Action & Adventure
![Marc Cameron - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B005FB45C8.jpg)
Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (A Jack Ryan Novel)
A missing Chinese scientist, unexplained noises emanating from under the Arctic ice, and a possible mole in American intelligence are just some of the problems that plague President Jack Ryan in the latest entry in Tom Clancy's #1 New York Times bestselling series.
Aboard an icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean a sonar operator hears an unusual noise coming from the ocean floor. She can't isolate it and chalks the event up to an anomaly in a newly installed system.
Meanwhile, operatives with the Chinese Ministry of State Security are dealing with their own mystery--the disappearance of brilliant but eccentric scientist, Liu Wangshu. They're desperate to keep his crucial knowledge of aerospace and naval technology out of their rivals' hands.
Finding Liu is too great an opportunity for any intelligence service to pass up, but there's one more problem. A high-level Chinese mole, codenamed Surveyor, has managed to infiltrate American Intelligence. President Jack Ryan has only one choice: send John Clark and his Campus team deep into China to find an old graduate student of the professor's who may hold the key to his whereabouts. It's a dangerous gamble, but with John Clark holding the cards, Jack Ryan is all in.
Aboard an icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean a sonar operator hears an unusual noise coming from the ocean floor. She can't isolate it and chalks the event up to an anomaly in a newly installed system.
Meanwhile, operatives with the Chinese Ministry of State Security are dealing with their own mystery--the disappearance of brilliant but eccentric scientist, Liu Wangshu. They're desperate to keep his crucial knowledge of aerospace and naval technology out of their rivals' hands.
Finding Liu is too great an opportunity for any intelligence service to pass up, but there's one more problem. A high-level Chinese mole, codenamed Surveyor, has managed to infiltrate American Intelligence. President Jack Ryan has only one choice: send John Clark and his Campus team deep into China to find an old graduate student of the professor's who may hold the key to his whereabouts. It's a dangerous gamble, but with John Clark holding the cards, Jack Ryan is all in.
Readers Top Reviews
William P. KnillPopp
the convolutions between the different countries/organisations and their different characters keep your mind active. The Campus operatives are slowly being replaced by gradual introduction of others who we'll probably see more of as the books progress with Jack Ryan Jr. taking a more leading role. A thoroughly good read
Jake Thompson
It has been seven years since the fateful passing of one of the greats in the thriller genre, Tom Clancy. Yet, his estate, with multiple authors, keeps the Jack Ryan series alive their own novels, in addition to the off-shoot “The Campus” series involving protagonist turned United States President’s son, Jack Ryan Junior (Jr.). Graciously splashing the name of each novel switching between Ryan and his operative son, the era of Clancy continues to live on. In Shadow of The Dragon, Marc Cameron delivers another blend of the Ryan family in another attempt of covert operations and joint terrorism attempting to spurn the world and throw the United States into chaos, forcing the hand of John Patrick Ryan to do what he does best, and act appropriately. The writing, while superb by Cameron, falls short in the vein that the detail of previous novels may not be present and that the story moved quickly. While keeping true with the carousel of characters, old and new, it is clear that the stories are aging with the characters and that it brings to the question of when it all may come to an end. For now, readers can take comfort in reading the next story of the Jack Ryan juggernaut and be sufficiently pleased until the next round of novels in 2021.
Linda Schmidt-
Marc Cameron carries on the Tom Clancy tradition of exciting plot with lots of informative current events. In this President Jack Ryan administration, the free world’s leader must deal with communist China which is hiding a special submarine from the West. John Clark, Domingo Chavez and the team must go secretly to China to rescue a woman scientist who can help the stranded sub. The team travels over much of China and helps as well as is helped by the persecuted Uyghurs. Shadow of the Dragon is full of action and information
Susan CameronN. Garg
The hendley group sets out to find a scientist who has created a system which makes a submarine’s noise undetectable. In the Bering sea, there seems to be a submarine in trouble and the scientist is aboard. The group is broken up into groups searching for a woman and her daughter. The CIA and FBI are searching for a mole who is giving secrets to China. I thought the book was too scattered. It seemed folks were all over the place and the book didn’t flow easily. Mr. Cameron is an excellent author, not sure what happened with this book. It’s just not up to his usual writing.
