Rainbow Six

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: Tom Clancy's book Rainbow Six is a GREAT book. It has a lot of action in it and really has a good plot. Part of the reason it is so good is because it really hits home that it is possible that it could happen in the world today. Also, the characters are very well thought up and you really get to know them. I think it is great how they solve the problem about the international laws at the end of the book. Overall, this was a great book that I just could not put down. So my suggestion is to read it as soon as you can.

Rating:
Summary: Red October, where for-art thou?
Review: This Tom Clancey book is about John Clark and Ding (from Clear and Present Danger) setting up an new international task force. Concerned mainly with anti-terrorism. Various scenarios ensue, building up their image of competence, and gradually introducing the main plot elements. It starts pretty well, but the last 200-odd pages, out of 897 in my softback, start to drag and annoy. I am not sure if he decided he had to wrap things up, or got sick etc, but the effort just doesn't seem the same.

I like Clancey, really I do. But Rainbow Six suffers in too many departments. I can accept the plot, it might be _possible_ for a private corp to develop a virus secretly. I can accept the formation of a NATO anti-terrorist group. But what really bugs me is the way the "bad-guys", who are obviously smart from their setup plans, loose their brains once the ball gets rolling.

Other people have mentioned inconsistencies, Clancey's right-wing views, and technical faults. This I can accept, but not the unreasonable reasoning of supposedly smart characters.

Buy the computer game instead, it's a little old now, but is a brutal and more entertaining education on anti-terrorist units.

Rating:
Summary: BEST Tom Clancy Book EVER!
Review: Anyone who thinks this book isn't good is just full of it! This quite simply the greatest Clancy book ever. I could not put it down. The information is extremely accurate and is very detailed. The only this book could be improved is to make it longer, its one book that i didnt want to end. I cant wait for a sequel to it(if there is going to be one). This is a definite must read. Whoever it was that said it should be read in reading classes was very right. READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Plausible enough to make you worry at night
Review: Having worked in industry among real-life environmentalists, I would say there probably really are people as nutty, self righteous, dangerous AND well-connected as the sinister group described in TC's Rainbow Six. The antagonists' plot to wipe out all humans, except the environmental elite who "get it" (themselves) -- and thereby provide an opportunity to repopulate earth -- is plausible enough to make you worry at night. With its typical TC focus on techno-weapons, action, anti-terrorist military tactics and world-class danger, the book was as compelling as it was unique. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: Not quite as great as his other works, but an excellent take on terrorism.

Rating:
Summary: Everyone misses the biggest flaw!!!
Review: If I have somehow overlooked this, then I am the fool but, A bit of a spoiler so don't read if you hate to know important data! I better get this in now, I enjoyed the book. Great way to pass the time, but glaring inconsistency must be pointed out. The premise is that Shiva is released through a spritzer-type coolant system at the Austrailian SUMMER Olympics. Gang, look at the Today show, consult your globe, Which Mr. Clancy obviously didn't do! IT'S WINTER IN AUSTRALIA WHEN IT IS SUMMER HERE!!!! Which just about kills the whole idea of introducing Shiva in Australia with a device designed to cool the crowd, when the crowd is already huddling in 40 degree weather!!! It's this type of asinine mistake looked over obviously by every editor and reviewer,that makes Americans look bad to everyone. I mean c'mon doesn't anyone pay attention, especially Mr. Clancy the particular "Uber-American" who espouses American superiority in every page. I have no problem with Americans on top, I just want to make sure every American actually knows where the "top" is "down under." I invite any exchange to my yahoo address [e-mail]. I will not respond to obvious diatribes, honest criticism or disagreement is the First Amendment baby, I live for it.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Very illustrative book. As usual the characters are very well described; The weaponry the team uses are adequate and modern; the tactics are accurate. The book doesn't leave any loose details. The story line is awesome. Strongs: The description of the missions. Excellent (and there are plenty of them; and Ding Chavez character. It seems we are looking at a new Clancy's "son". Weaks: Too many pages. Clancy waists lines and lines of the book in situations that are not necessary. At some point you feel like the book is a little bit too "heavy".

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, Mr. Clancy, this one was simply bad.
Review: I've been an avid Tom Clancy fan for years now, ever since reading Red October; my personally library contains all of his books, and in all the time I've read his work, I've never been disappointed. Until now.

Sorry folks, some of you may disagree, but Rainbow Six is not even close to being up to par with any of Mr. Clancy's previous works. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'd venture to say that this book was simply shoved out the door in an effort to create, and take advantage of, the publicity surrounding the release of the software game of the same name.

Let me point out that I have -never- been disappointed by a Clancy novel before. Even the germ warfare plot of Executive Orders, while already overdone in the media, was handled well enough that I thoroughly enjoyed that book. Rainbow Six comes across as so weak that I have serious reservations about whether Clancy actually wrote this book himself. (No offense, Mr. Clancy, but honestly it just isn't up to your normally high standards.) This is the first time I've ever read a Clancy book, then wanted to get my money back. Here's hoping the next title will be back on track.

Rating:
Summary: this book rocks
Review: i say that this book rocks over to the max wookie its so awesome it should be read to school children in reading class

Rating:
Summary: Definitely Not Clancy's Best
Review: I get a bit of a chuckle seeing the previous reviews that claim Rainbow Six as Tom Clancy's best novel ever. In fact, he has never equalled his first novel, The Hunt for Red October, although Patriot Games and Cardinal of the Kremlin were quite good.

To summarize briefly, Rainbow Six is Clancy's ninth novel in what I call the Ryanverse. Jack Ryan is not a character in this novel, although he is alluded to. The plot centers around longtime CIA agent John Clark, the hero of Without Remorse and a major character in other novels. In this novel, Clark becomes the head of Rainbow, an elite, multinational antiterrorist unit. A group of radical environmentalists plot to unleash a deadly virus and kill off all human life, and the Rainbow team must uncover their plan and stop them. There are lots of set-piece action scenes along the way.

Rainbow Six represents an improvement over Clancy's last novel, Executive Orders, in a couple of respects. First, Jack Ryan is offstage. Ryan's possibilities as a plausible character were pretty much exhausted by the end of The Sum of All Fears, and since then the Ryan novels have become less and less believable. Second, the plot is more focused around a single story, rather than the multiple plot-lines of the last novel. Unfortunately, these plusses are more than offset by several serious weaknesses.

The strength of Clancy's best novels was in their combination of seat-clutching suspense and technical realism (or at least the apearance thereof). In Rainbow Six, however, there are signs that Clancy's techincal mastery is slipping. His unawareness that the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere is laughable, and other reviewers here have noted several technical details that Clancy gets wrong.

Rainbow Six also displays many of the other weaknesses that have increasingly plagued the Ryan novels. Once again, we get a tiresome dose of Clancy's right-wing political views. In this book we she what he thinks of environmentalists--to a man, they are portrayed as wackos who subscribe to views that sound like a wild caricature of the deep ecology movement. Clancy simply has no idea of what real environmentalists believe or of the diversity of beliefs across the environmental movement.

We also see Clancy's continuing tendency to recycle plot elements from previous novels. The bioterrorism plot in Rainbow Six is just a rehash of the almost identical caper from Executive Orders. We also get at least the fourth rehash of the "terrorist threat to loved ones of the heroes" scenario. When Clancy first used this storyline, in Patriot Games, it made sense within the development of the story. Now it's just a way to slip another action scene in.

In short, Rainbow Six is for diehard Clancy fans only.