Product Description

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 thechariman 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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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79547 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

About the Author
Tom Clancy is the world's number one author of political thrillers. He lives in Maryland.

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Customer Reviews

long and involved, but always interesting
Phew. I finally finished this massive 1026 page hardcover novel. Ignoring the page count for a moment, this is a very large book with lots of things going on. Tom Clancy is following multiple plot-lines and eventually weaving them all together in the attempt to build not just a story, but the broad overview of his world. Over the course of the past 8 novels, Tom Clancy has built a world that is similar to our own, but different events have changed the political reality inside the United States. When The Hunt for Red October was published, Jack Ryan was new to the CIA as an analyst. As the series has moved on, Ryan has moved up the CIA hierarchy and was eventually the Deputy Director of the CIA and took the place of his mentor, James Greer. Terrorists have exploded a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl in Denver (The Sum of All Fears), a war was instigated that caused a terrorist to crash a plane into the capitol killing the President, most of Congress and all of the Supreme Court (Debt of Honor). At the time that happened, Jack Ryan was just sworn into being the Vice President (he was going to accept the post for the year until election time and then retire from government service all together), so he was now the President. After winning one more war in the Middle East, Jack Ryan actually ran for President and won. This is where The Bear and the Dragon begins. Ryan is now President in his own right and is a year into his term.

That was a long introduction to a long novel, but it is important to know because this shapes the actions and thoughts of the characters in Clancy's world. China was behind two major operations: the recent war with Japan (Debt of Honor) and the war with the new Islamic nation that consisted of Iraq and Iran (Executive Orders). CIA believed that China was behind all this, but did not have the proof. So, by this point the top ranked government officials are very skeptical of China and the Chinese. Some reviewers have cried racism, and while the Chinese are painted in a VERY unfavorable light and racist remarks are used by the government officials, we are dealing with a very different world than the one that we live in. China instigated major wars and chemical warfare against the United States. We must take the previous books into account when reading this one.

The Bear and the Dragon deals with several plots. The United States has a spy in China and he is working to get access to high level Politburo information. This involves the recruitment of an agent within China, a secretary to a Politburo member. Another plotline involves the discovery a massive oilfield in Russia (larger than the Middle East), as well as a huge gold mine in Russia. This naturally gets China interested in moving north into Siberia. The novel begins with an attempt on the life of Golovko, the top advisor to the President of Russia (I can't remember his exact title, but he used to run the KGB and has appeared in past novels). We see John Clark, Domingo Chavez, and other repeat characters from previous books.

As I said, the book is long, and in several parts it drags a bit. For a novel this large and with a plot this convoluted and detailed, it is an interesting read. Not quite up to the level of Clancy's best, it also isn't as bad as some reviewers might have you believe. There is some parts of the book that aren't as interesting and the characters are more or less one dimensional now (Clancy spent 8 books developing some of these characters, I think we're okay if he doesn't change them in book 9). Some parts feel rushed (the ending) and some parts smack of Clancy himself being too much in the novel, but honestly, this is a Tom Clancy novel and we aren't reading this with the expectation that it be William Faulkner. Clancy does best with the military parts of the book, and to be perfectly honest: this was an enjoyable book to read and is a worthy member of the Jack Ryan Universe.

-Joe Sherry

A Defence Academic's thoughts on Bear and the Dragon
I bought the latest Clancy/Ryan novel because I have always been a Clancy fan, and the idea of the clash between Russia and China in Siberia is an interesting, and increasingly plausible scenario. Ultimately though I was dissapointed with this novel, and Clancy's work has shown distinct deterioration in quality since Debt of Honour.

Increasingly Clancy's novels are becoming more a vehicle for his own political views, and less an entertaining read. Clancy manages to get every element of the right wing conservative political philosophy in the novel - maybe he should run for the Republican ticket in 2004! To me a novel should not be a medium to impose one's own political views on the rest of the world - that's rather selfish of the author.

The book is very long, and the first 700 pages drags on and on and on...yet it is easy to know where it is all heading. Russia is an economic mess after 70 years of communism. It discovers a big oil and gold reserve in Siberia, and needs US assistance to exploit it. President Ryan turns this opportunity into an excuse to bring Russia into NATO - a very unlikely prospect in the real world - just in time to deal with a plot by the 'Evil Empire Mark II' - the Chinese - to try and grab the oil and gold themselves.

