Finally read it. The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Mod. Loved it.

Have it (Clear and Present Danger -Mod.) haven't read it yet, part deux. Good movie, though. Come to think of it, so was Patriot Games.

Read it. Loved it.

Someone described the climax of this book (Debt of Honor -Mod.) as a five-run homer and having read it three times I agree. I wonder if the guys of the Secret Service were crapping in their drawers when Tom Clancy pointed out the little hole in government security... does anyone know if this caused panic at the upper levels of the US government?
Two things were re-used from past Clancy novels. The "alpha strike" on the Indian carrier group reminded me of the alpha strike from HFRO. Also the group of Spanish special ops troops running around in a place they shouldn't be came straight out of CAPD.
One thing really bugged me about this novel. The CIA's DCI seemed to be missing. Mary Pat and Ed Foley play the part together but neither one of them is the DCI because they're both alive in the next novel and they get promoted. Somewhere there is a DCI but he or she never actually shows up in the book.
I loved Jack's line about why golf is called golf.
It was very considerate of the Japanese to put all their nukes in one place. This happens in a Larry Bond novel as well.
I thought the thing about the president not wanting two big stories competing for headlines was bogus. Who cares if the media is busy? Do they really have a right to complain if two juicy stories break at the same time? These things do tend to happen.
Overall, this was a most excellent book.

Interesting scenario (In Executive Orders -Mod) of what happens after Saddam dies. Plausible.

It seems to me, though, that the recovery from the destruction of the Capitol building and 90% of the government was too fast.

I didn't think the Saddam scenario was plausible. Read Fredrick Forsythe's "The Fist of God" for his opinion of what would happen if Saddam died... four wars and general total anarchy.
An interesting point is raised in this novel but never expanded upon. Holbrook and the other redneck want to blow up the White House with a cement truck full of dung and bullets (I'm not kidding). The novel makes reference to White House security arrangements and has the rednecks thinking that something was overlooked but it never says what! Whatever it is, I would imagine the Secret Service found out from Tom Clancy and fixed it right away anyhow.
How old was the assassin when he left Iran? He couldn't have been more than a teenager. Pretty devoted for a youngster.
I liked President Ryan's new foreign policy.

How old was the assassin when he left Iran? He couldn't have been more than a teenager. Pretty devoted for a youngster.

He was probably recruited at some point later in his life.

I liked President Ryan's new foreign policy.

It *WAS* pretty good, but the trade policy in Debt of Honor is even better.

Even though this book is a whopping 1,354 pages long, it's still about as thick as my Aussie/Brit version of Rainbow Six, which is only 897 pages long but is published with thicker paper. Funny, ain't it?

It's been awhile since I've read this book (Hunt for Red October -Mod) but I remember that I greatly enjoyed it. It's a great read, very intense at times, very suspenseful.

Another very good book. (Patriot Games -Mod)

I had a hard time believing the bad guys in this novel (Rainbow Six - Mod). I find it hard to believe that even the most dedicated eco-freaks would spread an Ebola variant throughout the world, especially after the events of "Executive Orders", where Ebola was used as a terrorist weapon.

One of Clancy's good points is that his villains are usually believable, but this one goes way past that to the point of incredulity.

I thought the villains were alright. At least they weren't ALL psychotic. Some believed in eating meat, some believed in hunting, others were more extreme. The terrorists were kind of dumb though. They all went on suicide missions and let Popov steal their money!
I wish the President had been a little more involved in this book... but Jack is back in the Bear and the Dragon, which is coming soon.
There was no explanation as to how those terrorists at the beginning got their guns onto the airplane.
I found it a slight stretch that the Horizon corporation would have a ready supply of cocaine on hand. I thought coke wasn't used in medical applications anymore.

Oh, this book shares a theme with "Sum of All Fears", namely the terrorist attack at a major sporting event.

SPOILER

Ok, maybe not a terrorist attack, but what would you call spreading Ebola at the Olympics?

How about attempted genocide?

Someone else pointed out one of the real nits in this book. At one point a VEGAN (extremely strict vegetarian) talks about his philosophy while eating an EGG sandwich. Oops...

