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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90738 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1152 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Power is delightful, and absolute power should be absolutely delightful--but not when you're the most powerful man on earth and the place is ticking like a time bomb. Jack Ryan, CIA warrior turned US president, is the man in the hot seat, and in this vast thriller he's up to his nostrils in crazed Asian warlords, Russian thugs, nukes that won't stay put, and authentic, up-to-the-nanosecond technology as complex as the characters' motives are simple. Quick, do you know how to reprogramme the software in an Aegis missile seekerhead? Well, if you're Jack Ryan, you'd better find someone who does, or an incoming ballistic may rain fallout on your parade. Bad for re-election prospects. "You know, I don't really like this job very much," Ryan complains to his aide Arnie van Damm, who replies, "Ain't supposed to be fun, Jack."

But you bet The Bear and the Dragon is fun--over 1,000 swift pages' worth. In the opening scene, a hand-launched RPG rocket nearly blows up Russia's intelligence chief in his armoured Mercedes, and Ryan's clever spooks report that the guy who got the rocket in his face instead was the hoodlum "Rasputin" Avseyenko, who used to run the KGB's "Sparrow School" of female prostitute spies. Soon after, two apparent assassins are found handcuffed together afloat in St. Petersburg's Neva River, their bloated faces resembling Pokémon toys.

The stakes go higher as the mystery deepens: oil and gold are discovered in huge quantities in Siberia, and the evil Chinese Minister Without Portfolio Zhang Han San gazes northward with lust. The laid-off elite of the Soviet Army figure in the brewing troubles, as do the new generation of Tiananmen Square dissidents, Zhang's wily, Danielle Steel-addicted executive secretary Lian Ming, and Chester Nomuri, a hip, Internet-porn-addicted CIA agent posing in China as a Japanese computer salesman. He e-mails his CIA boss, Mary Pat "the Cowgirl" Foley, that he intends to seduce Ming with Dream Angels perfume and scarlet Victoria's Secret lingerie ordered from the catalogue--strictly for God and country, of course. Soon Ming is calling him "Master Sausage" instead of "Comrade," but can anybody master Ming?

The plot is over the top, with devastating subplots erupting all over the globe and lurid characters scaring the wits out of each other every few pages, but Clancy finds time to insert hard-boiled little lessons on the vileness of Communism, the infuriating intrusions of the press on presidential power, the sexual perversions of Mao, the poor quality of Russian pistol silencers ("garbage, cans loaded with steel wool that self-destructed after less than ten shots"), the folly of cutting a man's throat with a knife ("they flop around and make noise when you do that"), and similar topics. Naturally, the book bristles like a battlefield with intriguingly intricate military hardware.

When you've got a Tom Clancy novel in hand, who needs action movies? --Tim Appelo

Synopsis
President Jack Ryan faces a world crisis unlike any he has ever known, in Tom Clancy's extraordinary new novel. Being President isn't getting any easier. Domestic pitfalls await him at every turn and in Moscow someone may have tried to take out the chairman of the SVR with a rocket-propelled grenade. Even more disturbing may be the identities of the potential assassins. Were they the Russian Mafia, disaffected former KGB or something far more dangerous at work? Even while Ryan dispatches his most trusted eyes and ears to find out the truth, forces in China are moving ahead with a plan of audacious proportions. If they succeed, the world will never look the same. If they fail...the consequences will be unspeakable.

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Customer Reviews

God bless the US of A
This was my first Tom Clancy novel and i think it will be my last. There is a halfway decent plot somewhere in here but at over 1,100 pages, this is a turgid and bloated read.
Clancy's neo-con political rants and religious posturing are hilarious and his ethnic sterotyping would be a hoot if I thought he had his tongue in his cheek. The Americans are flawlessly moral, corn fed God damn super heros, the Russians are well meaning bufoons and the Chinese talk in sinister metaphors while planning to enslave the world. Every other nationality is a nailed on sterotype - efficient Germans, bumbling British, laconic Frenchmen etc
All the characters are dismally one dimensional and the constant gung ho brainless dialogue attributed to the Americans shows absolutely no understanding of the political process. The description of all the weapons throughout the book is genuinely painful and utterly irrelevant. Just call a missile a missile for God's sake.
I predicted the conclusion from reading the back cover but as I actually finished the whole book, I am duty bound to give it an extra star for the fact that there is actually a story in there somewhere.

God how boring
After reading Rainbow Six, i was on a Tom Clancy search and bought this title. OMG how boring and pro-American can you make a book? Its too jargonistic, use of multiple titles for the ever increasing number of characters i.e (Jack Ryan, POTUS, Swordsman if i remember rightly), multiply that for every character and it gets very very annoying!

It spends too much time in Jack Ryans ultra-moralistic head, tries to preach Christianity to you, it makes Russia out to be a carbon copy of the U.S with less fortune in it's past, and goes about destroying Chinese credibility in much the same way Joseph Goebbels did to the Jewish community in Germany. It comes over quite racist to be honest!

Analysis, 700 pages of Pro-American propaganda, 300 pages of a rather absurd battle between good and evil!

Very disappointing
This book was sooo disappointing. I hoped it might be Red Storm Rising in the east as China and Russia go to war, but it just does not deliver.

Firstly, it badly needs editing. Clancy's personal politics come through as he lectures the reader constantly about abortion through the characters. Yes, I understand its part of the plot but Clancy was about as subtle as a sledgehammer! Its just too long anyway. If I recall Red Storm rising set the plot in about 100 pages before the action began, this takes 700 and when we get to the action its just not that great!

Secondly, its just so American and stereotypical, the Russians are good but dumb, the Chinese are evil, the Americans are heroes, etc. Plus where are all the Allies; the Taiwanese, South Koreans, Australians, Japanese, etc? Some like the British and Germans rate a mention somewhere but thats it.

Thirdly he missed out on some many possibilties. I thought the Chinese would attack/besiege Vladvistock, then the US Marines, with maybe Japanese assistance as a nice irony could come to the rescue? Chinese commandoes could have attacked the Trans-Siberian Railway? The CIA could have stirred up Tibet and/or Inner Mongolia as well as democracy activists in China. Taiwan could have played a part but they werent even mentioned! It was just so limited.

Dont read this book, read Red Storm Rising again, when Clancy could write a great story, 1 star because I cant zero.