Rating: 
Summary: No.
Review: If I recall correctly, I may have read the first few pages of one of Clancy's earlier "novels" until my gag reflex kicked in and I began to go into a massive, boredom-induced seizure. I have not read this "book" (and I use this term loosely, because Clancy's tomes of ennui are more torture devices than anything else) but I think it will suffice to say that it involves one or more of the following: 1. Jack Ryan and his never-ending quest to involve himself in sticky situations with bearded men who wear hammers and sickles prominently on their clothing. 2. Espionage. 3. Russia. So if you're pretty sure that you lack either a soul or a personality, there's a fair chance you might enjoy this "book." P.S. JACK RYAN WINS IN THE END!!!! HAHAHAH SPOILER!!
Rating: 
Summary: Off the mark
Review: I don't have a lot to say about this book except that it is boring and confusing. Clancy gets so caught up in his minute details that he forgets to actually write a story. Early Clancy is far superior to this read. The only reason I'm finishing it, is because I started it.
Rating:
Summary: Red Rabbit
Review: I would rather rate it a zero but that choice is not provided. Not much of a story - and what little story there was was spoiled by injection of the neocon/far-right politics. I do not expect to read another Tom Clancy since there are lots of quality books/authors out there that leave the the politics at home.
Rating:
Summary: Boring...
Review: Tom Clancy really missed this one. The story within the 900 pages (Penguin pocket book edition) could be easily told in at least half of that. The large paragraphs with descriptions and characters thought add nothing to the plot and are passed through. Jack Ryan is a merely spectator. The guy in the right place at the right time. Where is the suspense? And all the hard decision making in the intelligence business? Who cares about the differences between american and british ophtamologists? I'll tell a small detail of the story now...the "hard part" of the defection, make the soviets believe that the Rabbits are dead, is easily solved with "convenient" fires in the US and Britain. That's awful writing.
Rating:
Summary: interesting idea, very tedious reading
Review: this book is a clunker. not because we all know the eventual ending but because the story moves along very tediously. there is no suspense. in the past i used to plow through the "jack ryan" novels. not this time.
also, clancy may want to do some research into actual family life. hey, it has some fantastic moments but the interaction between jack and his wife and kids is a bit much. i mean how many times can i read about little sally running into jack's arms and get the warm fuzzies? the dialog between jack and his wife is also a bit affected.
then there's the KGB communications officer. gee, will he try and warn the americans about the plot to kill the pope? it's all but a forgone conclusion.
it's pretty sad when you find yourself asking "do i want to continue reading this?" at the end of each chapter.
i thought non-fiction intelligence/CI books had spoiled me, but after having read the other reviews on this book i realize it's not me. the book is a clunker.
so, this is one book of tom clancy's i'm not going to finish. pity, since i already slogged through about 169 pages....
Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy is a Hack
Review: Don't buy this book. Don't Read this book. This is a story that clancy stole from a real book that was non-fiction. The Title of the real book is Tower of Secrets, written by Victor Sheymov, the actual KGB defector. It's written in third person and accounts for Sheymov's history with the KGB and eventual questioning and hatred for the communist system. Buy Tower of Secrets. There is nothing more disgraceful for a writer to do than to steal ideas from other writers. I met the man from the CIA that initially met with Victor Sheymov, or "the Rabbit" as he is referred to in this book. The agent James Olson, now retired from service and teaching in Texas, told us the entire story, and how Clancy gets information from informants and reveals secrets of national security in his books. Buy Tower of Secrets.
Rating:
Summary: The last Clancy?
Review: I have been a fan of Mr Clancy's work for about a dozen or so years. However I have now reached the point where I doubt that I'll ever buy another of his books. In short the reason is "Red Rabbit", one of the worst books I have ever read. In "Red Rabbit" Clancy has taken a moderately interesting storyline and has destroyed any readability with his increasingly ponderous and turgid prose, irritating style and dreadful characterisations. He has even managed to turn Jack Ryan into a barely likeable character. In fact, all of the good guys can easily be identified by their white hats, their stellar relationships and their highly moral and justified behaviours. Clancy's style revolves around using a range of monikers for his characters (e.g. DCI for the head of the CIA, C for Sir Basil Charleston, and even at one point referring to Charleston as the Knight Commander of the Bath, DDO for Ritter and DDI for Greer etc) and unnecessarily interjecting them into dialogue paragraphs, often at the expense of the flow of the writing. He is also guilty of building unnecessary background and back stories for characters who only make a passing appearance and who don't even really even require names. Mr Clancy appears to want to show off the many different ways there are to identify his characters but does not seem to realise that it makes for very uninspiring and even poor quality writing. A high school student would do better. Jack Ryan has the closest thing to a perfect marriage and we hear, ad nauseum, how much he loves his wife - even to the point of the reader learning that he hates not sleeping with his wife and how much she hates not sleeping with him. Clancy also continuously swaps between calling him "Jack" and "Ryan", often several times in one paragraph or section. It is as if Clancy is unsure about how familiar he should be with his own character. Clancy does not seem to be able to be clear about his own relationship to his protagonist - is he a good mate or is he a character to be kept somewhat at arm's length? Ryan's history is repeated time and again and his Americanisms are largely just plain