The Bear and the Dragon [Hardcover]

Tom Clancy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2000

Time and again, Tom Clancy's novels have been praised not only for their big-scale drama and propulsive narrative drive but for their cutting-edge prescience in predicting future events.

In The Bear and the Dragon, the future is very near at hand indeed.

Newly elected in his own right, Jack Ryan has found that being President has gotten no easier: domestic pitfalls await him at every turn; there's a revolution in Liberia; the Asian economy is going down the tubes; and now, in Moscow, someone may have tried to take out the chairman of the SVR--the former KGB--with a rocket-propelled grenade. Things are unstable enough in Russia without high-level assassination, but even more disturbing may be the identities of the potential assassins. Were they political enemies, the Russian Mafia, or disaffected former KGB? Or, Ryan wonders, is something far more dangerous at work here?

Ryan is right. For even while he dispatches his most trusted eyes and ears, including black ops specialist John Clark, to find out the truth of the matter, forces in China are moving ahead with a plan of truly audacious proportions. If they succeed, the world as we know it will never look the same. If they fail...the consequences will be unspeakable.

Blending the exceptional realism and authenticity that are his hallmarks with intricate plotting, razor-sharp suspense, and a remarkable cast of characters, this is Clancy at his best--and there is none better.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 U.S. 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 reprogram 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 reelection 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 armored 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 catalog--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

From Publishers Weekly

"Klingons" is how hero Jack Ryan describes the villainsDthe Communist Chinese PolitburoDof Clancy's mammoth new novel; other Yanks refer to Chinese soldiers as "Joe Chinaman." It's not for subtlety of characterization, then, that this behemoth proves so relentlessly engrossing. Nor is it for any modulation in the arc of its action, which moves insistently from standstill to hurtle. Nor is it for the author's (expressed) understanding of life's viscissitudes; in this Clancyverse, no white hat with a name dies, but every black hat gets whupped bad. Partly it's for the sheer bulkDif ever a book should come equipped with wheels, it's this oneDwhich plunges readers into a sea of words so vast that, after hours of paddling happily through brisk prose, the horizon remains hidden from sight. Mostly, though, it's because that sea glitters with undeniable authority. Clancy has demonstrated in earlier books (Rainbow Six, etc.) that he towers above other novelists in his ability to deliver geo-political, techo-military goods on a global scaleDand here he's at the top of that war-gaming. With aplomb, he spins numerous plot strandsDamong them: a Sino-American spy seduces his way into Politburo secrets; enormous oil and gold reserves are discovered in Siberia; the new Papal Nuncio to Beijing is murdered; the Politburo orders a hit on a top Russian officialDthat lead to a Chinese invasion of Russia and a credible war scenario that occupies the novel's last quarter and that culiminates in a nuclear crescendo. Each thread carries a handbook's worth of intoxicating, expertly researchedDseemingly insideDinformation, about advanced weapons of war and espionage, about how various governments work, complemented always with ponderings about the tensions between individual honor and the demands of state. Add to that the excitement for Clancy fans of this being the first novel to feature not just Jack Ryan but also, in significant subordinate roles, Jack Clark and Ding Chavez of Rainbow Six and other tales, and you've got a juggernaut that's going to hit #1 its first week out and stay there for a good while. 2 million first printing; BOMC main selection; author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 1028 pages
• Publisher: Putnam; 1st edition (August 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039914563X
• ISBN-13: 978-0399145636
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,070 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #550,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Clancy is America's, and the world's, favorite international thriller author. Starting with THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, all thirteen of his previous books have hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. His books, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, PATRIOT GAMES, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and THE SUM OF ALL FEARS have been made into major motion pictures. He lives in Maryland where he is a co-owner of the Baltimore Orioles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Clancy's best, by far, October 23, 2000

By 

hannibalsmith "hannibalsmith" (Van Nuys, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Bear and the Dragon (Hardcover)

As an avid Clancy fan, who's read all of his books and owns most of them in hard cover, I found this book to be a bit of a dissapointment that doesn't even approach Clancy's normal high standards. Its a definite "must read" for Clancy fans, but for everyone else I'd highly recommend skipping this one at least until reading most of Clancy's other books.

The plot of the book, as the title implies, focuses on Russia and China, but mostly the latter. In a nutshell, a diplomatic incident plus some trade negotiations with the U.S. gone badly awry lead China to seek to take advantage of some new found economic luck by their neighbors to the north. There are a lot of parallels between US / Japanese relations leading up to WW2. along the way, there are assasination attempts and spycraft, but at a high level that sums up Clancy's latest effort.

