Rating: 
Summary: Niven needs to get back his Muse!
Review: I reluctanctly say this is not exactly what I expect from Niven. This is not Science Fiction as much as total Fantasy. He has created a menagerie of genres, borrowed from other writers, to create an impossible set of possibilities. Alternate time lines, unicorns, world trees, Barsoom and Megalomaniac feudal lords. I like to think of Science Fiction as a plausible future. This novel is too far removed from that premise. But this is not to say someone else might not enjoy it.
Rating: 
Summary: A most disappointing book!
Review: I hadn't read a science fiction book in several years, but decided to buy one when browsing a bookstore. I had always greatly enjoyed Larry Niven's novels and (especially) short stories, so I picked up this book. What an unfortunate choice! This book has few creative ideas. Since Niven is usually weak on characterization, this leaves little reason to read it. The references to some of the standard works on Mars are mildly interesting, but all-in-all, the book is dull and tedious. Very disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: Niven's Narrative Style Applied to an Interesting Conceit
Review: Larry Niven's style is always accessible, intriguing and "sci fi". His characters tend to be ordinary folks caught up in extraordinary situations, whether they wear a janitor's togs or a general's bars. Although he gives his books a contemporary feel, they also hearken back to the 1930s and 1950s magazine based stories. Mr. Niven himself wrote for some of the later magazines, and this novel is a sort of long sequel to a series of time travel stories. Niven's approach to this Mars time travel satire mines liberally from science fiction that has gone before. Its central conceit is satisfying and useful--what if every science fiction story and misplaced scientific theory about Mars were true? Analogously to Heinlein's Number of the Beast, Niven harvests from a rich field of Martian myths and stories. Although this is a time travel work, Niven thankfully spares us any "hard science" effort to explain the time paradox. He's out to mine a solid satiric story from his material, and he manages to accomplish his goal without unduly burdening his story with inside jokes. This book uses the traditional Niven narrative devices, but it feels much more like comic material such as "Hitchhiker's Guide" than the "fantastically improbable crisis made real through good characterization and patient explanation" which usually denotes Niven novels. Yet, although the work is a satire, it rarely plays for cheap laughs. The author creates a dilemma, builds a series of characters to resolve the dilemma, and winks at the audience quite a few times in doing so. It feels like a book-length issue of Astounding Magazine, re-issued in 2010. Fans who want a detailed and realistic bit of Niven unreality will be disappointed. Fans who don't mind a stretch will be pleased. This one marches to a different drummer, but the beat's not at all bad, and sometimes you can dance to it.
Rating: 
Summary: An enjoyable, but short, read.
Review: Includes an original 260 page novelette, and reprints of some short stories. I'd previously read some of the shorts in other anthologies, and felt a bit disappointed that the new novelette, although a good read if you are a Niven fan, was too short.
Rating:
Summary: Niven - 75% new, the rest old.
Review: Thinking that this would be a good Niven tale I sprang for the full hard cover book. The main novel ended abruptly after 224 pages. The story could have been finished with success at Mars, leaving room for future work. Instead the remaining ninety pages are filled with reprints of old short stories on Svetz's time travels. I was very disappointed, if I could of opened a window on the jet I would of thrown it out.
Rating:
Summary: Ripped off
Review: I seldom buy hardbacks since very few are worth the price. The exception is anything from Larry Niven. I have always purchased his hardback first editions as soon as they are released. Especially when he makes the effort to write on his own and not with that idiot Pournelle. Rainbow Mars was a mistake. A marginal work at best and only half the book. He reprints some old ho hum work from his early days to fill space. If you have to read it, wait for a used paperback edition.
Rating:
Summary: Over the Rainbow Mars
Review: I have always looked forward to Larry Nivens' works. As a master of "hard" science fiction Mr. Niven has few equals. Too bad this book is fantasy. I enjoyed the compilation of short stories previously published as "Flight of the Horse", now I realize why. They were short indulgences. A sideline to his normal, excellent SF. While long time SF readers will recognize the Martians encountered by Svetz and company during their "travels" to Mars' past, the book never develops past these recognitions. Entertaining to a degree but not what I look for from Larry Niven.
Rating:
Summary: Another writer falls into the Mars morass
Review: Theres something about the word Mars in a sci-fi title that fills me with fear. And much as I like larry niven, this justified my fears. A terrible mistake, directionless and annoying. Finished it with a struggle and shudder.
Rating:
Summary: One of Niven's Best!
Review: Rainbow Mars is a revised collection of some shorts that he published in the early 70s (under the title Flight of The Horse) with a great novella added named Rainbow Mars. These stories follow the adventures of Svetz the time traveller. But, Svetz is more than a time traveller. Svetz can go back to alternate worlds. In one Svetz story, he brings back a unicorn. In Rainbow Mars, the novella, Svetz go back to several fictional Marses of Burroughs, Wells, and others to bring back high technology. Niven goes one step further and looks at the question of why Mars is apparently a dead desert planet. He introduces plants that can grow to become space elevators - they can grow up to aerosynchronous orbits and beings can use these plants to get into space (see Clarke's Foundations of Paradise or Sheffields Web Between The Worlds). If you think about what a plant needs to grow, you can see why Mars is a dead desert planet, and why such a plant on Earth would be a disaster. Svetz has to use time travel to prevent a catastrophe. This is one of Niven's best novels.
Rating:
Summary: Rainbow Mars
Review: Dissapointing. Unforgivable planetery mistake. My humble opinion is: in an attempt to be 'compelling fiction' the story tends to confuse the reader, not propell her along. If it has a good ending I'll never know, for three fourths of the way through I put it down, unable to force myself to finish it. Sorry. Thumbs down for Rainbow Mars.
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