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53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Clancy keeps getting worse, June 8, 2004
When I heard that Clancy wrote a book that was set back in the 80's Cold War era again I was hopeful that he could regain some of his earlier writing success. Not that I was hopeful for his well-being, but more that he would start writing books that were as enjoyable as the ones he wrote early in his career (Red Storm Rising, Patriot Games, Hunt for Red October, etc.). If Red Rabbit was an attempt at reliving the early years then he failed miserably.
Red Rabbit focuses on the spy game that was so prevalent during the Cold War 80's between the Soviets and the British/Americans. Attempting to relieve political pressure from the Pope and remind Poland who's boss, the Soviets decide to assassinate the Pope. Having read previous Clancy books I assumed that this was the catalyst and that the plot would promptly fill in around it. That was my first mistake (and possibly Clancy's too). Instead of moving on with the details of the assassination and the West's attempt to prevent it, the story completely switches gears, now attempting to highlight an unremarkable character in KGB agent Oleg Zaitzev that has an attack of conscience and decides to defect with his family and some very sensitive information. On a sidenote, how can Clancy possibily expect the reader to believe in the shear coincidence of Zaitzev arbitrarily choosing a person on the subway to help with his defection because the guy looked like an American, when in fact he's actually chosen the CIA chief of station in Moscow. Lucky guess, right?
My second mistake was assuming that the story would right itself and get back on track with what seemed to be more interesting, the prevention of the assassination. Instead the pace of the books slows considerably while the focus has shifted to the defector. Plans are made by the CIA and SIS to help him defect and then the plan is executed. What's the problem, you ask? We appear to be missing an antagonist. At one point the defecting family is attending a classical concert in Budapest which had been hyped up earlier in the book as though it was going to be a focal point of the story, perhaps even the setting for the climax. Wrong again. The reader gets the impression that a climax is near when the story starts jumping around frequently from Ryan to Zaitzev to the CIA in Washington, etc. Unfortunately, nothing ever comes of this, namely because the KGB isn't chasing Zaitzev, and it makes you wonder why Clancy just wasted 50 pages on this concert. This story suffered from an extremely feeble plot with little or no climax in the end.
Aside from a weak plot, the book has some other major flaws, one of which is new to Clancy, some of which are not. The new one (of which I don't recall this in his earlier novels) is his remarkable redundancies. From vocabulary to concepts, and character quirks to character titles, Clancy seems to forget that he's already used a particular word (i.e. capacious or ignominy) where even the most common word would have worked in its stead (i.e. spacious or disgrace). Then you have his seemingly unending references to Jack Ryan as a former Marine. Ryan reflects on it often himself, but it became just plain overkill when every time the scene shifted to the boys back at the CIA (they were naturally talking about Jack Ryan every time as though the CIA didn't have any more pressing issues) they'd have to justify his position in the CIA by referring to his stint in the Marine Corps (apparently all Marines are fit for the CIA). Okay, we know he was a Marine, now let's try focusing on a plot. Then you've got "Sir John" and "Lady Ryan". The couple, knighted in the novel "Patriot Games", routinely refer to each other by these titles even though they constantly claim to some sort of aversion to them. While addressing Ed Foley, Clancy will arbitrarily refer to him as "Chief of Station, Moscow," in the middle of a paragraph as though you may have forgotten his position. And how many times does he need to reassure us that Cathy Ryan won't have a glass of wine the night before she's due in surgery or that Jack Ryan doesn't like to fly?
By far the largest fault of this book and the reason it will never measure up to his earlier work, is his nonstop bragging about his characters. Where character or plot development could be taking place, Clancy chooses to continue with lengthy descriptions of his characters personal lives and undying love for their spouses, etc. And when I say character development, I don't mean further developing the same old tired characters that he should have retired 15 years ago, I mean he should be introducing new characters. Clancy boasts about his characters throughout the novel as though they were his own children and he's constantly touting their resume as though someone might question the reputations of these fictionally flawless people. His overuse of Jack Ryan has reached a new high in this novel. Throughout the book, the scene was continually switching between the Foleys in Moscow, the CIA in Washington, and the Ryan family in London. After about 350 pages I started to notice that Jack Ryan served no purpose whatsoever, yet Clancy kept including him and his wife as though their input was relevant to something. Eventually you realize that he is going to be used, even though it feels like it is being completely forced in poor literary fashion, just to keep Jack included in the novel. But if his relevance doesn't begin until page 400, then it makes you wonder why Clancy wasted so much text early on. Parental pride? It gives the story a ham-handed predictability that segregates this book from his earlier, successful novels.
I used to enjoy Clancy novels and I had high hopes that Red Rabbit might take on the appearance of his previous spy thrillers, but it is merely a 600+ page attempt at conveying a lackluster story that could have been told in 250 pages and even then would have been mediocre.
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65 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Save some time and just read this, September 9, 2002
By A Customer
Save some time and just read this: While sleeping the sleep of the just he looked at his wife, the eye cutter, and asked himself, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" which made him realize that little girls give the best hugs. Suddenly he recalled that the KGB had roasted a traitor alive and made a film of it so he decided to buy some Starbucks stock before it was available. Then the Pope didn't get killed. Now read it again and again and again.
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Wait for the paperback., September 10, 2002
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later - after the disappointing _The Bear and the Dragon_, Clancy has sunk even lower with the bizarrely flawed _Red Rabbit_. Clancy's shortcomings (cardboard characters, unconvincing dialogue, trite political preaching) have always been acceptable in the face of his terrific plotting and edge-of-your-seat action sequences. Not this time. The story moves along at a slow pace, there is little to no action, and Clancy barely even provides conflict. Instead, he annoys the reader with repetitive pap. Longtime Clancy readers will grow tired of being constantly reminded that Mary Pat Foley is a "cowboy", Caroline Ryan is a "doc", and that the thought of his wife slicing into someone's eyeball gives Jack Ryan the heebie-jeebies. Clancy has also decided that if he is to refer to a psychiatrist as a "shrink" (and he does it quite a lot), he must spell it "pshrink", so we'll know what he means. The book overflows with anachronisms. Ryan apparently bought Starbucks stock a good eight years before the company was formed, mourned the loss of a football team that hadn't relocated yet, "thought outside the box" long before anybody else did, and coined the phrase, "been there, done that, got the t-shirt". All this in 1982. I found myself annoyed with the Ryan family while reading this - their interaction seems even more shallow than usual in this book. Apparently, the estimable Dr. Caroline Ryan cannot understand that intelligence officers aren't supposed to discuss their work with their families. She comes off as a little bit silly sometimes - certainly not like a woman who can operate on eyeballs like few else in the world, play a dazzling if somewhat mechanical piano, deal seconds like a Las Vegas cardsharp, and charm heads of state while bringin' home the bacon and fryin' it up in the pan. The plot revolves around a real historical event - the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul. Of course, we all know how that came out, and Clancy doesn't rewrite history here. Unfortunately he doesn't even make the event very exciting. I don't wish to provide a spoiler. Rest assured that Jack Ryan, in an extremely unlikely denouement, saves the Pope and the day. I did enjoy parts of this book, particularly the Foley sections (a book about Ed and Mary Pat would be very welcome), and the Russian defector's story. The espionage passages were satisfyingly realistic and provided the only tension in the book. I am a big Clancy fan, and up until now have eagerly purchased his books as soon as they were released (not those "Op Center" things, just the novels). The last two books have been disappointing enough to make me check the reviews before buying future Clancy offerings. _Red Rabbit_ is by no means a terrible book, it's just that one expects more of Clancy, especially now that he's a well-established author - or is the phrase "firmly entrenched"? I hope not.
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