Rating: 
Summary: Mixture of Old (Wonderful) and New (Lackluster)
Review: I have read just about everything Larry has put to paper and I was told to avoid this book. Despite the advice I picked it up and I liked it. Well, almost liked it. The odd placement of the novella BEFORE the short stories was and odd choice since you end up reading the chronology backwards by the time your done. It is one of the few "time travel" books I have ever read and liked. I hate time travel books, period. The jokes are cute but the casual fan of si-fi may not spot them all. Niven's style is as solid as ever. Shallow people with no depth and aliens that act alien. If you like Larry's books, pick this one up but read it BACKWARDS. Start with the short stories and work you way to novella. You won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: Amusing but lacking
Review: I have read just about everything Larry has put to paper and I was told to avoid this book. Despite the advice I picked it up and I liked it. Well, almost liked it. The odd placement of the novella BEFORE the short stories was and odd choice since you end up reading the chronology backwards by the time your done. It is one of the few "time travel" books I have ever read and liked. I hate time travel books, period. The jokes are cute but the casual fan of si-fi may not spot them all. Niven's style is as solid as ever. Shallow people with no depth and aliens that act alien. If you like Larry's books, pick this one up but read it BACKWARDS. Start with the short stories and work you way to novella. You won't regret it.
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: Confusing, but yet intriguing
Review: I read this book in remarkably little time, mainly because it isn't exactly heavy on pages... This book was like a vacation which has been planned to include EVERYTHING in as short a time as possible. Sometimes I wondered if there was something wrong with my copy of the book, as Niven dashed from one idea to another, and then yet ANOTHER! Still, I found the book to be intriguing, and some of the quotes included (such as Jerry Pournelle's about dreaming that he would one day see man land on the moon, but never imagining he'd see the last) give the book a nice weight and feel. I was a little bemused by the supposed link to Terry Pratchett's work. This book never felt like funny fantasy, but simply a non-too serious romp into fantastic science fiction. Well worth seeing once released in the paperback edition.
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: 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: More serious than slapstick
Review: I think many people were expecting humor of the 'Diskworld' variety, which may account for some of the disappointment I see. This is not, in fact, a particularly funny book at all. It's the idea itself that is amusing, not the treatment. As is often true for Niven, the world is the main source of interest. His Mars is a compilation of at least 5 previous 'worlds' of Mars, all joined together - H.G. Wells' martians live side by side with Burroughs' and Lewis', for example. The world is developed, at least a bit, and quite colorful. Hanville Svetz is there to travel through Mars (and Earth of both past and future) and let us see what Niven has developed. Niven tries to add some character to Svetz for the first time, and this is one of the weaker portions of the book. He still doesn't have any talent at doing romance stories, although he has improved some since the Integral Trees (a slight exception for Inconstant Moon, which was fantastic). But when Svetz is performing his primary role - being a tourist - he does it well. All the previous Svetz stories are also included. There were a few I had not seen before, and was glad to have here. Others may or may not appreciate this, depending on whether you've read them earlier.
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: 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: Niven missed....
Review: I'm a hardcore Niven fan and have been ever since I first read "A Gift From Earth", but with that said - this book is mediocre at best. I suppose it is just a matter of taste, but I found this book to be tedious and confusing. I usually appreciate his sense of humor, (anyone who hasn't read Man Of Steel/Woman of Kleenex is really missing out) but this time I have to say I just don't get it.
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