Rating: 
Summary: The Big Pink Bunny
Review: I usually enjoy a Tom Clancy thriller. But his one didn't do it for me. At one time it could have been interesting to know how and why our Russian friends tried to assassinate the pope. But the Cold War ended about 12 years ago and with it so went the mystery and intrigue of what motivated mother Russian to do what she did. Less than two months ago President Putin visited the Vatican to speak with the pope. The reason for an assassination has long been lost and with it the drama for this story. I think this book could have been written with about 50% less words. While I found the story very interesting from the Russian point of view I did not find the lives of the Western spies so very engaging. I look forward to the next Clancy offering. Cammy Diaz Attny @ Law
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing rehash of old plots and information
Review: The latest installment in the continuing adventures of Jack Ryan, "Red Rabbit" is a prequel of sorts, the story taking place after "Patriot Games." In this book, Tom Clancy backtracks to chronicle Ryan's first mission during his assignment with British Secret Service. "Red Rabbit" does not live up to the high standards of Clancy's other Ryan-novels. The plot line is basically a re-hash of "Cardinal of the Kremlin;" the CIA has an informant in the KGB who must be exfiltrated out of the Soviet Union. This informant is important because he has information on a KGB plot to kill the Pope. However, this story has NONE of the suspense and action Clancy gave us in "Cardinal" and the assassination plot is poorly developed. The plot itself seems to be secondary to character development. Clancy devotes endless pages to developing background information on Ryan, his wife, and the Foleys (two CIA agents introduced in "Cardinal"). However, like the book's plot, the insights he gives us into these characters is a re-hash of things we saw/heard in other books. Don't know why Clancy even wrote this book. Maybe its been sitting on the shelf; maybe he wants to complete the Jack Ryan Timeline; maybe he's just out of ideas. In any case, "Red Rabbit" was a serious disappointment. If you must read it, get a used copy: its not worth cover price.
Rating:
Summary: The Worst Clancy Book
Review: I think I have now read all Mr C's Ryan/Clark series......and this is the worst, very dissapointing. I read somewhere that T.C. does his own editing, if this is correct it shows in Red Rabbit, way too long for the story.
Mr Clancy has gone overboard with the detail in this story and seems to be using the book as a vehicle to impress his readers with his intimate detailed knowledge of his subject matter. The detail supplied in works such as Red October, Executive Orders and Debt of Honour was relevant and added to the experience making those books very good indeed, and EO & DOH were HUGE stories. The Red Rabbit story could have been told in 2/3 of the size, I only just managed to make it to the end. Also his knowledge of England could use a little work, It may pass muster to an Americam audience but is exposed to a british one.
2 stars - must try harder
Rating:
Summary: Not the best
Review: This really wasn't all that great. I've heard some complaints about the length of the book, but the problem seems to be more that he isn't saying much and taking a long time to do it. C'mon...200 pages so that we can find out the the Soviets want to kill the Pope. He needs an editor. Plus, this book kind of has two parts. I won't ruin it for anyone except to say that the book seemed to reach some kind of a conclusion ~100 pages from the end. Then rushes like mad to get "part 2" finished.
Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as some reviewers say
Review: Obviously, given the story line, the overall outcome of the book is predictable. Nevertheless, I found myself interested and unable to put the book down as I read how the main characters (Foley, Ryan, etc.) tried to pull off the operation in the book. This book, like The Bear and the Dragon, is not what can be called action-packed. Nevertheless, it is still a rather good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Red Rabbit--better than you have heard
Review: Many, many reviewers have taken their time in utterly bashing this book. Sure, it does not have the high intensity action of some of Clancy's older books, but for that it is no less interesting. The reader should beware that this is not a fast paced, action packed book, but it, while slow, is ultimately quite worthwhile. One quibble about the book was that while it seemed to take place in 1980-81, there is little mention of Pope John Paul II's first trip to Poland in 1979. That truly caused an earthquake in the communist world.
