Rainbow Six is an action thriller of a global scale with multiple attention-grabbing plotlines, interesting and visualizable characters, and keen emphasis on the technical aspect of combat.
Rainbow Six follows a black (off the books) counterterrorism team comprised of the best operatives from different NATO countries, who are tasked with taking out terrorist plots that countries are under-prepared to deal with. The outfit is known as Rainbow. Tom Clancy spectacularly combines different plotlines to all fit together, with a vast global conspiracy at the heart of the plotlines. While it could have been a cumbersome mess to deal with, it turned out absolutely great to read. Each plotline added to the crux of the story in a way that completed the big picture without leaving any plot holes. The plotlines themselves displayed Rainbow’s expertise in handling counterterrorism missions in great tactical detail styled action sequences with heart-pounding intense moments that add to the gritty realistic vibe of the book.

It was interesting to read John Clark in a more paper-pushing style role rather than the boot on the ground. It definitely set up for a great torch-passing narrative between Clark and Domingo Chavez, a talented operative and leader of one of the Rainbow’s teams as well as Clark’s son-in-law. Clark and Ding make for a fantastic duo to read, taking on the role of mentor and mentee, as well as more of an emotional support for each other when the events of the book call for it.

Rainbow Six is a groundbreaking read, given its release in 1998, as it blurs the enmity of nations and focuses on the idea of private companies dominating governmental control. One of the major takeaways of Rainbow Six is the concept of extremism being applied to an unconventional ground; environmentalism. The way the characters are written superbly show how extremism exists not only in countries and religions, but also in concepts that may seem banal to many, such as protecting Planet Earth. The unpredictable nature of the threat, coupled with shady characters capable of gruesome acts in the name of protecting nature, push Rainbow against an unusual adversary with a truly horrifying endgame.

The action is technical and fast-paced, with a great and imperative focus on weapon systems, as Rainbow is a team of highly trained operatives. The action sequences are written in harmony with realistic team movements in the field as Rainbow takes out bad guys and look cool with their MP10s and Berettas while doing so. The training sequences, particularly those at the gun range, written so well that I could visualize even non-combat sequences in their technical authenticity.

Rainbow Six is a work of literature that transcends time, as it holds up just as well today as it did back in 1998. A fast-paced, interesting, story-driven action thriller with all the necessary elements to appease all action thriller fans. A memorable book with characters that are imbued with personalities that feel relatable, and action sequences that are sure to be remembered as some of the best ever written when it comes to tactics and cinematic balance.

This is a terribly lazy book. It is 900 pages and should be about 200. And while there are long descriptions of gun cleaning and men's showers, the thing that got me most was the repetition. Every time Clancy comes back to a character, he gives us the same details about him. "Tim Noonan had come to Rainbow from the FBI. He was a tech guy but he wanted to get in the field and he spent a lot of time at the range. He was as good with a handgun as any of the other men." (x4!) This tremendous repetition isn't limited to characters, either. It is as if he designed the book to be skimmed: "Don't worry if you miss anything, you'll have four or five more shots at it." Rainbow Six needed an editor.

Then there is the dialogue. British characters have been known to say more than "Quite". The characterization of the terrorists is laughably thin. There are lots of true believers out there, and it would have been fairly easy to craft some authentic seeming terrorists, but he couldn't be bothered. Seemingly every line of terrorist dogma is appended with a wink as the they constantly contradict themselves. It seemed as if his anti-environmentalist message got in the way of his characterization. And there is no need for that - it is possible to write believable ecoterrorists. Then again, the military people I've known don't talk like Clancy's characters either. "Who's running that?" "Johnson out of Fort Bragg." "Good man." "Sure is."

The set pieces are engaging however, but they are just too few and far between. Someone should really release an abridged version of Rainbow Six.

I plan to read one of the earlier books -- Hunt For Red October or Red Storm Rising -- before I write him off entirely. This one is not recommended.

Extrajudicial murder for fun and profit. I've been a longtime fan of Tom Clancy, even though he never met an adjective or adverb that he didn't like. Each of his books is exactly 1/3 too long. In some respects this is the best written book of the Clancy canon. On the other hand, the resolution of this story turned my stomach. The resolution of the plot left a tricky legal problem to deal with. Rather then solve the issue, Clancy uses his characters to murder everyone involved. This one has put me off Clancy for good. Good riddance.

