Rating: 
Summary: tom clancy should be ashamed
Review: This book was a mess. Mr. Clancy creates bad characters in a lackluster plot. There's no action, and the dialogue seems like its written by some fourth-tier college drunk frat boy. Do yourself a favor and read Demille or the late and great Mr. Ludlum. Harrison Ford or Ben Affleck--both deserve a whole lot better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Over and Out, Mr Clancy
Review: If one bothers to read a previous (August 29, 1999) Amazon[.com] review of mine, of Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October", one can find some perplexity about Jack Ryan's future career: after all, one cannot go much higher up than the presidency of the USA., and he's still relatively young... Mr Clancy must have recognized the snag, but - after all - that fat cow the reading public is still there, the publisher is still willing to shell out those very substantial advance payments... and, in this book, he goes back to roots. We find Jack again at the beginning: a self-made guy who's amassed personal wealth on the stock market, he's lured into a job with CIA as an analyst. Hence, all of the happenings in Clancy's books are a chronological sequence to the plot of this one, and the taste is that of warmed-up soup. In the following books (with a side-excursion into Mr Clark's misterious past, "Without Remorse"), we find him working for Foggy Bottom until the situation sublimates and he's kicked up to the presidency of the U.S., first by "traumatic succession", then by election: down to "The Bear and the Dragon" (© 2000). This book (© 2002), written with a 20/20 author's foresight (really, hindsight) of Jack's epics in the following years, is just as lengthy, dragging and tiring as the preceding one, "The Bear and the Dragon"....The only better feature over "The Bear and the Dragon" is that the pages of this one are a little more than 600, versus the 1,100-plus of the other one - but it's still graphorrhea.
Rating: 
Summary: A contrary opinion
Review: Okay, it's not a technothriller, a lot of the dialogue is a bit corny, but it's still a Clancy page turner based on a real life event. Jack Ryan is a bit of a wimp but it's a fun look at the days of the Cold War CIA and KGB cloak and dagger stuff. Not all of the characters are developed as well as others but it is a good yarn and I devoured the more than 600 pages in record time.
Was it worth the time and money? I give it a yes.
Rating:
Summary: If I could leave a negative star I would
Review: This book is his worst. I am glad that I bought it used as to pay full retail for it would have been an even worse insult.
I have read all of his books that he has written and he has not written one in years that was good. It is like he and another writer who has rode the gravy train of a one character series have lost sight of what a good book entails. Read Jack DuBrul for something new and refreshing, or waste [the money] and buy this doorstop.
Rating:
Summary: BOOORRRRING
Review: This book is utterly boring! Everything goes according to plan from start until 3 pages before the finish. If I read the words "works for me", "...,ok?", "right pal" again, I'll slap Clancy myself. They mention Ryan's time in the marines about 300 times. Completely dull.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm a woman who reads Tom Clancy
Review: I'm almost ashamed to say that it took me well over a month to read Red Rabbit. Usually I neglect my family and read until the Tom Clancy book is finished! The background information was interesting, and maybe this is really the way spy work goes, but the whole book I was waiting for something to happen. We are used to it taking half the book to set up all the pieces of the action, then the action happening, and the rest of the book detailing the aftermath. Nothing happened. Nothing really went wrong. No one was in danger. Nothing. I even expected something more to be said about Cathy's frustrations with the British surgical system, but nothing. I will continue to read Tom Clancy, but most likely will not rush out to buy the book on it's first day available. Mr. Clancy can even continue to fill in some of the background info about his characters. But it's more interesting if something actually happens in the story.
