Name: The Bear and the Dragon
ISBN: 9780425180969

Tom Clancy

In the wake of an assassination attempt on the SVR (former KGB) chairman, newly elected U.S. president Jack Ryan puts black ops specialist John Clark on the alert, only to have things complicated by dangerous forces in China.

The Bear and the Dragon

Tom Clancy's biggest strength is his ability throw a comical amount of technical lingo and job titles your way, forcefully drowning the reader in knowledge. Due to this overwhelming force, you're imposed to believe that Clancy really does understand how all of this works. It is beyond a doubt, bare-minimum, part farce, but impressive nonetheless.

Clancy can also bring threads of seemingly no attachment together into a very tense scene. He can also write general action well, as long as it's on a small scale.

However, most of this book is filler garbage. The amount of repetition is absurd: this book is just over 1,000 pages long and it could have been a tight 500 with zero issue. If something happens, you hear that something be repeated by morons several times. Then these morons have to guess how the other morons are going to handle it. There is a section of the book where the entire point is that when two governments engage in diplomacy, it's a pointless repetition that leads to nothing. You will read these repetitions. You will also read Clancy attempt romance: it is vile.

This book is about a war brewing between Russia and China. That war doesn't break out until page 780 and by that point, it's too little too late. I was proudly speed-reading (barely skimming) pages I could predict would suck. I don't need to read about the speeds ICBMs fly at and what a cruiser's missile comparatively can do for several pages; worse yet, I don't need this to keep popping back up. I get it: it's foreshadowing. Thanks, Tom.

Clancy has President Jack Ryan spouting off the dumbest shit you've ever heard, stuff that makes you sad to be American. Ryan will claim there are no class distinctions in America because his dad was a cop and now he's president -- ANYONE can do it!! Thanks for the lie, Jack!!

Several times, the "smart money" people are very Jewish and it seems like Tom was earnestly complimenting Jewish people with this portrayal, which felt weird.

Clancy REALLY wants you to know Chairman Mao raped children and he will say this many, many times. He will also have President Ryan call Chinese people "Klingons" about a dozen times.

Out of the dozens of named characters, I liked two whose names I cannot even remember right now: they were both Russian foot soldiers who didn't get much "screen time". That's it. Maybe Clancy can write, like maybe some of his other books aren't bloated messes and they explain why he got so popular decades ago? This book, however, does not explain that at all.

So you sat through a thousand pages of American exceptionalism propaganda that can't even entertain you when the fireworks FINALLY get to going 4/5 of the way through, and what is your reward? How does this bad boy end? The last line is a woman fantasizing about Japanese dick.

Evan

Tom Clancy's biggest strength is his ability throw a comical amount of technical lingo and job titles your way, forcefully drowning the reader in knowledge. Due to this overwhelming force, you're imposed to believe that Clancy really does understand how all of this works. It is beyond a doubt, bare-minimum, part farce, but impressive nonetheless.
Clancy can also bring threads of seemingly no attachment together into a very tense scene. He can also write general action well, as long as it's on a small scale.

However, most of this book is filler garbage. The amount of repetition is absurd: this book is just over 1,000 pages long and it could have been a tight 500 with zero issue. If something happens, you hear that something be repeated by morons several times. Then these morons have to guess how the other morons are going to handle it. There is a section of the book where the entire point is that when two governments engage in diplomacy, it's a pointless repetition that leads to nothing. You will read these repetitions. You will also read Clancy attempt romance: it is vile.
This book is about a war brewing between Russia and China. That war doesn't break out until page 780 and by that point, it's too little too late. I was proudly speed-reading (barely skimming) pages I could predict would suck. I don't need to read about the speeds ICBMs fly at and what a cruiser's missile comparatively can do for several pages; worse yet, I don't need this to keep popping back up. I get it: it's foreshadowing. Thanks, Tom.

Clancy has President Jack Ryan spouting off the dumbest shit you've ever heard, stuff that makes you sad to be American. Ryan will claim there are no class distinctions in America because his dad was a cop and now he's president -- ANYONE can do it!! Thanks for the lie, Jack!!
Several times, the "smart money" people are very Jewish and it seems like Tom was earnestly complimenting Jewish people with this portrayal, which felt weird.
Clancy REALLY wants you to know Chairman Mao raped children and he will say this many, many times. He will also have President Ryan call Chinese people "Klingons" about a dozen times.

Out of the dozens of named characters, I liked two whose names I cannot even remember right now: they were both Russian foot soldiers who didn't get much "screen time". That's it. Maybe Clancy can write, like maybe some of his other books aren't bloated messes and they explain why he got so popular decades ago? This book, however, does not explain that at all.

So you sat through a thousand pages of American exceptionalism propaganda that can't even entertain you when the fireworks FINALLY get to going 4/5 of the way through, and what is your reward? How does this bad boy end? The last line is a woman fantasizing about Japanese dick.

Do not read this book.

Michael Cowell

Sang Park

Brandon Mills

Scordatura

Anthony Bosio

Nuno Figueiredo

Michael W

Andrew Kerr

In the wake of an assassination attempt on the SVR (former KGB) chairman, newly elected U.S. president Jack Ryan puts black ops specialist John Clark on the alert, only to have things complicated by dangerous forces in China. 2,000,000 first printing.