belinda g
I really liked this book and it was really well-researched. It's hard to put it down once you get to the last 100 pages. Deep dive into culture and how the ChiComms subjugate ethnic groups and get away with it. Very real depiction and so believable. I'll buy them as long as they produce them. However, as much Jack Ryan novels have been a part of my life for over 30 years, at some point his continuing on as POTUS (pre Smart phones) is starting to strain credulity. The books keep up with the tech but it has been many moons since he defeated Ed Kealty and lots has changed in the world. I believe I had my brand new IPhone 2 at that time. How much longer can Foley, Arnie, and the loyal crew go on? Clark is 75 now? Chavez is 50? Damn. They can work in a lot once Jack and Kathy are out of 1600. Challenges to the Campus. Jack actually going on missions. Jr getting involved in politics? It can go on forever. As much as I believe John Patrick. Ryan was the greatest POTUS who ever lived, all good things have to come to an end at some point.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
Dr. Patti Moon sat bolt upright in her plastic deck chair, startled at the sudden noise coming across her headset.
The biting wind blowing off the Chukchi Sea didn't realize it was spring and pinked her round cheeks and smallish nose. Apart from her hands, which she needed to work the Toughbook portable computer, her face was the only part of her not bundled in layers of wool or fleece. Dr. Moon leaned toward the folding table, situated on the afterdeck of the research vessel Sikuliaq, straining to hear the noise again. Sikuliaq was Inupiaq for young ice-appropriate for a science vessel capable of traveling through more than two feet of the stuff.
They were in open water now, taking advantage of a large lead, more than a mile wide, to set some research buoys before the wind blew the ice pack back in.
Moon touched a finger to her headset as if that would help her make more sense of the sudden burst of sound. A former sonar technician on a Navy destroyer, she'd listened to a lot of noises from the deep, but nothing like this.
She sat up again, shook away a chill, telling herself it was just the wind.
The scientist slouching beside her turned to look at her with sleepy eyes that dripped barely veiled contempt. She didn't take offense. He looked at everyone and everything on the boat that way. Steven "Snopes" Thorson had spent his entire adult life in the world of academia. He knew he was smart-and he liked to make sure everyone around him knew it, too, fact-checking everything anyone said-especially his colleague and fellow Ph.D., Patti Moon.
Her academic bona fides were stellar-but she'd also had the experience of a life growing up in the Arctic, which apparently burned Dr. Thorson worse than the bitter wind.
Moon spent her first seventeen years in the tiny coastal village of Point Hope, Alaska, just four hundred miles south of where the Sikuliaq now motored to stay hove-to against the wind. She'd been in Anchorage for a high school basketball tournament when the USS Momsen, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, stopped for a port call. A female sailor had come ashore with the skipper-and that changed her life. No one pressured her to enlist-they didn't have to. She'd grown up on the ocean, fishing and seal-hunting with her father. The sea was in her blood, and though she wasn't sure how she felt about the U.S. government, the beautiful gray warship off the coast of her home state was all the inducement she needed to sign on the dotted line as soon as she graduated. She served six years as a sonar technician.
Her test scores were through the roof, and though she had a reputation for believing most every conspiracy theory she heard or read online, her sea-daddies (and -moms) pushed her to go to school when her enlistment ended. The GI Bill put her through undergrad at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, after which she'd gone on to attain a first-class graduate degree, and her doctorate in physics from Oxford.
She was just as smart as Dr. Thorson. And frankly didn't give two shits if he judged her for being human and touching her headset in hopes that it would make her hear better. Something was down there. A sound that didn't belong.
And then it was gone, yielding to the other squeals and grunts and songs of the ocean as quickly as it had arisen.
A strand of black hair escaped her wool beanie and blew across Moon's wind-chapped cheek. The wind had shifted, coming from the northeast now-beyond the pack ice. She ignored the cold, focusing instead on the sound she'd heard for only an instant as the hydrophone descended beneath the Sikuliaq.
Ballpoint pens were iffy in the cold, so Dr. Moon used a pencil to record the depth and time in her notebook. She shot a quick glance at Snopes Thorson.
"You didn't hear that?"