I'm reading this book now and haven't really been looking for any nits, but I'm just enjoying it for the sheer pleasure of its escapism. What's kinda funny is that my beat up paperback is an Aussie/Brit publication, and though having the exact same amount of pages, it's still thicker than the US version cuz of using thicker paper. This was also a buck cheaper than the thinner one at the bookstore where I got it from so I figured why not endure the extra thickness for a buck less.

I enjoyed this, but...

SPOILER WARNING!

The problem I have is that there isn't a firm plot to back up the fantastic gun-fuelled carnage. Previous Clancy novels have had thought-provoking and intricate plotting and story progression. This one feels like a computer game, with our team tackling increasingly complicated and difficult missions (levels) before facing off with the Mr Evil Final Boss and his private army. Nah, it IS a computer game.
And Kelly/Clark must be going soft in his old age. I'd expect him to at least bust Popov's nose for arranging a terrorist attack on his family and friends.

Another example of how the Ryanverse is diverging further and further from our own. This one is technical. Near the end of R6, Clark hops on a BA Concorde to travel to New York for his meeting with Popov. This is during the Summer Olympics, which in our universe haven't started yet (As of Sept. 5th or so). But in our universe, the Concorde no longer flies because of the accident in Paris. So if Mr. Clark was in our universe, he wouldn't have been able to catch the Concorde because they're all grounded and not likely to fly again any time soon, even though the crash had nothing to do with a fault in the plane.

JamesB, have you played the Rainbow Six PC game? It's pretty good, though dead terrorists can be half in/half out of walls. One on my game was lying horizontal but he was sticking outward from the stairs I killed him on, instead of lying downwards like would really happen. Eagle Watch is the same. I'd like to get Rogue Spear and it's add-on, too. They have much better, more intelligent AI's, I hear.

I've been meaning to get hold of that game for ages now. Does the first game follow the plot of the novel exactly?

I just finished reading the novel during the last day of the Olympics. I thought it funny that I just happened to start reading it shortly before the games began, not knowing that they'd be a big part of the novel. Clancy was also pretty good at predicting that a Kenyan would take first place in the marathon, but I think one actually took second or third, while two Ethiopians medalled, one gold.

JamesB, the first game has a lot from the book, like the Brightlings and Worldpark, but it doesn't follow it exactly. They do talk about the Shiva virus and you have to go in and rescue hostages sometimes (like Carol Brightling twice, only to find out she's a traitor, but you already knew that from the book), but Popov doesn't make an appearance, as far as I can recall. Nor were anyone left standing naked in a Brazilian jungle at the end of the game, either. One annoying thing about the game is that in two missions you can't use deadly force at all or the mission fails and you have to start all over again. If you have a Costco membership you might find the action pack that includes the strategy guide and Eagle Watch, which has an extra 5 missions and added weapons, for $24.99. A guy at work with a CD burner on his computer copied the original game for me and let me use his EW CD. You don't need the disks in the drive to play, too.

That sounds cool. Funnily enough, I just found out that I've got a demo of Rainbow Six knocking around on CD somewhere. Gonna have to dig it out and give it a thorough investigation. Pretty sure my folks'll enjoy it too...

This (Red Storm Rising -Mod) is an ambitious book. But it's definitely one of Clancy's less satisfying reads. I think the problem is that he tried to do too much in the book. It's difficult to give the entire scope of a war in this manner.

The individual threads (especially the guy in Iceland) were good, but it was very hard to follow the whole narrative. Harold Coyle did a better job in "Team Yankee", were the confusion of war comes through because we only know what a particular tank team knows.

I also found it hard to believe that the CIA didn't know that the Russkies were going to war over oil. They should have been able to figure it out.

I enjoyed this novel...

"But it's definitely one of Clancy's less satisfying reads."

Clancy didn't write it. "Red Storm Rising" was shadow penned by Larry Bond then (because his name was more notorious) had Clancy's name put on the cover. Anyone who reads a Lary Bond book will instantly recognize the cookie cutter plot.

