have ghost writers to blame for the poor work and, you'll still collect a fat advance and steady royalty checks. But remember kind sir, if the Clancy name no longer means what it used to mean in the way of entertaining and informative suspense, you and your publisher can forget about the big royalty checks. We -- your loyal readers -- will quit wasting our time and money.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good, But . . .
Review: There's a very good story here. There's also too much detail/filler. Clancy has always used detail to enhance his stories well (create images of settings, add depth to characters, explain aspects of character's lives that many readers would be unfamiliar with, etc.), but he gets carried away here, and the pace of the novel is damaged, impairing the pace of the good story underneath the excessive detail. But, again, there is a good story in there.
Rating: 
Summary: And if you go chasing rabbits .....
Review: 'And you know you're going to fall, When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead.' With apologies to Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) this book was a bad trip. First of all, the book was repetitive to distraction. How many times do we need to be told that Sir John is uncomfortable with his honorary title of Knight? How many times do we need to be told about the origin of the KGB HQ Bldg? Ok we now understand 'kulturniy', perhaps it was the tenth mention of it in Red Rabbit that did the trick. Also the interaction between Jack and his wife Cathy was at times poorly written, surely the fine surgeon doesn't pout when Jack is out of town for a few days or can't disclose his activities to her? Granted there were some interesting tidbits in Red Rabbit, but not 600+ pages worth. As a huge Clancy fan, I really am disappointed that he didn't take this opportunity to fully explain in more detail how close the former USSR already was to collapse at this point in time, and explain in far more detail the social/economic unrest in Poland that caused the domino effect in Eastern Europe when coupled with the West's aggressive military spending. Where were the other interesting subplots as demonstrated in Clancy's other novels to keep it far more interesting? Although I finished the book, consider yourself warned that there isn't much meat on this particular bone.
Rating:
Summary: Bad
Review: Tom Clancy is good at two things-- action, and the description of military equipment. He has always been terrible at everything else. This book is everything else--an utterly tedious work where the reader is forced to wade through some 600 odd-pages of Mr. Clancy's vulgarity and mindless conservatism without any action or the description of any military equipment at all. Clancy has apparently forgotten why people buy his books.
Rating: 
Summary: old fashioned Cold War thriller
Review: In 1981 Pope John Paul II threatens Moscow and Warsaw that if the repressive government does not ease off the people he will resign his current position and return to his native Poland, causing an international incident. Hard line Soviet KGB leader Yuri Andropov refuses to sit idly by and accept the Pope's intimidation. Historian Jack Ryan conducts research in England when the CIA and the British SIS recruit him as an analyst. Jack learns from a defector that Andropov plans to assassinate the Pope. Even for the Russian Bear that seems farfetched, but then again sending a confrontational message involving world affairs appears out of the ordinary for the Papacy. Still Jack needs to find confirmation that Andropov has decreed that Pope John Paul II must die. If he finds his evidence, the tyro spy knows he enters a realm that his entire life has not prepared him for in the slightest, as he must find a way to keep the Pope safe from the Soviets. RED RABBIT is a clever prequel that places Jack at the beginning of his espionage career. By doing this, Tom Clancy enlivens his hero, yet keeps his core values consistent with the other novels. The story line is exciting as the rookie Jack seeks proof while engaging in a battle of wits though readers will wonder why the novice has such responsibilities with something of this magnitude. Still Jack is back doing what he does best, leading to the audience enjoyment of an old fashioned Cold War thriller. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: This is the 2nd Clancy book I have read, and I really liked it. It wasn't quite as good as The Hunt for Red October, but it came pretty close.
The only real things wrong with it were: 1) there were too many typos. Clancy should get a new editor. 2) It gave away a lot of events from Patriot Games, a book which I haven't read yet. 3) In Red October, Ryan says he hasn't been 'in the field' before while working for the CIA, and yet he goes into the field in this book. 4) This book is set almost immediately before Red October, but the head of the Russian government is Brezhnev instead of Narmonov, and the U.S. President is Reagan instead of an unnamed former D.A.
All in all, a great book. It almost made a 5-star rating, except for the problems I listed above. (What I'm really saying is: buy this book! It may not be perfect, but buy it anyway, or at leat borrow it when it comes into a library! If you're a Clancy fan, buy it! If you're not a Clancy reader, this is a good starting point!)
Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy? Meet Jenny Craig!