This heart pounding thriller is set in England and tells the story of an intelligence agency and a special air service called Rainbow. Soon after its establishment a bank in Switzerland is robbed and they are sent in to handle the situation. They are successful at getting inside the bank and executing terrorist to stop the death of innocent civilians. Soon after, german terrorists obtain fake codes for the international trading markets. Rainbow sends out disguised shooters and they handle the situation. The book goes through a number of terrorist encounters and describes how rainbow and its two teams handle them. After the hideout of the eco-terrorists is discovered rainbow is sent to it and kills them with a few survivors left naked to die and "reconnect with nature." This book was a wild thriller and anyone looking for action and military strategy should read it.

Towards the end of this book I went back and looked at my review of Without Remorse. I found the vigilante-ism in that highly unrealistic in that any legal issues were quickly swept under the rug. This time around the vigilante mind set is back, but it's a large group effort with government backing. I guess I can believe that a bit more (if you can believe governments do questionable things in secret). I think realism aside, this novel simply had a much more exciting plot. I was on the fence of continuing the series, but boy am I happy I did.

John Clark takes a back seat this time around as he is pretty dang old. Instead of being at the front lines, he is in charge of a new team of experts with one goal in mind: take down terrorist scum. Take them down they do! This book is overflowing with terrorist situations. The action-to-story-telling aspect ratio here is considerably stacked in favor of kicking ass and taking names. There are way too many popular reviews for this book claiming it's alphabet soup with no content. Did they even read the same book? It's highly unlikely. This is the most exciting book I've ever read. Easily a Hollywood blockbuster from start to finish. It's so obvious why Rainbow Six has become such a long-lasting popular franchise. More stuff happens in the first 20% than the entire Game of Thrones book (talk about needing an editor to cut the length in half).

Was The Great Reset based of this novel? The similarities are terrifying. Swap out the Shiva virus for Covid-19. Swap out 1 filthy rich corporation to many thinking they know what's best for the Earth (hint: it's lowering the human population to rescue mother nature). I think Billy Gates is a big Clancy fan. Even how in the book they create a vaccine before the arrival of the virus and in real life the vaccine was nearly done before the need for it.

Anyway... ignore the reviews and read it. This will probably be my favorite read of 2022. Heavy on gun play, light on drama.

What a trip! Tom Clancy, arguably (along with Larry Bond) the biggest game-changer in the history of the technothriller, proves that he can deliver comedy gold with this droll self-parody. Ex-Navy SEAL and super-duper CIA legend John Clark, still hurting under his warrior's iron-hard facade from the brutal and plot-driving death of every woman he has ever known in his entire life, is put in charge of a top-secret NATO counter-terrorist team. Clark, his demeanor increasingly reminiscent of Uncle Duke from Doonesbury, assembles a crew of multinational stereotypes so flat they could fit into business envelopes. Clark starts with his son-in-law "Ding" Chavez, a veteran of other Clancy novels who used to be interesting but seems to have gotten over it.

Clancy cranks up the hilarity by allowing this team to launch cross-border operations with the eager blessing of every government involved... just like real life! Additional comedy comes from the notion that the Rainbow project is "blacker than black" on the U.S. side of the pond, a secret known only to gods and Ubermensch, and yet can be called in by the governments of Switzerland, Spain, and Austria at the drop of a hat. Oh, the trenchant sarcasm of Clancy's portrayal of these helpless Euro-wuss bureaucrats, pathetically eager to let a team led and dominated by American personnel run around shooting things up on their own turf! The way the terrorist scenarios play out in a ludicrously linear fashion, ramping up in challenges and complexity like video game levels, is also a deft parodic touch.

All in all, this book is so thunderously dull, its moral questions so elementary, its politics so spavined, its protagonists such jut-jawed spelunkers up their own buttholes, I have to applaud the author's divine sense of irony and... wait, what?

This book wasn't meant to be satire?

If you've made it this far into the "Jack Ryan Universe" you won't be disappointed!

Rainbow Six marks a refreshing return to the military action formula for Clancy after he made some unfortunate tangential departures in his John Ryan canon, straying into revenge fantasies (the myopically unremarkable Without Remorse) and conservative/libertarian political fantasies (the all-but-unreadable Debt of Honor and Executive Orders). Rainbow is most similar to Clancy's Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears in both pacing and content. 400 pages of story crammed into 900 editing-be-damned pages, with a terrorism scenario that is as unlikely as it is plodding, interwoven with numerous lengthy pages of ponderous and oversimplified explanations of political issues not to mention technical details of military weaponry that are best skimmed until you get to the good parts, usually where something blows up.

