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Rainbow Six

Rainbow Six

List Price: $8.50
Your Price: $7.65
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Shoot-em' up Action Flick
Review: This is a book that needs to be read for what it is- An action military suspence work of fiction. I think often people read Clancy and follow his characters as sort of a paralel reality to current world situations, and in that way find his books engaging in the description of military technologys. I happened to read "Rainbow Six" after 9-11 and in the midst of a war in Afghanistan. Terrorism has been seen at its extreme and has a new meaning. Suddenly, the terrorists in this book are so completely unbelievable that it reads more like a Die Hard movie. I for one, like a good bad/guy, good/guy explosion flick every once in a while, so I was really into "Rainbow Six". At the same time, much of the technology described here has roots in current military situations. It was nice to read a book centered around another character than Jack Ryan. Clark and Chavez are solid characters, and as usual Clancy does a great job bouncing back and forth between the good guys and bad guys, giving the readers knowledge that the opposite set of characters don't know. Read this book and enjoy it for the farce that it is. Don't expect to find this paralel world so believable.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: great book, ending could have been better
Review: This was my first Tom Clancy book, and the first book I have read in awhile. I read this book off and on for quite some time, but when I really got into reading it regularly, I could barely put it down. The descriptions of the characters were very good and made it feel like I really knew them. It was suspenseful and made me sit on the edge of my seat. This was one book where you really root for the good guys and wonder what the heck the bad guys are thinking. The ending seemed too easy compared to some of the missions throughout the book. I was expecting a more exciting ending, especially with the length of the book, and that is the reason for the 4 stars. I do, though, highly recommend reading this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Rainbow Six is a highly entertaining suspense thriller
Review: Tom Clancy is the most talented author of the modern times. He writes novels that combine entertaining action and suspense with a lot of realism. They can be long, but are very much worth it. The characters are all very human and their personalities are flushed out in great detail. The plot is great as always: a team of radical environmentalists decide that the human race is destroying the planet, and must be removed. Therefore, they have created a virus called Shiva that they will spread all over the world (with an anti-virus exclusively for them) starting with the summer games. Meanwhile, John Clark, the ex-Navy SEAL introduced in Clancy's previous novels has started a new top-secret international counterterrorism commando unit code-named Rainbow (for the rainbow of different nations involved) headed by him, a coupla British guys from the SAS, and his son-in-law and ex-Army Ranger Domingo Chavez. There is also an ex-KGB officer who unknowingly works for the environmentalists, and is handed tasks of terrorism designed to keep peacekeeping forces busy. Rainbow deals with these threats, each one growing in severity, effectively, but suspense is kept up not only during the missions but afterwards as they try to discover the reason for these attacks for themselves and stop these biological terrorists before its too late. A highly entertaining read for anyone who is willing to read it (after all, it is a lot to read). I highly recommend it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Rainbow six gets my pick
Review: Tom Clancy rainbow six was one of the greatest and most memorable books I have ever read. Hi my name is Master C and for the following I will explain to you why I enjoyed this book. First off there is the main characters consisting of John Clark, Domingo Chavez, Ding, and Alistair Stanley. Firstly I liked this book because they are always either off doing some mission or they are getting ready for a mission or even reflecting on how good they did on their last mission, and personally that's what kind of stuff I would enjoy doing any time of the week. Even when they are not on a mission they are always involved in a action and dangerous situation. They are always getting ready for missions by practicing and practicing, practice makes perfect that's what I always say. I also like it because they always are traveling places like Switzerland and Germany, and Russia and by the sounds of it they are not there for a holiday it is serious mission involved trips. I also liked it because when they are doing their missions they don't just storm in there and try and kill as many people as they can without dying. They have lot of pre mission practice and when they get there they wait in till they now the coast is clear and then they throw bombs (non-explosive off cause) to either blind them or make them delusional so they can not react to the special forces flooding in and securing the area. Finally I liked this book because it was not just all fighting and killing it was also like real life situations that either us or some one we now has been in, so I kind of connected with the book in that way.


Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great story, terrible ending.
Review: True to form, Tom Clancy has cooked up yet another super-tense technothriller. This time the threat is bioterrorism on a global scale, all part of a nefarious plot hatched by a gaggle of environmentalist wacko intelligentsia types that frequently find themselves on the receiving end of some unflattering commentary by Rush Limbaugh and his contemporaries. These "characters" are portrayed more like caricatures, with their off-the-wall ideas and somewhat corny dialogue. Throw in the ultra-sexy element of high-end, world class special ops, and you have all the makings of an awesome read -- until the end.

The basic premise is that a group of self-styled defenders of Mother Earth are conspiring to restore her to her pristine, unsullied state by eliminating the chief cause of her defilement -- humanity. They will do this by developing and deploying an ultravirulent bioagent designed to render mankind extinct -- except for themselves and a few "chosen". These will be immunized with an appropriate vaccine, and will whether the storm in a "biodome" type of facility. After the cycle of bio-death has run its course, they will emerge to rebuild humanity and civilization "as it was meant to be", in an environmentally sound and sensitive way.

These goings-on just happen to coincide with the assembly of a multinational force of special ops experts built around John Clark, with Domingo "Ding" Chavez (of "Clear and Present Danger" fame) as the XO and senior field operative. This organization, known as "Rainbow", will fill the gaps in counterterrorism efforts of other individual nations by providing an integrated rapid-response team with all the necessary jurisdictional and diplomatic details hammered out in advance. As luck would have it, little hints begin to drop and little pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together over time, allowing the goods guys ultimately to stymie the evildoers.

This one is chock full of suspense and gritty action sequences, with some slick operations involving all manner of high tech weapons and gadgetry -- you would expect nothing less from Clancy. There are also some pulse pounding hostage rescue situations where the Rainbow team shows just how good it is -- but not perfect. Generally speaking it's a great read and a good time, but I was incredibly disappointed by the anticlimactic ending -- Clancy definitely dropped the ball on this one. I'm not sure what happened, but he had an opportunity to make this a top-notch thriller and he just plain blew it. I've read only about a third to a half of what Clancy has in print, so I'll just get over it and hope the next one of his books I pick up doesn't have the same flaw.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Big Action, Great Big Bores
Review: Without Remorse left us with John Kelly turning into CIA legend John Clark. Unfortunatly for Rainbow six, that doesnt leave much for charator development. Besides the good guys it doesnt leave much for bad guys. Although they are anything but typical, think of them as hippies gone wild. Rainbow Six isnt a total let down though. On the contrary, it's anything but that. It's starts off hard and fast, and ends the same way. But you can't help but catch your eyelids falling as you read inbetween the action parts. It's fun to read, but none the less, can't match up to Without Remorse.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Another timely idea, but marred.
Review: Yet again Clancy shows his ability to produce a topical and timely treatment of a 'big' issue in the Jack Ryan world. Despite the underlying theme, a number of errors and naive shallow characterizations mar this book. On reflection I've seen the same problems with characters in some of his other work and gotten over it so what went wrong here? Clancy has upped the ante so much in his recent Jack Ryan series that in seems every sequel must now attempt to construct a credible doomsday scenario. By attempting this in Rainbow Six the evil protagonists lack the credibility they need to be menacing.

Clancy thinks he must save the world or more importantly, America from dire consequences to provide adequate entertainment for his readers. This time around unfortunately the high stakes game has worn a little thin. How many times can you threaten nuclear, biological or constitutional catastrophe before it becomes dull and before you run out of ideas? In Clancy's case the answer would seem to be "This many.". It's never the high stakes alone which make his plots interesting. There was far less at stake in "Clear and Present Danger" yet that book demonstrated Clancy's ability to tell a great story and tell it at just the right time.

This won't be my last Clancy book, normally I enjoy his work. I just hope he rediscovers what he's best at. Not saving the world, but weaving a great plot embroidered with the speculation on new technology which he's famous for.


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