I don't remember if I've read this one (The Sum of All Fears -Mod) or not. I think so cuz I don't have it, but then I've read so many books, too.

This book will probably be seen as prophetic when the first terrorist nuke goes off.

As what? The Turner Diaries of nuclear terrorism?

The only thing that Tom Clancy has to do with them (the Op Center series -Mod) is creating the idea and putting his name on the book. You can tell the difference betweem his writing and this series' writer right away. These books aren't nearly as good and I would recommend collecting them from secondhand stores. The same also goes for the Net Force and Power Plays series.

That's what I'm doing, DW. Mostly cuz I'm cheap but hey, if they're not as good as if Clancy himself wrote them then no big deal. But why put your name on a book or series of them that you're not actually writing? Who's it helping? What's it the purpose?

But why put your name on a book or series of them that you're not actually writing?

Because the Tom Clancy name will sell books the publisher will pay him un-holy amounts of money. Meaning that he does not have to do any work and the checks come rolling in. The down side to that is that if the product starts suffering people will stop respecting you as an artist and think that you are just a wh0re who's selling your name for cash. Master of horror Wes Craven spent a few years getting executive producer's credit on several films that his company worked on but he had nothing to do with creatively. Wes Craven presents: Bushmaster and several other films were done like this. Finally Craven decided that he did not want to do business like that. Now he only puts his name on films that he has worked on creatively e.i. Wes Craven presents: Dracula 2000

I'm also collecting these (the Power Plays series -Mod) but haven't read any yet.

Another Clancy submarine novel, (SSN -Mod) in which China invades some oil rich islands, the US responds, and WWIII ensues. At least according to the jacket cover, that is. I've not read the book yet.

Pretty sure this isn't written by Tom Clancy either...
The dialogue's a bit stilted, but it's still a good book. The interview in the back's quite fun.