Rating: 
Summary: Red Rabbit is a gripping blend of fact and fiction by Clancy
Review: Having followed the rise of John Patrick Ryan to the Presidency in the course of four novels (including one in which Ryan is an off screen presence), Tom Clancy takes the reader back to Jack Ryan's days as a fast-rising CIA analyst in 2002's Red Rabbit. Set between Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October, Red Rabbit takes place in the early years of President Reagan's first term. Having saved the Prince and Princess of Wales from a terrorist plot, Ryan is assigned by CIA Deputy Director (Intelligence) James Greer to London, where he will be part of a CIA Liaison Team working side by side with British intelligence analysts. Their mission: to keep abreast of events and developments in the Soviet Union. It is a time of transition in the Soviet Empire. Leonid Brezhnev is dead, and former KGB director Yuri Andropov is General Secretary of the Communist Party. Soviet forces are still "pacifying" Afghanistan, and two world figures in the West have surfaced as potentially dangerous adversaries in the struggle between the Capitalist World and the Soviet Union. One of them is America's new President, Ronald Reagan, whose "cowboy" image and strong rhetoric about rebuilding the long neglected U.S. defense establishment and open disdain for communism are, at the very least, worrisome to Andropov and the Politburo. Closer to home, and therefore more troubling, is the threat posed by Pope John Paul II, a Polish cardinal elevated to the papacy after his predecessor's short reign. Although the Pope has no armies or nuclear weapons, his strong will, his anticommunist beliefs, and his nationality (Poland was then part of the Warsaw Pact, back in 1981) combine to make John Paul II more dangerous to the U.S.S.R. than the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Pope can be used as a symbol of anticommunism around which the restive Polish nation can rally. With the opposition gathering strength and the Solidarity union movement creating havoc to communist-dominated Poland's centralized economy, Andropov fears a general revolt in all the Soviet satellite states. Knowing that the Soviet Union would probably fall apart if its "fraternal socialist brotherhood" were to break away, Andropov decides that if the Pope cannot be cowed into silence, he must be done away with. And after a document called the Warsaw Letter reaches his desk, Andropov chooses to order an operation to silence the Pope...forever. Clancy has mixed fact and fiction before in the "Ryan-verse," most notably in The Hunt for Red October, whose pages are inhabited not only by Clancy's fictional cast but also by actual historical figures, such as Sergei Gorshkov, Dmitri Ustinov, and Yuri Padorin. But Clancy blends two real-life Cold War episodes (the plot against the Pope and the defection of a KGB officer to the West) and tosses in at least some of the major players in the Ryan-verse. Although far from perfect (there are references to the Falklands/Malvinas War of 1982, while the plot to kill John Paul II took place in 1981), Clancy proves he can still tell a compelling espionage/adventure story. There is relatively little violence or gunplay here, a rarity in Clancy's work, since the focus here is on the extraction of the KGB defector and his small family from behind the Iron Curtain. This makes Red Rabbit a throwback to the classic espionage thriller of the John Le Carre mold, very much in the vein of Clancy's own The Cardinal of the Kremlin. Even better, long time readers know (if they have read The Tom Clancy Companion) that the storyline about the KGB defector's extraction is probably based on a real story. This novel is definitely among Clancy's best works.
Rating: 
Summary: Clancy's getting worse and worse . . . .
Review: I've been a big Clancy fan ever since I was a submariner and Hunt for Red October came out. But his plots have become too predictable and his characters are too perfect. (Name a Jack Ryan flaw other than he sneaks cigarettes when his wife's not around.) Red Rabbit is the worst. The book contains some interesting insight into spy operations behind the iron curtain, but do I want to read a page and a half of the Ryan's morning routine or a several pages about how much Jack Ryan loves his wife? (No!) Tom Clancy is a father of this genre, but he needs to take some lessons from his proteges -- Neal Stephenson, for example.
Rating:
Summary: poor effort
Review: Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy
ISBN 0-141-004-916
I bought this book and began to read it with great anticipation and feverish excitement. The promotional blurb on the back cover was attractive and the author's pedigree quite impressive- the author of 'Red Storm Rising' and 'The Hunt for Red October' could, after all, only be expected to turn out another thriller. Alas I was due to be disappointed. This book is oversized, at least 695 pages too long and one gets the impression that the author manfully struggled to expand the shallow and puerile plot into a predetermined tome size. This was obviously impossible so the vacant pages were filled with a liberal sprinkling of the philosophical musings of Mr and Mrs Ryan, repetitively and wantonly. The first 690 pages are near about forgettable and painfully tedious and it was a combination of pecuniary considerations and stubbornness that saw me through. The rest of the tale was entirely predictable, unexciting, uninspiring and this silly fat book is not much more than an unfortunate piece of chest-thumping, red-necked patriotic hagiography. Mr Clancy fails to entertain or inform and this book is a signal lesson in the dangers of an astute literary mind being infected by misplaced patriotic fervour. I wondered about asking for a refund of the purchase price and recompense for the pain and suffering I suffered in reading it. This is the second worst Tom Clancy novel I have ever read (the worst is 'The Bear and the Dragon') and I will not be buying another. Unless Mr Clancy rediscovers the form of 'Red Storm Rising' and leaves political propaganda to the relevant authorities those who buy his novels do so at their own and considerable peril. Dr OA Adebajo
October 15, 2003.
Rating:
Summary: repetitive blah
Review: here's a synopsis:
a foreign government wants to do something to the pope; jack ryan doesn't like planes; america is the best; jack ryan doesn't like his father in law; the russians are pretty good, but the americans are better; the british are pretty good, but the americans are better; ryan doesn't like planes; cathy ryan doesn't like not sleeping beside jack; jack doesn't like not sleeping beside cathy; ryan doesn't like planes; america is the best place to live.... blah blah blah, THe first 3/4's of the book is boring and highly repetitive. The last 1/4 is OK. I'm a big fan of Tom Clancy's books containing more technical and suspensful content (i.e. most of the books before this one). This book had no suspense or cool technical stuff. THis book is barely worth reading and certainly not worth buying new.
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