Rating:  Summary: very mixed Review: Interesting anti-terroist commando missions, and lots of them -- these parts will be read with pleasure, compulsively.But the book is fatally flawed -- bland villians, and a pathetically ludicrous MacGuffin....
Rating:  Summary: Worst Clancy has EVER DONE Review: Clancy really missed the boat on this one, the plot was foolish, the characters were stereotyped comic book characters, he might as well have been writing a bat man book! I was a HUGE Clancy fan, but this was a book I had to struggle with after 200 hundred pages. It is not the size that is a problem, but the politics and missing story plot. This book offended me pretty harshly, so much so I might not pick up his next offering until I heard a lot of good reviews. I have never agreed with Clancy politically, but now, I think that Clancy is actually MORE conservative then Rush Limbaugh!
Rating:  Summary: Good, but certainly not his best Review: Although the action sequences ripped along, there was little in between to latch onto. Rainbow Six lacked the scope and grand feeling that usually characterizes his books. But then again, he was probably aiming more towards interpersonal conflicts, rather than trying to bring together a hugely complex plot. Also, this book was wrongly positioned as a John Clark piece. The focus was much more on Chavez, and his rise as a capable leader. He lacks the savvy and dark persona, though, of a Ryan or Clark, so I hope that Chavez isn't the future of Clancy's books. I'd also suggest to wait for the paperback.
Rating:  Summary: A sequel to "Without Remorse", but Clancy has lost his touch Review: Now and then, a good writer writes a bad book. This is one such. "Rainbow Six" is Clancy's second book about John Clark, an unromantic CIA agent with a license to kill. His first, "Without Remorse", built the character of Clark, and was perhaps Clancy's best writing. "Without Remorse" wasn't a techno-thriller, but more of a classic character novel. "Rainbow Six" is more a classic Clancy gadget story, but unlike his Jack Ryan novels, this time he can't pull the threads of unlikely events together into a believable whole. The book revolves around a succession of terrorist plots executed for no visible reason, and when the reason finally becomes clear, it doesn't make sense, especially since the bad guys aren't portrayed as dumb. I wonder if Clancy even wrote this turkey. It reads more like the "Op-Center" books, on which he puts his name but doesn't write.
Rating:  Summary: Single dimensioned, naiive, typographically flawed. Review: I've read nearly every Clancy novel. Over the years I've detected a gradual diminishment in the quality of plot, character depth, subplot integration, and richness in wording when comparing his first series of works to this. It's quite possible to skip entire sections in the book-and I did through sheer boredom-yet stay connected with the main plot. I'm disappointed with how unidimensional the novel is with its sophomoric approach to both "global/environmental" terrorism and special operations units and tactics. A 300 page novel crammed into 700 pages. Too bad, Tom, you could have done much better....you did before.
Rating:  Summary: Familiar stuff. Review: Tom Clancy's recent novels have been much too wordy. Nearly all would have been improved by being a few hundred pages shorter. Someone must have gotten the message to Clancy (or he figured it out himself), because this book is just a little over 700 pages -- brief by recent Clancy standards. And the novel's pacing and general tone do benefit from this brevity. That's the good news. The bad news is that there's not much here that's new. The central characters are people we know well from previous novels (John Clark and Domingo Chavez), and we don't learn anything new about them here. The sides of their personalities that we see are those we already know well. Familiar and comfortable, yes; revealing or enlightening, no. The plot elements are mostly recycled, too. The main threat to Life As We Know It is the Ebola virus that was used in Executive Orders. It's been beefed up in a bio-lab to make it easier to spread, but it's not really new. There is also a personal vengeance subplot involving Clark that is similar to the one in Without Remorse, with a similar resolution -- Clark takes the law into his own hands in a mildly creative way. There's more, but nearly all of it fits the pattern: Clancy is reworking materials he's already used. Another problem with this novel is that the character development of the primary villains is unusually weak, which takes much of the starch out of the good-vs.-evil struggle. These people -- based on the little we learn of them -- are very shallow, even by the normal standards of the Clancy actiontechnothriller genre. Their motivations have minimal credibility, because we just don't know them well enough to find the outlandish things they do very believable. So, bottom line, this is a pleasant and diverting read but does not engage and satisfy the way the earlier novels do. It's vintage Clancy, but not very original within its genre. All of Clancy's novels make for enjoyable reading, but if you have to skip one, this is the one you'll miss the least.
Rating:  Summary: A fair read. Technically sloppy. Not up to Clancy form. Review: Has the timing of the "Summer" Olympics moved to January? Only that way could the outdoor temperatures in SE Australia be in the 90s. It read like several separate novellas, strung together. Poor continuity. Many technical (and typo) errors, some glaring (e.g., forgetting season reversal for the southern hemishere). Clancy peaked with Red Storm Rising.
Rating:  Summary: So Far So Good Review: I'm about 250 pages into the book and so far it's not to bad. It is not his best but not nearly as bad as some others have portrayed it. If you are a Clancy fan, but, not a fanatic then you will enjoy this story.
Rating:  Summary: Tom Clancy is at his best Review: The new book by Tom Clancy certainly views the world issues in an intense, excelently documented view of life-changing scenarios. Buy the book.
Rating:  Summary: Awesomely Fantastic!!!!! Review: Clancy has written another page-turner with everybody but Jack Ryan in it. We get to see the action that Clark and Chavez do so well--rescuing innocent people and taking out the bad guys--alive when necesary. Dr. Bellows and the British staff are great addtions to the cast of characters. My only beef--no Jack and Cathy Ryan. Maybe next time?
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