Review: First of all, I have to say that I am a huge Tom Clancy fan but "Red Rabbit" REALLY put that to the test. I normally love seeing continuing characters inserted into "real" history. C. S. Forrester's Hornblower is a perfect example of how this can be done with hardly a ripple and Tom could learn a lot from him. A better plot would have been to have dropped Mr. Clark into Sophia to try and uncover the plot and then barely fail in an attempt to stop the assassination. But, then, that wouldn't have generated another script treatment for Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan. In fact, I almost could hear the AFLAC spokesduck quacking out "Affleck!" throughout the book. Maybe I'm wrong but... Anyway, to the book. It's been a long time since I had to force myself to finish a book by an author that I liked but this read was work. Hard work. I, for one, always have found the relationship of Jack and Cathy Ryan to be wooden and stilted but there were always other exciting sub-plots running in the background that eventually drew us mercifully away. Not here. They are like Luci and Desi on Prozac. Several times I caught myself fantasizing about Cathy hitching a ride on the Popemobile and taking one or two for the Pontif. But I digress. I have long ago accepted Clancy's difficulty in showing a believable man-woman relationship just like I have given up on ever seeing John Grisham end a book well. Heavy sigh! I've run on way too long but here's the book in a nutshell. No real drama or suspense as to the outcome. Too much of Jack and Cathy. No entertaining side issues or sub-plots. Not even any good jingoistic rhetoric. Too big to be so dull. C'mon, Tom!
Rating:
Summary: Too much and not enough
Review: Somewhere buried in this bad 618 page novel is a good 100 page novella. Clancy (or his editors) should have made the effort to publish that novella instead of "Red Rabbit". Clancy who, in the past, has had a tendency to take his plots to the point of over-complication (and sometimes past that point) went too far in the opposite direction here. The outcome of this novel is obvious within the first 25 pages and the depictation of that outcome occurs within the last 25 pages; leaving the five hundred pages in the middle for repeated scenes of various characters having meetings to discuss what's happened, descriptions of characters traveling from place to place, and prolonged passages of characters thinking about what's happening. Even in cases where Clancy seems to be foreshadowing a plot twist, nothing comes of it (was I the only one who thought Mrs. Zaitzev was going to refuse to defect at the last minute?) The closest thing to a sub-plot in this book is when Clancy starts whining about the evils of socialized medicine. That and an attempt at historically revising Reagan's foreign policy seems to be the reason this book was written.
Rating:
Summary: The (YAWN) Education of Jack Ryan
Review: Once again, Tom Clancy has written a crackling thriller, delving into the heart of the CIA operations - in this case, the exfiltration of a KGB defector with information on the plot to assassinate the Pope. Unfortunately, he has buried it in a surplus 300 pages of turgid prose, clumsy attacks on the usual suspects in Clancyland (including the Soviets, the New York Times, politicians and liberals of every stripe are the biggest threat to American democracy), and mind-numbing detail about the process for getting a document from Langley to Moscow. How many trips by Jaguar from the airport to British Secret Service by one-appearance non-entities, whose drivers are even named, does it take for us to get the picture, Tom? Possibly worst of all, though, are the repeated scenes in the first 400 pages of the book. Yuriy Andropov, KGB Chair and heir to Brezhnev's throne, has a cynical thought about personal power handed to him through Marxism-Leninism. 3000 miles away in London, CIA novice analyst Jack Ryan speculates that Andropov is having such thoughts. 6000 miles away, a Greek chorus of CIA administrators speculates that Ryan is having such thoughts about Andropov having such thoughts. Intersperse with scenes of a conscience-stricken KGB communications officer and the CIA Station Chief he miraculously contacts the first day of his spiritual crisis. Repeat. Repeat again. Repeat a third time, moving the story forward by microscopic increments. Hey Tom, the secret to multiple plotlines is to have them all advance the story then come together in a little thing storytellers like to call a CLIMAX. At last comes the great defection scene, which is pulled off without a hitch. Ditto the interrogation of the defector. Ditto the decision to send Ryan to Rome to almost single-handedly prevent the Pope's assassination, which at this point every sentient reader knows both happened and failed to kill the Pope. Clancy's solution? Have Ryan capture the link between the assassin and the KGB. The whole Italian sequence lasts about 50 pages, mostly interspersed with commentary on the quality of Italian beer and coffee. At this point, having wrung every drop of melodrama from the plot, Clancy has Ryan return to Washington to off-handedly suggest that the Soviet's greatest weakness is - gasp - their economy. Well, who knew? Throughout, Clancy's need for an editor and proofreader is evident. Not only is the same Andropov-Ryan-Langley sequence repeated too frequently, we also have Ryan frequently observing that little girl's hugs are special, riding the train (every day, for God's sake) with his wife, and pointless though frequently reiterated asides about the virtues of free market entrepreneurs compared to stifled government bureaucrats. In the last third of the book, Clancy even switches the name of the KGB-backed assassin with one of his victims. Shows what happens when an author can bypass the publication process and send his material direct from his computer to the printer. All in all, this is one fantastic doorstop. When an author like Clancy has to go back to the beginnings of his protagonist's career to sift for material, we can only hope that his creative days are almost over, and that he can rest on the laurels of his 6 good books. Too bad he didn't draw the line a little earlier.
Rating:
Summary: Sympathetic characters but peters out at the end
Review: I guess people don't buy Clancy novels for well drawn characters but that is this novel's virtue. I think most readers will be intrigued and sympathetic toward Jack Ryan and the Russian defector. The story just runs out of gas at the end. Perhaps it is because the reader knows how it is going to end. Perhaps it is because a new set of characters who are not as well drawn as the previous characters have to be introduced at the end.
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