Rating: 
Summary: Some Good, More Bad and Ugly - Wait for the Movie
Review: This review is written by a huge fan of Tom Clancy. By far the worst Jack Ryan book.**Summary**
The Good - The Idea
The Bad -Tom Clancy's execution of his idea
The Ugly -618 pages for a 350 page idea **Details**
THE GOOD - The plot is simple and an interesting idea. Jack Ryan early in his career as a CIA analyst is posted to London and brought into a situation involving the attempted assasination of Pope John Paul II. It has cold war intrigue, spycraft and gives us the opportunity to see Ed and Mary Pat Foley at work early in their careers, as well as Admiral Greer and DDO Bob Ritter. At the same time Tom Clancy gets to write some historical fiction and speculate on the details behind the event including the roles of Brehznev, Andropov and Suslov. THE BAD - Of course, the villians are the KGB, communists and the assassin that a defector (the Rabbit) identifies. Also, as an aside, according to Dr. Cathy Ryan (who joins a hospital staff there) socialized medicine in the UK is so pathethic that one hopes never to need surgery while there. (This is the illustrative of the level of mind numbing detail in the book.) Of course, we are reminded at length how bad the communist economies were and how delusional were their leaders and while such reminders are probably worthwhile and do explain the thesis of the book, they continually interrupt the flow of the story. THE UGLY - The details of the torture methods used by Stalin and the KGB. The lack of fact checking and several editing mistakes, especially since Clancy's strength is his attention to detail. E.G. the assasin is twice misidentified as one of his previous victims with a similar name and even more incredibly the attempt on the Pope's life in actuality was made in 1981, yet in the book it occurs the year that the Orioles won the world series (1983) and when Cal Ripken was supposedly a rookie (1982). If you are going to write historical fiction rather than about events in some parallel universe, get your facts right. Jack Ryan fans will probably want to read this book despite its serious shortcomings, all others should wait for the movie which can keep the plot and action while getting rid of the extraneous material. Let's hope the apparent sequel, The Mask of The Red Death if the hints throughout this book mean anything, is better.
Rating:
Summary: Ugh!
Review: I haven't sat down to write a review on Amazon.com for quite some time. "Red Rabbit" has motivated me to end my silence. I look forward every other August to a new Tom Clancy novel -- not the supermarket checkout ghost written "Ops" books or his non-fiction. To say the least, "Red Rabbit" is the most disappointing Clancy novel to date. The story is a decent one -- KGB's plot to silence the Pope -- but Clancy constantly repeats information about his characters, mostly Ryan. How many times do we have to be reminded that Ryan was in the Marines? A history professor at the Naval Academy? Or that his perfect wife Kathy disapproves of his smoking? How many times do we need to be reminded of the "Patriot Games" plot -- to kill Ryan and the Prince of Wales at Ryan's home? The constant reminders distract a reader -- even the newest readers of Clancy's work. Also, a some inconsistences: the "Rabbit" is referred to as a Captain of KGB as well as a Major. Unless KGB has a peculiar ranking system, Mr. Clancy's editors should have weeded that sort of error out. My advice: Go back and read Red Storm Rising!
Rating: 
Summary: Hollywood may be disappointed, but I certainly wasn't
Review: Only one gun is fired in the whole book. The only explosion is a single case of arson. Hollywood is probably extremely disappointed. But this one of the best Clancy book I've read to date. If you've only see the movie adaptations of Tom Clancy's books, this is probably not the book for you (look to the 'Net Force' or 'Op Center' series instead). However, if you've enjoyed his books like 'Hunt for Red October' or 'Cardinal of the Kremlin', this book is pure espionage, a stimulating page-turner. The principal character of Jack Ryan spends much of his time waiting in the wings, but Clancy breathes life into the character of a Russian Captian (RABBIT) who's conscience compells him to defect in order to prevent a KGB murder plot. Familar characters from the Ryan series abound in this book (some only by name), but by far the most interesting is RABBIT - one of Clancy's talents that is so enjoyable in his books is how well fleshed-out his charcters are (maybe that's one of the reasons the movie-versions are always so disappointing to me). Set in the early 80's, some of the 'predictions' of the future can be hard to swallow at times (hindsight being 20/20), but Clancy did a nice job of taking a point in history where we already know the outcome, and still making it interesting enough to want keep flipping pages. For me, the end lost a little momentum (loose ends - not as exciting, but the audience still wants to know what happens), but all-in-all, a good read. I am only wishing now that I hadn't given my copy of 'Cardinal' to a friend moving to eastern Europe - that would make a good follow-up read.
Rating:
Summary: ??? ! ! !
Review: This a major let down on Clancy's part. I wont waste my time on this book any longer than i have to. There are only 2 or 3 shots fired in the entire book. None of which are of any consequence. I am 14 and have read all of Clancy's books except for "Red Storm Rising". This is obviously the worst yet. I reccomend that you borrow this book from a friend. Dont bother wasting your own money on it. I love all of his books. The only one I hadn't liked so far was "The Bear And The Dragon", But this is going way too far.If you want to buy his best book of all time, buy "Rainbow Six". I hope this sends you a very clear message.
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