Tom Clancy is a prophet and this novel (The Bear and the Dragon -Mod) proves it. Kursk, Russia is mentioned twice. The Kursk disaster itself was spelled out in Tom Clancy's first novel, the Hunt for Red October. I personally think that that novel is the reason why Russia wouldn't accept foreign help at first. They read HFRO and were afraid that the Americans would pack up the Avalon and steal the Kursk! There are other striking similarities. This novel features the explosive destruction of a country's best (or in China's case only and by default best) missile submarine at sea. This incident is caused by the enemy of that country, one which they are involved in active conflict with. In the novel, it's the Americans who destroy a Chinese sub. In the newspapers, it's Chechen rebels who are suspected of having sabotaged the Kursk. Also, this novel mentions persecution of religious groups, especially Christians, in China. I was reading about this in the newspaper today.
Anyhow, on to the ruminating and nitpicking.
Tom Clancy's latest novel, with the bear representing Russia and the dragon representing China. As usual, the blurb doesn't really tell the whole story. This novel is not about how a plot to kill the head of the KGB (or RVS or SVR or whatever it's supposed to be called) leads to war with China. It's way more complicated than that.
General ruminations: For one thing, if you're Chinese and you have strong ties to your country, don't read this book! I'd go so far as to call it blatantly racist, because China plays the bad guys in a war. The Chinese are painted as being barbaric, stubborn, unappriciative of life, aggressive, stewpid, et cetera. I'm betting that Tom Clancy is the latest member to be put China's list of people who will never be welcome in their country... (Richard Gere was the last person to make this list for his work in Red Corner)
This book was a little more elegant (in terms of the writing style) in places than previous Clancy novels, which generally tend to be pretty plain. If you want eloquence and flowery terms for things, try Anne Rice. Of course, Tom Clancy manages to be throughly crude in many ways as well.
I know there have been some heated discussions amongst nitpickers here regarding abortion. I'll say this to the vociferious pro-lifers: be glad that you don't live in China! If you did, you'd be shot for expressing your opinion and your family would get the bill for the bullet. And if your family decided to have another child to replace you, it would get a needle of formaldehyde in the head as it was being delivered. At least in North America we have the right to complain if we don't like something.
The book's blurb also mentions "domestic issues" that hamper the President. I didn't notice any. There were no major at-home scandals to distract Pres. Ryan from doing his job. The worst thing in the "domestic issue" category seemed to be Cliff Rutlege reluctantly agreeing to do what his CINC told him to do.
Another thing I noticed: Tom Clancy will not hesitiate to drop a plot thread and never pick it back up. The first quarter of the book is dedicated to a who-done-it and they eventually do figure it out but nothing major comes of it. I don't even think the Chinese diplomat was arrested.
I'm glad the Rainbow team didn't just disappear. It would have been easy for TC to say that Rainbow had been disbanded after terrorism in Europe dropped to nil. Of course, this was probably intentional because for people to understand all of this Rainbow business, they would have to buy TC's last novel, Rainbow Six.
That reminds me: if you're thinking about getting your first Tom Clancy novel, don't make it this one. Start at the beginning, with Hunt for Red October. That's classic Clancy and still the best of the bunch, excepting perhaps CAPD.
This book references EVERY single preceding novel except Red Storm Rising, which takes place outside the Ryanverse anyway. It references Red October, with Mancuso (I think) ruminating about what big brass ones his NCA has. It mentions Patriot Games and how the terrorists attacked the Ryan home in Maryland. It mentions Cardinal of the Kremlin several times, with Bondarenko, Gregory, the SDI stuff, the ex-KGB guy and a few other things thrown in. CAPD contributed Captain (or was it Major?) Bronco Winters, a brief mention of the Zimmer clan and of course Chavez who made his first appearance in CAPD. The Sum of All Fears is mentioned a few times, primarily the mentions of how Ryan stopped a missile from being launched. Without Remorse isn't mentioned in any way that I remember but I'm sure it's in there somewhere. Debt of Honor is mentioned a few times. Executive Orders is extensively referenced, since this book is pretty much a direct sequel. Rainbow Six is also mentioned a few times.
NITS:
This novel reuses a few plot devices from previous novels, especially the tiny army destroying the big one. I thought the casualties were a little on the low side for the Russians.
Russia joins NATO in this novel. Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens wrote a novel called Quicksilver all about Russia joining NATO and the signing ceremony has massive, unprecedented security. It's even held in the Pentagon. This novel doesn't even mention security arrangements and Russia joins in about five minutes.
President Ryan thinks to himself about how the US is the largest member of NATO. Actually, if we're talking about landmass, that distinction belongs to my stomping grounds... good old free-health care CANADA!
This novel probably contradicts the timeline of the Ryanverse novels a bit. This one is set in 2001 (fifteen months after Executive Orders and shortly after Rainbow Six, because the President's science advisor is mentioned as being "new) but it holds the timeline together pretty well. It might even leave room for President Clinton, who is indirectly mentioned a few times. (Well, stains on the Oval Office rug and people messing around with interns). The presidents seem to go like this: Reagan, Bush, the unnamed president of CAPD (Clinton?), Fowler, Durling, Ryan. That seems like a lot of presidents to pack into twenty years.
The Capitol Dome is mentioned. It was completely demolished in Debt of Honor but I presume it was quickly rebuilt.
There's no mention of plot threads left over from previous novels, like what ended up happening to Brown and Holbrook or the fate of Aref Raman. Presumably the three of them are sharing a jail cell in Marion, Illinois but it still would have been nice to know.
Another nit: The papal nuncio to China is killed. That's all fine and good except that China doesn't have relations with the Vatican because of the Vatican's stance on Taiwan. So there is no papal nuncio there, nor is there likely to be one any time soon.
The CIA doesn't have a website at cia.gov. I think I tried that address once and I was redirected to some odci.gov.us.etc.etc.etc. site. I'm sure they could put a site up pretty fast though and they probably have the domain name resevered already.
BTW, it looks like Information Technology people are the spies of the future. This brings a question: why didn't Nomuri set up his program so that it would spread itself to all the computers on that network and send the take from all of them to CIA?
Also: Did Ryan win an election or not? Chavez mentions in EO that it's an election year and no one is running because the filing dates have passed and the candidates died on the Hill.
Another nit: Chavez's Russian patronymic changed. He was Domingo Estebanovich before and he became Domingo Stepanovich for this novel. Cover name, maybe?
Scary though: NSA helped AT&T design the telephone system.
Overall this was a good book, if somewhat disappointing at the end. Again I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't familiar with all of Tom Clancy's previous novels. But it is good to know what's going on in the Ryanverse because Executive Orders left me wondering and Rainbow Six certainly didn't help!
Sorry for the long post but if you have the patience to get through all thousand pages of the Bear and the Dragon, I'm sure you'll be fine with this.