Book Review – Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six” was the first thriller novel I ever read and started me on my un-relinquishing quest to reading action thrillers. Over the course of nine other political/military novels, Tom Clancy's brilliance for big, compelling storylines and his natural and detailed storytelling, mesmerized me and millions of other readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Rainbow Six however went beyond anything he had done before and was probably his most extraordinary novel. At the heart of the vast novel is John Clark, the ex-Navy SEAL of “Without Remorse,” and well known from several other Clancy novels as a master of secret/Black Ops operational missions. Whether hunting warlords in Japan, drug lords in Colombia, or nuclear terrorists in the United States, John Clark is efficient, lethal, deadly, and is Clancy’s ‘badass’ protagonist in many of his novels. Newly named to head up an international task force dedicated to combating terrorism, Clark is looking forward to getting into a new opportunity, but the missions of the new opportunity start coming thicker and faster than anyone could have expected. Various developments of an incident at a Swiss bank, the kidnapping of an international trader in Germany, and a terrible raid on an amusement park in Spain; each episode seemed separate, but discrete, yet the timing disturbed Clark. With the help of his close associates, and strike team leader and another Clancy stalemate character, Domingo Chavez, Clark figures out where all this activity is heading, and ultimately the real threat of a group of terrorists like none the world had ever encountered. Rainbow Six is Tom Clancy's ‘BIG’ action thriller novel and most shocking story to date -- and probably the closest thing to reality than any government would care to admit. As Clancy took readers through the twists and turns of this intense action-thriller, he blended exceptional realism and authenticity with his hallmark intricate/detailed story plotting, knife-edge suspense, and a remarkable cast of characters. In my opinion, Rainbow Six is Tom Clancy’s his best book ever, there is none better in this genre! No wonder the best shooting video game was named after this book…

After not having read it in years, Rainbow Six is a perfect example of Clancy's strengths and flaws. His strengths reside in his thorough technical research and plotting, while his flaws reside in character development, dialogue, and forgetting that he has created his own universe and creating inconsistencies between the Clancyverse and the real world.

It's also an interesting looking glass into what was thought to be the threats on the horizon. Clancy seemed to put jihadists on the backburner and thought Marxist elements and environmental extremists would be much more active.

There's also the thing about how he claims special ops don't jump out of planes and prefer helicopters. While they do prefer helicopters, HALO/HAHO insertions are still done from time to time, which is why they maintain that skill set. Curious how he downplayed that thoroughly.

Still, entertaining read all around.

Goodness Clancy gets so bogged down in details. 5 or 6 long pages without dialogue just bores me to death. It got to where I skimmed a ton of the pages and didn't miss a thing. Still always knew what was going on. The action scenes are splendid and worth reading. Just speed read half the book and its worthwhile.

This book is butt.

Clancy initially got into the techno-thriller genre with the Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger...books that largely focused on the espionage and tactical aspects of the Cold War world. After setting Jack Ryan up as President and probably due to his fame, Clancy's editors all but disappeared just as the novels got longer and longer, less accessible, and begin to read as neo-con diatribes praising the military-industrial complex. Where the series was once fun, or at least fun-adjacent, it's now fully a Reagan-era conservative wet dream. Chock full of extra-judicial military killings, military arrest of civilians (?????), complete and utter disregard for international law or state sovereignty, and tired stereotypes, and that's Clancy's GOOD GUYS.

Of course, Clancy also takes the opportunity to take aim at the LGBT community, decries countries that don't have an American 2nd Amendment equivalent, and praises and propagates grossly outdated toxic masculinity ideals of "big strong man protect family from cold dark world." The irony is that Clancy's worlds are entirely black and white; there's no nuance. A few times, I came close to identifying with the terrorist organizations, as their ideas are largely based in logic and then twisted, not unlike actual terrorists. But Clancy can't resist turning them into caricatures and the plot goes reeling off the page yet again.

This is to say nothing of every character getting a pages-long soliloquy waxing poetic about how the world has changed, or what does this all mean. Where I normally wouldn't mind if a character takes time to think on something, there are several passages where a character can't figure out what's happening despite trying to logic it out. This is incredibly tiring and frustrating because we, as readers, DO know what's happening. It's not interesting or helpful to have the characters go "gee, I wonder what this all means" when the audience ALREADY KNOWS.

And then of course the ending. Arrest the entire Rainbow organization. Christ, what absolute nonsense.