Rating: 
Summary: Poorly written, very disappointing
Review: I've certainly enjoyed Niven's work in the past -- but the "wildly funny" assertion made in the publisher's book description should have tipped me off here. I don't think *anything* I've read by Niven has made me crack a smile -- certainly nothing recent. Yes, I got all the "in jokes," references to Burrough's Barsoom, etc., but they weren't funny. The main problem as I saw it was his writing, which was incredibly confusing and favored supposedly witty dialog too heavily over explanation/description (if you want me to imagine another world, you gotta throw me a bone or two). I don't recommend purchasing this. A better recent Niven book was "Destiny's Road." While I still wouldn't stand up and cheer for the writing, at least it had a fascinating hard-science premise and enough world-creation to keep me going.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun and adventures in Time and Space with Hanville Svetz
Review: This book is a great deal. The first part of the book, Rainbow Mars, is a new Svetz novel (novella? novelette? Whatever). Svetz is sent back to Mars in a time machine to find out if there was ever life there, of course since the time machines in Larry Niven's world don't work in a nice, linear fashion he finds out that there was life on Mars, life that was described in the stories of C.S. Lewis, Robert Heinlein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells and Raymond Gallun, and that's where the fun begins. In addition to the new story this book also includes all of the Svetz stories that were originally printed in Flight of the Horse, all in all a good read and a lot better than the other books that Niven has written in the last few years.
Rating:
Summary: Every page is a struggle to read
Review: It's hard to believe the same author who co-wrote (with Jerry Pournelle) such masters as "Lucifer's Hammer" and "Inferno" could write a book whose every page is a struggle to read. Unless you're already familiar with the Hanville Svetz short stories, "Rainbow Mars" will make no sense to you. Either way, it will produce a level of boredom that should be prohibited by the Geneva Convention. The book consists almost entirely of dialogue between many characters, and it's often difficult to decipher who says what. There is no character development, little narration or background information and almost no explanation of the scenes or action sequences. For example, when the two main characters spend many pages descending the beanstalk from outer space, it's difficult to tell where they are in relation to each other or to the Martian surface. When it appears that Svetz is about to crash to the ground, a few sentences later we see he's still a few hundred miles up. If you want a humorous science fiction book about time travel, read Robert Silverberg's "Up the Line." It's one of my all-time favorites. If you want alternate history, read "What Might Have Been," a 2-volume collection of short stories, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin Greenberg. Or you can watch Sliders on the Sci-Fi network.
Rating:
Summary: A lot of fun, even if you don't get all the inside jokes.
Review: I enjoyed this book, but I suspect I would've enjoyed it more if I were more familiar with the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom stories. Recursive SF is like alternate history in that you have to be familiar with the original material in order to get full enjoyment out of it. Also, this is not much like most of Niven's other work, so that may be a problem for some of those who prefer only "Hard" science fiction. That said, I recommend this book for a quick, entertaining read. It does help, as a previous reviewer stated, to read the short stories first. In fact, I think the book should've been printed in that order.
Rating:
Summary: Has he lost his touch?
Review: I found this book incredibly boring and difficult to follow, and I'm a huge LN fan. I do not recommend this to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: I read the first seventy-five pages...
Review: ...and had to put it down. As far as I'm concerned, Robert Heinlein proved in "Number of the Beast" that it is NOT possible to write a readable novel with nothing but fast-paced dialog. I'm awed by some of Niven's other stories, but I had to drop this one.
Rating:
Summary: Very confusing and not a lot of fun.
Review: I picked up Rainbow Mars without having read the earlier stories and found this book confusing and worse, boring. I did not care about the environment or the world in which it took place. I put the book down halfway and do not care to finish it.
Rating: 
Summary: Svetz on Barsoom!
Review: If you loved Edgar Rice Burrough's "Barsoom" novels (as I did when I was a kid and clearly as Larry Niven does), then you'll be enchanted by this wonderful new novel. Borrowing on his time travel stories, Niven updates and reimagines Barsoom in his usual, engaging style. READ THIS BOOK.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I felt that the story telling was rather confused, and that the premise wasn't working at novel length. Note: I re-read the older Svezt stories first, which I recommend doing to facilitate following the story better.
Rating:
Summary: A Time-Travel Romp
Review: Nobody does clever like Niven does -- he sets limitations on his technologies and then explores the boundaries right at those limits. This new story combines his fantasy time travel with chemical rocketry to get us to a Mars that teems with old friends.
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