Ryanverse presidential trivia. Durling is based on (former) California Governer Pete Wilson.

DW March, Regarding your nits,The 'RYANVERSE' has drifted further from our reality with each book. The Papal Nuncio is said to be the first in this Fictional world. Russia joining NATO is just the latest Clancy version of what is Increasingly looking to be his perfect vision of ' A New World Order'. This fictional world has had a 2nd Gulf War, an 'armed Conflict" with Japan, a Trade Reform Act, a devestated American Gov't, and a # of nuclear and Biological disastors, or near so disastors. I also found the attitude toward the Chinese offensive, but, it was MAINLY focused on the Corrupt Communist leaders, and not the Chinese people. I was looking Forward to this book, but I was dissapointed.

LOL , That last line is too true, but I remember reading after Rainbow 6 came out Clancy said he had one or 2 Ryan books left in him. So, now we have One More?? ........and they all lived happily ever after. *S*

The Ryanverse has also had several different presidents and many world leaders have been killed. Saddam Hussein gets it in EO, the leaders of North Korea are said to be gone in DoH, Iran's secular leader gets blown away courtesy of the Ryan Doctrine, et cetera.
I know that the Ryanverse is drifting further and further away with each novel but China in this book appears to be based on China as we know it, financial situation aside. My wonder is why Clancy's "brutal" Beijing has a papal nuncio while the kind (or bleeding) hearted world that we live in doesn't have one. Of course, since the novel is set in 2001 it isn't really a nit if a papal nuncio pops up in Beijing sometime in the next year. But I guess I should have pointed out what were differences between the Ryanverse and our own and what were actual nits. Clinton being referenced is a nit. There's no room in the timeline for him. The election is a nit unless Ryan decided to throw one out of the goodness of his heart. The election filing dates were past and the candidates were both killed on the Hill. Ding's changing patronymic is a nit. A gun on the Apache is a nit but I'm not sure why. (They don't have 30 mm cannons or something like that.) A reference to the dead Iridium phone system could be a nit but perhaps in the Ryanverse, Iridium didn't fail. Refering to F-117's as F-111's is a definite nit.
If Clancy does develop a perfect "new world order" he won't have anything left to write about!

I'd go so far as to call it blatantly racist, because China plays the bad guys in a war.

Huh? I'm not understanding this at all. How does having a war involving an agressor country make a book racist?

I suppose that an argument could be made that having the Chinese people be bad guys was racist. . .except for inconvenient facets like: being Red Chinese isn't a racial characteristic, it's a national characteristic; genetic Chineseness (PRC, RoC, SanFran, etc.) isn't one of the ?five? recognized races (although racial categories in general are abitrary, absurd, and usually generated by racists for their own ends, so that doesn't count for much); and in fact lots of Chinese people in the book are good guys (the Christians, the demonstrators at the end)---the villians are really the Politburo.

Sorry, I should have specified a little more... there are quite a few ethnic slurs in the book directed at the Chinese people and quite a few generalizations (like the forced abortion thing) that paint China in a very unfriendly light. The characters themselves can't seem to get through a single sentence about China without calling the people "chinks" or some other slur. My main point really should have been that this particular book has a lot of racial slurs, swearing and Tom Clancy cliches rather than the good dialogue, swift plot and sense of adventure that the Hunt for Red October had.

Go back and look at D.W. March's June 15 2000 06:59 PM post in the light of 9/11. One of my first reactions on 9/11 was that they read that book.