The 'good guys' - the Americans and the Russians are cardboard cutout characters. Ryan has become the 'perfect Republican President we would all like'. He is a man of honor, truth and justice - with perhaps one failing of liking to smoke. Forget sacrificing principles to get into power, and stay in power - Ryan never does anything wrong and is purely concerned about doing good in the world. His advisors are equally virtuous and decent people - Washington is Camelot once again. The Russians are portrayed as honourable warriors having put the past behind them. Their politicians are carbon copies of Ryan - their soldiers are all carbon copies of American military officers. A nice vision - but neither the US or Russia is really like this. Politicans are corrupt, principles are negotiable, doing good is optional. Soldiers whilst having a sense of duty and honour can make mistakes, can be afraid, can be corrupted.

Clancy paints the Chinese as one dimensional, bumbling bad guys - so over the top in fact that China could be the Third Reich reincarnated. The political leadership are portrayed as purely evil in every respect, and totally 'stupid' in their ability to assess the intentions or policies of the outside world. Yet the real world suggests that the Chinese Government are in fact far more intelligent and formidable as a potential opponent than Clancy would have us believe. An intelligent, calculating adversary is for me far more interesting than a bunch of stupid dictators, and the Chinese are not stupid.

Likewise when the action finally does begin, Clancy portray's the Chinese armed forces as equally as 'stupid' as the political leadership. Clearly Clancy has ignored the reality of current Chinese military planning which is based around exploiting US military weaknesses via assymetric response. Instead, the PLA blindly charge into the sights of US and Russian armed forces, with the US easily winning purely through reliance on superior military technology. There are zero or minimal casualties on the US side - real wars in the future are not likely to be that way, especially given that the Chinese did learn the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War and the 1999 Kosovo Conflict, and have developed their military strategy around denying the US an easy, cost free victory. Clancy clearly is an advocate of the Revolution in Military Affairs, and paints a picture of the US forces as reluctant warriors who always win because they are after all the 'good guys' and because they have the 'silver bullet' of advanced tech. In this assertion, Clancy completely ignores (or maybe he is ignorant of?) the on-going debate about the true value of advanced military technology in future war. It will not be as one sided as Clancy would have us believe.

The novel reaches a climax in dealing with the issue of use of weapons of mass destruction. Clancy portrays a future in which the US and Russia have eliminated virtually all of their nuclear capabilities - also highly unlikely - and here Clancy manages to make it clear that he is an advocate of National Missile Defense. I am too...but not at the expense of maintaining a nuclear deterrent. Clancy provides an 'easy test' for an NMD capability and thus does not have to face the question of what happens if hundreds or thousands of warheads are inbound. He ignores the reality that the Chinese are planning to upgrade their capability from the 20 or so old liquid fueled ICBMs they currently have to maybe several hundred mobile solid fueled ICBMs - because this clearly would fly in the face of his distaste for maintaining an effective nuclear deterrent in a period when the WMD threat is increasing - not decreasing.

Ultimately the perfect President Jack Ryan, and some good old American technological know how saves the day, in China the young educated capitalist students rise up and the evil dictators and Chinese communism are banished to the ashheap of history. Predictable, unimaginative, boring. The Americans and the Russians walk off into the sunset together, having saved the world for democracy, and we all wait for the next novel.

I have nothing against a conservative world view. Were I an American (I'm not - I'm Australian) I would probably vote Republican rather than Democrat. But having or portraying a realistic world view is vital - and in The Bear and the Dragon, Clancy portrays a completely unrealistic perspective of how America should be, what it should be doing, and how it might defeat future security challenges. Clancy's novel is way too black and white - when in fact the world of international security is always shades of gray.

Can you stand to wade through 600 pages?
That's about how long it takes this book to get going. I found it very hard to retain any sort of interest in the book during this, frankly rather dull, period. In my opinion, Clancy would have done better to have chopped out this entire section of the book and summarised it into nearer four or five. As Tony Niemczyk has mentioned before, the British army seem to get left behind in the fighting somewhat - as indeed do the Russians - and it unfortunately becomes a tale of America saving the day. Perhaps Clancy is taking after directors of American-made war movies? Anyhow, although the American home audience would have enjoyed it, it would have been nice for foreigners to have got a look in. All that said, once the war is going in the last 300-400 pages, it does become a gripping read and evidence of what the author can accomplish when he puts his mind to it.