I have read all of Clancey's books starting with The Hunt for Red October. Unfortunately, this is not one of his better works. It is slow to develop, makes too many references to previous books, and asks the reader to believe a quite preposterous notion of the our Chinese friends. If I had to rank the Clancy books: 1) Hunt for Red October, 2) Patriot Games, 3) all of the rest, Last) Bear and the Dragon.