First, the book's bad points:

1. Obviously Clancy now considers himself above editors - cause its obvious this book was not edited at all. There are at least 7 or 8 occasions where characters thoughts are repeated, verbatim, 2 or 3 times over the course of the book (for example, Ryan's belief that 'Daughters are god's punishment to fathers for being men' ... Ryan 'thinks' this about 4 different times during the book) and there are a fair amount of spelling/typo type errors that detract from the enjoyment of the book.

2. The structure of this novel simply isn't as good as Clancy's best efforts - the plot is very straightforward and not at all unpredictable - but more importantly it really is not very intricate - One of Clancy's fortes is to start with seemingly disparate story lines and seemlessly relate them together in the scope of the larger story (the Sum of All Fears is an excellent example of this)- in this novel, however, none of that occurs - the reader can pretty much see, immediately, the signifigance of just about everything that occurs. In the end, Clancy spends (depending on your point of view) 600 to 800 pages of this 1000 page book building toward the climax - which leaves the climax too short and the buildup is just not executed in Clancy's usually superb fashion.

3. The book almost seems unfinished - there are a lot of plot points that are left dangling when it really seemed like Clancy had intended to finish them.

4. Clancy has been developing a penchant recently for repeating the same ideas conveyed in his previous novels. In Rainbow Six, he basically repeated the whole bio-warfare aspect of Executive Orders. In the Bear and the Dragon, at the end of the book he pretty much repeats what was a very large aspect of Debt of Honor.

On the plus side, this is Clancy after all, and it is still a good read. The novel's premise is a good one, and in that sense its a good follow on to some of the plot threads Clancy started four books ago in Debt of Honor.

112 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Sum of All Formulas, September 3, 2000

By 

"hulamoons" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bear and the Dragon (Hardcover)

I have long been an admirer of TC as a plotter and writer, despite his occasional lapses. [But never an admirer of his "as told to, but written but someone else" Op-Center products.]

With Bear-Dragon, TC has fully descended into Clavell's Disease - that syndrome which causes formerly creative and exciting writers to ACT like they're being paid by the word, which one should not do, even if one IS paid that way. Too many words (a fair-to-good 500-pager fluffed to 1 kilopage), too many subplots, too many characters, too many moral lessons.

And the editing! Are TC's editors now afraid to point out to him that he's used the same phrase, metaphor, simile, or analogy several times before - a few hundred pages ago? It's distracting and it's unprofessional. Sure people will buy the book anyhow, because of TC's name, but those loyal readers are owed a better book - I suggest we are owed a better book with each outing. Bear-Dragon isn't it, Tom.

120 of 138 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This should have been a 400 page novel, not 1000 pages, September 19, 2000

By 

Lane G. Shelton "shannontr" (Manville, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bear and the Dragon (Hardcover)

I've always enjoyed Clancy novels, but the whole Jack Ryan-as-President thing is getting old. And how many times is Mr. Clark going to save the world? How many times do I need to hear that Jack Ryan hates being President (it was great the first hundred times, but I really don't need to be reminded every other page - I get the picture now move on!)

There are also several anti-Clinton side-references in the book, making subtle condemnations of some of the more outrageous Clinton escipades. But in Clancy's world there never was a President Bill Clinton, so his obvious references really corrupt the plot. You know what the author is trying to say, but a fiction-novel is not the format for a manufactured political diatribe.

Usually I'm amazed by the subtle way Clancy brings all the sub-plots together, but in this book everything feels contrived. It's painfully easy to figure out what's going to happen next, and one of the better sub-plots in the book just fizzles out in the end. The chilling tension that is the hallmark of a Clancy novel just isn't there.

The characters felt contrived as well; cookie-cutter. Sometimes I felt like Clancy was preaching (at one point quite literally)through the mouths of his characters.

Overall, The Bear and the Dragon was a great disappointment. Any serious Clancy reader knows about the "Clancy Experience" - the nail-biting tension, the total immersion in his world, that keeps you reading until beyond 3am. I've read through the night many times with a Clancy novel in hand.

Sadly, The Bear and the Dragon didn't capture me at all. I found myself wanting to skip to the end just to be done with it, but I plodded through because I owe Clancy that. I hope the next one will be better because Tom Clancy is a great writer, and it pains me deeply not to recommend this book.