Rating: 
Summary: Niven's having fun.
Review: I've read Niven for years. He has been writing since before I was born, and he was great before I was born. Over the years I've learned to love his style, later, to admire it, and later yet to admire the mind behind the stories. As we all reached the 90', our society changed a bit. I'ts o.k for everyone to do small things for themselves even if those things are somewhat unacceptable. I'ts o.k to chase your own ambition. Well, I think that Niven wrote "Rainbow Mars" mainly for fun. Because he wanted to rest a little from hard sci-fi or to get a different writing expirience, and now everyone claim that the book is not as good as the other Niven works, well he did'nt try to write another "Ringworld", if you'll just relax and have a fun reading you'll get the most out of "Rainbow Mars". The book, by the way, is full of cute references to many old sci-fi books such as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, H.G.Wells's "War of that world" etc'. A nice reading from one of the masters of hard sci-fi, writing leasurely a comic fantazy, that should be read without preconceptions.
Rating: 
Summary: A disapointing read.
Review: After reading Niven's "Destinys Road" I was looking forward to another great plot with developed characters, but found this collection of stories lacking completeness. I kept waiting for the story and characters to gain some depth but sadly I was disapointed. The twists and turns of the plot with no real direction was very frustrating. Not to mention the unfinished endings. I would only recommend this book for very light sci-fi readers who just want a quick story tease.
Rating: 
Summary: An OK Sci-fi/Fantasy
Review: This was my first book from this author. Rainbow Mars was a semi interesting novel about aliens and time travel. The book kept me hooked most of the way through. The introduction was short, but it didn't lose me. The ending was where it got really weird; tying in myths and doing multiple time jumps on the fast changing earth. The chapters on mars where my favorite part, with constant confrontations with the locals. This book is mainly about a large mysterious plant that can benefit the exploration of space for mankind and the connection it has with Mars and Earth. It was interesting enough for me to finish.
Rating:
Summary: Wait for Mr. Niven's NEXT book
Review: I was excited to see Larry Niven had put out a new book, since his name seems to be a guarantee of an engaging read. This, however is an exception. To begin with, it isn't at all clear from the blurbs that this is actually a novella and a bunch of short stories (I blame the publisher for that). And the short stories are all just more of the same. I mean, how many times do we have to sit through the timeline changing and people are suffocating because the air is now clean? The problem, of course, is they weren't meant to be read back-to-back, but rather over time in various publications. Forgetting that disappointment, the novella has some interesting premises and characters... BUT the writing style seems to be a concerted effort to appear to be a 40s or 50s potboiler SciFi. Mostly it was just annoying. My advice is to pass this one up and go directly to Mr. Niven's next novel.
Rating:
Summary: Rainbow Mars
Review: I am a long time reader of Science Fiction who has enjoyed Larry Niven's works but Rainbow Mars was a severe disappointment. I found the book, particularly the dialog, confusing and rife with non sequiturs. It's almost as if Mr Niven had written a book twice as long and then went back and deleted every other line.
Rating:
Summary: Niven's disappointment.
Review: I have been a fan of Mr. Niven for many years and have found his work both technically plausible and readable. Rainbow Mars is neither. The inclusion of unicorns, dragons, and the borrowing of old SF plots set on Mars turn this into a "sword and sorcery" novel. The use of time travel was unconvincing, effectively no more than a "magic-wand" to link the story elements. This book was a major disappointment from an author I (formerly) expected to turn out high-quality science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After 60 pages, I closed it and put it on the shelf. A waste of time and money. Although I loved Ringworld, The Integral Trees, etc., stories about time travel should be left to someone like Keith Laumer, the best IMHO.
Rating: 
Summary: Adding a story does not make a new book
Review: I was pleased to see a new Niven--until I realized that this was a repackaging of The Flight of the Horse with a single new story, Rainbow Mars. The publisher's blurb makes it sound like a novel, which it is not. _Flight of the Horse_ is probably out of print, so if you haven't read the Svetz stories, you may enjoy the book. They are something of a flight of fancy for Niven, not unlike the warlock stories. This is not his best sub-genre.
Rating:
Summary: Disjointed but still Niven
Review: Something has happened to Niven in the last few years, his writing is still great for novel ideas but its getting hard or perhaps less enjoyable to read. Rainbow mars fits this mold. The plot includes a fascinating idea for getting into orbit, but his writing skips and jumps and is a little hard to follow at times. Its almost as if he is publishing a first draft (well maybe a second). In Rainbow mars we can see the new story and the old and compare the writing. We have the old time travel stories, finely crafted with excellent well thought lines (for example) "it was terrible in its beauty, the flight of the horse" (describing the gallop of a unicorn) a quote that stays with you. Nothing similar exists in the new story. Still worth buying though.
Rating:
Summary: a waste of money....worse, a waste of time
Review: i found this book boring. it also went beyond my ability to suspend disbelief.
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