dumb. The regular references to him as "Sir John" by the British characters is highly unlikely in real life and very tiresome in the book. Although obviously a very proud (and right-wing) American, it is increasingly obvious that Clancy is an Anglophile and he continues to make much of the small differences between the English and Americans but surreptitiously seems to be stating the American way (pronunciation, style, side of the road to drive on, etc) is the better. He often explains the English pronunciation and uses italics to emphasise the difference on a regular basis. For example he often writes "leftenant" when discussing a rank in the British military. OK, Mr Clancy, we get it. But do you not think that once, up front, you could mention that "he pronounced it in the British style - as leftenant" and for the rest of the book write it as lieutenant, which after all is the way that the British spell it. They (and we Australians) just pronounce it differently. The continual references to "Brits" is also irritating. Has Mr Clancy never heard of the words "Britons" or "British"? All of his British characters speak in a very clear, grammatically correct, upper class manner. Mr Clancy's exposure to the British people and their behaviours and dialects appears to be very limited. The characters are stereotypes and are shallowly drawn. Mr Clancy has the right to thread his own politics and religious beliefs into his work (it is his book after all) but he makes no allowances for differing beliefs within Western and other societies. We are repeatedly informed that Ryan attended Catholic and Jesuit schools and that Catholicism dominates his belief system. All of the American and British characters are fairly religious and uphold mainly Catholic beliefs. The problem I have with this is that someone who is not religious would be lumped in with the "bad guys" (the Soviets) and it does not take into account that many citizens of the Soviet Union were religious, even if not on the scale of many other countries and cultures. The treatise towards the end of the book about someone who doesn't do right by god and is therefore one of the bad guys is frankly offensive. How would Clancy cope with describing a CIA agent or patriotic American military officer who is an atheist (and yes, they do exist)? A final gripe is that the Rabbit in question varies from being a Captain to a Major from chapter to chapter. It is also the first book that I have read that I have regularly thought throughout that the Reader's Digest Condensed edition would be a much superior book. This is one book that is in desperate need of an editor, one who wouldn't be doing his or her job if he or she failed to remove at least 300 pages.
Rating:
Summary: just plain stinks
Review: i have to say that this was, without a doubt, the absolute worst clancy novel ever written and rates in the top 10 of worst novels i have ever read. had i not been trapped on an airplane for 13 hours straight with a faulty headphone jack and no other reading material I doubtless would have thrown it away. As it was, it was a close match between this "novel" and the duty free shopping magazine. The novel could have been cut down to under 200 pages. that leaves 400 pages of fluff. We are treated to cliches and hackneyed aphorisms over and over again. Subjected to clancy's far right political leanings again and again and when you have just about had enough, they pop up again. and come on... ryan at 32 years old (this point is only emphasized about 2 dozen times) has: gone to college, joined the marines, been injured in a helicopter crash, made a fortune on wall street, went to grad school, got his PhD in history, wrote a book and got a position teaching at the naval academy. oh and he has a wife he has "never slept away from" and a daughter too... come on. his prose is turgid beyond belief, the dialogue invariably devolves into sermons and jack's americanisms are forced and obnoxious. none of the above, however, is unique to this novel--they are all present throughout clancy's works (which is why it had been many years since i stopped reading him and why i will never read him again). however usually he has a strong plot that pulls you through and we arent reading him for poetry lessons. but clancy without a plot--for this novel certainly did not have one--was more painful than root canal. getting off the plane i dumped this book right into the trash can. and i never throw away books...
Rating:
Summary: Just Not Good Enough
Review: I found the book to be pedestrian, dull, ordinary, colorless, mundane, banal and just plain uninspired. I felt like I wasted my money -- not up to Clancy's standards or for that matter anyone else. Written just for the bucks and it shows it.
Rating:
Summary: Jack Ryan Back in Time
Review: After a couple of duds in the Ryan series, I was looking forward to going back in time and re-capturing the thrill of the earlier Jack Ryan books. I thought Tom Clancy's storyline for this book was great. Take a real world event where everyone knows the outcome (early 1980s attempted killing of the Pope), mix in a young Jack Ryan and the other usual suspects from this series to weave a tale where the story's characters are impacting the real world outcome, and then twist and turn us through the book so we don't know how the author will get us to the historical finale. That sounds great and this book has the potential to be an exceptional story, but fails to capitalize on that promise. Unfortunately, I fully concur with the numerous other assessments that "Red Rabbit" is too long, slow in developing, poorly edited, surprisingly vulgar, and worst of all predictable. When determining a recommendation, I considered "Red Rabbit" against the standard military techno-thriller and also versus Clancy's other works. In both cases it comes up short. It is almost on par with other books in the genre but short of Clancy's normally high standards. For a better book, read anything else by Tom Clancy that has the word "Red" in it. "The Hunt for Red October" is the exceptional 2nd book in the Jack Ryan series. "Red Storm Rising" is an epic World War III scenario right from the Cold War and not part of the Jack Ryan series. It is hard to believe "Red Rabbit" is written by the same author. Not a worthwhile read.
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