The Bear and the Dragon
Written: Sep 02 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Structure and characters will appeal to Clancy fans.
Cons: No new ground broken here, a bit formula
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| TrekBody's Full Review: |
Having been a long-time fan of Tom Clancy's novels, I was a little disappointed by The Bear and the Dragon, his latest release. Clancy breaks little new ground in his latest Jack Ryan book which features familiar characters such as John Clark and Ding Chavez. In fact, the book feels suspiciously like turned earth - a bit recycled. My feeling was that the book follows a very structured Clancy novel-writing formula, if anything, taken to an unsatisfying extreme.
Without giving much about the plot away, (and there is not much here to reveal), The Bear and the Dragon feels like a thousand-page exercise in getting Clancy's familiar elements all to be at the right place at the right time for events that are telegraphed FAR to much in advance. The way Clancy now crafts his stories, every scene seems a crowbar to wedge diverse elements onto a path of convergence which brings little surprise to the reader. Some of the sub-plots manage to come across a bit thin in TBATD, at least in my opinion. I found in particular the story regarding Rainbow Six highly contrived, shoehorned into the rest of the book. And after an almost agonizing path to the final scenario filled with the standard Clancy techical over-exuberance, I felt unfulfilled at the end.
On top of shortcomings in the plot, I feel that Clancy's ideas are a bit old themself. He manages to interject a bit more racism and sexism in the book than I would like. At least he does not continue to use the awkward word niggardly as he did in Rainbow Six (which was noticed as strange by me and friends of mine). And why he manages to weaken the character of one of his interesting female creations by making her a vomiting, morning-sick "woman" doing a "man's job", I can't figure out. Then there is also some very pro-life Republican tirades in the book (I'm Republican so I can say so) that I could have lived without.
(If Clancy can get on a soapbox then so can I - to me the "Republican" pro-life agenda offers little in the way of solutions, more in the way of guilt. I'm pro-life and pro-choice - let's ENCOURAGE alternatives to abortion, but give every woman their FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. For those that claim that having an abortion is "too easy" - go and speak to someone who has gone through it - I have - and you know not what you claim. 'Nuff said.)
It's a little strange to me to read pro-life proletizing in a novel that is basically about war. For one of the scenarios in the book I found it interesting, but he applies it to one of the main characters to make them seem anachronistic (to me), but that's not unexpected, Clancy is a bit of an anachronism himself - he continues to write about the great and all-powerful military of the US, which vanquishes enemies with a stealthy and technologically marvellous swish of the hand, but always is short just that one special munition we need to get the job done right.
That's not to say it was all bad - there were definetely good elements to the story. Clancy always manages to nail the battle action superbly, and I liked the espionage revolving around the Chinese Politburo. There were also some interesting insights into the Presidency, but not enough to save the entire book.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
TrekBody
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Location: St. Paul, MN
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 0 members
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