Red Rabbit

A very boring beginning but picks up in the middle with an explosive ending. Jack Ryan,Jr. Books are more to my taste. Mire action from the beginning.

Exciting expose on the inner workings of KGB, CIA and British Intelligence. Lots of action and suspense. I enjoyed it.

The story was pretty good. He just needed to bring so many! people into it. That took time. Very good ending.

In lieu of current world events world events in which Russia is threatening the use of nuclear weapons, this book is particularly relevant when considering the mindset of those in power in Moscow.

I reread this book because I couldn’t remember how the initial contact was made between the “Rabbit” and the Cos. Chief of Station. A second reading provided much more in terms of context and background. Loved the book.

I have always been a big Tom Clancy fan and wait with tremendous anticipation the publication of each of his novels. Lately, however, I have grown disenfranchised with Mr. Clancy and have found it harder and harder to get through his books. This book was no exception and I struggled to get through this book, though for different reasons than his last couple of Jack Ryan novels.Mr. Clancy is a talented action writer and his mastery of the techno-thriller novel has been widely and justly praised. Unfortunately, Mr. Clancy is also a talented researcher and political thinker, and he tends to assume that his audience is equally interested in the minutiae of these subjects. Ever since Red Storm Rising (co-authored with the under appreciated Larry Bond) Mr. Clancy's books have been growing thicker and thicker to the point that one often despairs of the number of trees necessary for just one print run of his books. Regretfully this increase in girth has not always been to the benefit of the story.Fortunately for his readers, Mr. Clancy is an excellent action writer and his novels are generally filled with enough action or blistering political tension that you are able to digest the odd 50 pages here and there of political or military analysis. Two fine examples of this are The Sum of All Fears and his last offering, the Bear and the Dragon. The Sum Of All Fears offers one of the most suspenseful and thrilling stories he has ever drawn up which covers about 500 of the 798 pages of the book. The rest is filled with the sometimes mind numbing detail of the process of assembling a terrorist nuclear weapon. Similarly, the Bear and the Dragon offers up a fine political suspense drama for about 600 of the 1028 pages of the book. The remainder are filled with long political dissertations on the morals of the political process, party politics and just about anything else President John P. Ryan might care to muse about for 100 pages or so while pondering his next decision.Ironically, this book is one of Clancy's shortest efforts in many years coming in at just 618 pages (not the 896 pages erroneously reported in the Amazon info section) and does much less delving into the thinking of the President or the minutiae of the technology involved. Unfortunately, the trimming process seems to also have cut deep into the action in the book resulting in lots of interesting information on how a CIA station works and what a defection is like but very little suspense. Indeed, since you know the outcome of the primary plot point before you start reading the book it is difficult to stir up any feelings of excitement even when the action does get going in the last 50 pages or so. This book is very similar to The Cardinal of the Kremlin in that it is almost entirely about the process of espionage and defection, which in the real world frequently have very little action indeed.I cannot recommend this book as his best, but I will continue to read Mr. Clancy's books because even his bad books are interesting and his good books are wonderful. I would recommend a reread of Without Remorse or Rainbow Six, two of his best more recent works, before investing any time in this one.

I enjoyed the first few novels in the Jack Ryan series, but by the time I had gotten well into reading this one, a number of annoying tendencies are beginning to emerge in Clancy’s writing.First of all, the story was painstakingly slow in developing. The first 18 chapters, approximately half of this volume, was background minutiae and character development that was simply too drawn out! I honestly had to push myself to keep reading to see when or if there was ever going to be a decent story here at all!Next, unlike other Clancy novels I had read, he developed an irritating habit of making a statement and then trying to create suspense by adding these two-word, second-guessing questions such as “, was it?”, “, were they?”, “, did it?”…and seemingly hundreds more. What at first may have served its purpose very quickly became as irritating as the proverbial “fingernails on a chalkboard”1Lastly, he seems to have developed quite a predilection for profanity. I certainly am not offended by such language; in fact, used judiciously, it can help define one or more characters. In the book however, ot seems like his overuse began detracting from the story and made me wonder why such a gifted writer would sink to such a low bar.Overall, this has been a difficult book for me to get through. I just could not get into this story at all and it made my reading time feel much more like an effort than something I looked forward to.I think I will look at some other authors in this genre! I always heard Clancy was great, but this was really a disappointment!

Por error pedí los mismos libros dos veces, pero enseguida que me di cuenta, inicié el proceso de devolución A TIEMPO y los libros no fueron dañados. ES UN ASALTO!!

Been going back and repairing my library for want of better words and revisiting old favourite authors. Tom Clancy was my first in this genre of writing and I love going back.

Goog

"Hunt for the Red Octorber"で登場したJack Ryan が、作品が新しくなるごとにどんどん出世し、遂に "Debt of Honor（日米開戦）”では大統領にまでなってしまったが、今回の設定は1980年代前半。時代はぐっと遡り、Jack Ryan も若すぎて今回は脇役並。エド・フォーレイやマリー・パットが中心となって活躍する。米ソ冷戦の真っ最中で、鉄のカーテンを挟んだ情報戦の時代。東西陣営のスパイ活動が最も盛んな頃であり、ＣＩＡとＫＧＢの情報活動・防諜活動や旧ソ連体制下での政治力学など、それなりに面白い。しかし、毎度のことながら、始まりの数章はじっと我慢をして読む覚悟が必要。読み進んでストーリー展開にのめり込んでしまうと、最後まで読まずにはいられなくなってしまうが、勢いに乗るまでは、正直言って苦しかった。Tom Clancy の魅力は、ストーリー展開の面白さもさることながら、専門的で詳細すぎる程の描写の迫真性にある。最先端の専門技術、例えば他の作品での例をあげれば、潜水艦がどのような仕組みで成り立っているかとか、プルトニウム爆弾がどのように核爆発の連鎖反応を引き起こすかといった技術的・科学的なことを、これでもかと言うぐらいに何ページにも渡って細かく説明する。こうした記述は普通は冗長なだけだが、Tom Clancyの場合には、よく調べてあるだけに、これがまた面白い。リアリティと言うか説得力というか、妙に引き込まれる不思議な魅力となっているのだが、本書には、これがないのが残念。時代を遡ったので仕方がないのかも知れないが、旧ソ連下の政治力学について延々と書かれても、少々疲れるのが、やや難点。但し、本筋であるストーリー展開の面白さ、読後の爽快感は期待して良い。ファンとしては、あえて辛目の評価をして星３つ。

Really poor. Zero suspense. Jack Ryan has no real role. It's a very shallow story. Just a way to milk the Ryan brand a little more. Using Giovanni Paolo II adds to the shame.