Let's just hope The Sum of All Fears isn't next on Osama's book list!

Okay. . .in the process of reading Red Rabbit right now. There are a lot of references to Eddie Foley watching Transformers on (Betamax) tapes while in Moscow. This novel is set in 1982. This sort of thing naturally gets my nitpicking instincts aflame. Indeed, according to the Transformers FAQ, the Transformers cartoon first aired in 1984.

There are similar such nits that I've read about in a.b.t-c including Ryan moping about a sports team that moved out of the Baltimore area in about 84 (but he's moping in 82 if this novel is supposed to reflect the actual attempt on JP II's life), Mary Pat has a breadmaker stored away (invented in 87 but she's got one in 82), et cetera. Lots of timeline mistakes in the new novel, unless the actual event happened a few years later. But Tom Clancy has always played a little bit fast and loose with timelines.

The assassination attempt on JPII was in 1981.

Which makes the continuity errors even more glaring... especially since anyone with a decent internet connection can look and see when JPII almost got killed or when breadmakers were invented or when Transformers came on TV... etc. Tom Clancy just hasn't been putting much effort into his books lately, concentrating more on quantity and less on quality, which is a large part of the reason why I didn't rush out to buy Red Rabbit.

Clancy always fudges timeline stuff. He does it on purpose so you can't narrow down the exact time frame.

D. W. March: Mary Pat and Ed Foley play the part together but neither one of them is the DCI because they're both alive in the next novel and they get promoted. Somewhere there is a DCI but he or she never actually shows up in the book.

This is standard Clancy. In the previous book, Sum of All Fears, Ed and Mary Pat are both assistants to the DDI, Harry Wren, but he never shows up in the book and is mentioned only once as being "away on business". Ed and Mary Pat play his role in that book. Clancy is trying to be realistic in that he paints a fairly accurate picture of how a capable person might advance through the ranks (i.e., Ed doesn't go from being Chief of Station Moscow to being the DDCI in the next book) but at the same time he wants to use the same characters over and over again and not switch main characters every time a new administration comes in. So these "excuses" show up a lot.

ScottN: One of Clancy's good points is that his villains are usually believable, but this one goes way past that to the point of incredulity.

I wonder if Clancy has even written his last few books himself. RB6 and Bear have very different writing styles from his previous books. I mean, the plot lines are Clancy, but some of the passages do not sound like him at all.

Well, I just read Red Rabbit and am reading Teeth of the Tiger. I have to say that RR was extraordinarily disappointing. I have felt for some time, ever since Rainbow Six, that Clancy was no longer writing his novels. The reason is, after EO there was a very subtle change in writing styles, like someone was trying to copy Clancy and not doing it perfectly. With Bear, it was completely apparent. The exhausting overuse of similes, the sudden escalation of sexually explicit content, the burdensome filler material--all of it pointed to a different writing style.

While Clancy has always been verbose and has included numerous plot threads, no matter how small, they always served a purpose. For example, the scenes in DoH where we meet the logging execs, where the tree is cut down, where it is loaded--they're there because Clancy needs the logs to disable the Maine but hates the idea of deus ex machina, so he puts these little scenes in the book so when the sub slams into three trees floating in the Bering Straits, no one says, "Huh?? Where'd THAT come from?" It seems coincidental, but perfectly acceptable.

However, contrast these scenes to the endless pages of Jack and Carol talking on the train on the way to work in RR, or Carol's multipage tirade against the drinking surgeons. These scenes had absolutely no bearing on the story. In addition, while it was great to have the old Moore/Ritter/Greer triumvirate back at CIA, it was clear that the ghost writer didn't know how to write their scenes, since they're nothing more than the three of them sitting around the DCI's office debating back and forth. The subtle infighting between Greer and Ritter was always a part of previous books, but here it's plain that the ghost writer seized on a Clancy subtlety and hamhandedly overused it, to the point of annoyance. The point is, elements which have always served Clancy in good stead were misused by his ghost writer, whoever that may be.