Wind fanned the ash on the end of Thorson's cigarette, turning it bright orange-like a tiny forge. Bundled in layers of merino wool, fleece, and orange arctic bibs, it was difficult to tell much about him, except that he wasn't very tall, and was, perhaps, very well fed. He wielded his sideways glares like weapons when he was annoyed, or, more often, when he was about to annoy someone else by fact-checking every little detail of a conversation. Thorson relished the notion of calling everyone out on the slightest error. Patti Moon made it a point to speak as little as possible around the man-not an easy thing to do when their jobs overlapped and their office was a 261-foot boat in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.
Like Moon, Dr. Thorson was a science of...
Dr. Patti Moon sat bolt upright in her plastic deck chair, startled at the sudden noise coming across her headset.
The biting wind blowing off the Chukchi Sea didn't realize it was spring and pinked her round cheeks and smallish nose. Apart from her hands, which she needed to work the Toughbook portable computer, her face was the only part of her not bundled in layers of wool or fleece. Dr. Moon leaned toward the folding table, situated on the afterdeck of the research vessel Sikuliaq, straining to hear the noise again. Sikuliaq was Inupiaq for young ice-appropriate for a science vessel capable of traveling through more than two feet of the stuff.
They were in open water now, taking advantage of a large lead, more than a mile wide, to set some research buoys before the wind blew the ice pack back in.
Moon touched a finger to her headset as if that would help her make more sense of the sudden burst of sound. A former sonar technician on a Navy destroyer, she'd listened to a lot of noises from the deep, but nothing like this.
She sat up again, shook away a chill, telling herself it was just the wind.
The scientist slouching beside her turned to look at her with sleepy eyes that dripped barely veiled contempt. She didn't take offense. He looked at everyone and everything on the boat that way. Steven "Snopes" Thorson had spent his entire adult life in the world of academia. He knew he was smart-and he liked to make sure everyone around him knew it, too, fact-checking everything anyone said-especially his colleague and fellow Ph.D., Patti Moon.
Her academic bona fides were stellar-but she'd also had the experience of a life growing up in the Arctic, which apparently burned Dr. Thorson worse than the bitter wind.
Moon spent her first seventeen years in the tiny coastal village of Point Hope, Alaska, just four hundred miles south of where the Sikuliaq now motored to stay hove-to against the wind. She'd been in Anchorage for a high school basketball tournament when the USS Momsen, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, stopped for a port call. A female sailor had come ashore with the skipper-and that changed her life. No one pressured her to enlist-they didn't have to. She'd grown up on the ocean, fishing and seal-hunting with her father. The sea was in her blood, and though she wasn't sure how she felt about the U.S. government, the beautiful gray warship off the coast of her home state was all the inducement she needed to sign on the dotted line as soon as she graduated. She served six years as a sonar technician.
Her test scores were through the roof, and though she had a reputation for believing most every conspiracy theory she heard or read online, her sea-daddies (and -moms) pushed her to go to school when her enlistment ended. The GI Bill put her through undergrad at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, after which she'd gone on to attain a first-class graduate degree, and her doctorate in physics from Oxford.
She was just as smart as Dr. Thorson. And frankly didn't give two shits if he judged her for being human and touching her headset in hopes that it would make her hear better. Something was down there. A sound that didn't belong.
And then it was gone, yielding to the other squeals and grunts and songs of the ocean as quickly as it had arisen.
A strand of black hair escaped her wool beanie and blew across Moon's wind-chapped cheek. The wind had shifted, coming from the northeast now-beyond the pack ice. She ignored the cold, focusing instead on the sound she'd heard for only an instant as the hydrophone descended beneath the Sikuliaq.
Ballpoint pens were iffy in the cold, so Dr. Moon used a pencil to record the depth and time in her notebook. She shot a quick glance at Snopes Thorson.
"You didn't hear that?"
Wind fanned the ash on the end of Thorson's cigarette, turning it bright orange-like a tiny forge. Bundled in layers of merino wool, fleece, and orange arctic bibs, it was difficult to tell much about him, except that he wasn't very tall, and was, perhaps, very well fed. He wielded his sideways glares like weapons when he was annoyed, or, more often, when he was about to annoy someone else by fact-checking every little detail of a conversation. Thorson relished the notion of calling everyone out on the slightest error. Patti Moon made it a point to speak as little as possible around the man-not an easy thing to do when their jobs overlapped and their office was a 261-foot boat in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.
Like Moon, Dr. Thorson was a science of...
