Look. Is Tom Clancy a good writer? Probably not. Is he an engaging storyteller? For the most part yes. His politics are very obvious and equally awful, and the characters are flat, but the action is written incredibly well and the plot is entertaining enough to keep you invested even if it isn't surprising. I can't remember the last time I rolled my eyes at a book this much, but it was never a chore to listen to and I looked forward to it most days.

Long book, sometimes repetitive, but the action was phenomenal and ending was great

So after being a fan of the Tom Clancy-inspired games for over 20 years, I thought it was time I gave some of the man's literature a try.

Rainbow Six might not be the best place to start with his work, but that's because it's so damn dense. The first half reads like an instruction manual, as John Clark builds Rainbow. From there it has the anthology feel, and to be honest - there are is books worth of material in here.

The second half is where the shit really kicks off though. There is a cool thriller underneath the intimidating barrier to entry. The main plot had me gripped and as the book came to a close I was honestly hooked.

Though, I understand when some people might say that this is too long at parts. Maybe I'll attempt one Clancy book a year...

But at least now I can say, I love the book some of my favourite games are based off.

Long novel, the last 200 pages flew by though!

This book takes off from the moment you pick it up. There was only one time that I felt like I had to put it down because it was slowing down. Not bad for a 700 page book. I highly recommend it!

The HYPE was real!! I have been told by a ton of friends that this was their favorite book. I can agree. This book was amazing. An all time classic. Only my 3rd Tom Clancy book and I am hooked. John Clarke is the MAN. Cant wait to read more.

Better than I expected :) Too long, some chapters starting with repeating everything that happened so far, for the readers who managed to forget. Different characters dwelling on very similar thoughts as they discover and digest new information (which is reasonable, but no need to tell me this).

Still, I thought this would be a description of several glorious military operations, and it started that way, but developed into a global overarching plot with spooky spies doing international spooky things, large corporations conspiring, and CIA, FBI, KGB, SAS (and the other SAS) dancing around the task with decisively heavy jaws and silenced weapons.

This ain't Dostoyevsky, but for its genre — good stuff, though prolonged more than it has to be. :)

If I had to review this book in two words, 'Interesting enough' would be my choice. The entire book rides a solid 6 on my interest scale. I was slightly interested and rarely crazy about it. The combat missions are exciting, but are simply too far between. If this is your type of book, you may enjoy it. If it's not, it won't win you over. Even if you enjoy this genre, there's a chance it'll still leave you wanting. But it's not a bad read. Bit repetitive, but not terrible.

I didn't particularly care much for the primary plot. I was interested enough to see how it ended, but that was it. Zero suspense in that regard. Clancy could've likely dropped 200-300 pages from this and the book would've benefited. That or adding another 2-3 combat missions.

I didn't care much for any of the characters. If I had to pick, John Clark and Popov would be my 'favorites.' I was not a big fan of Ding's character. Partially because the name Domingo is so much better than Ding. it bugs me. I was waiting for another Rainbow member to step up and flaunt some personality while taking a bigger role in the book, but it simply wasn't happening.

Overall:
Enjoyed it? Yes.
Crazy about it? No.
Reread? No.
Interested in John Clark/Ding 2? No, but I wouldn't be against trying Without Remorse or something else by Clancy.

Starts off good not great—then catches fire halfway though. Extremely satisfying. Even if it is longer than Anna Karenina.

The first time I started this book, I didn’t make it all the way through. I was reading it slowly, and it didn’t grip me right away. It was fairly predictable until the very end, and the conflicts in the first half of the story seemed to get resolved a little too easily. When I came back to the book, this time with the audiobook, I read at a faster pace, and it was much more enjoyable. I appreciated the way the story seemed to progress in distinct episodes, which I felt gave the story enough ups and downs to keep things interesting. I feel like intense action scenes in books are difficult to do right, and Clancy does them right. The details in the tactical operations make it seem much more real.

The one thing that really bothered me was the characters’ internal voices. Although the thoughts themselves were different, they all seemed to think in the same way. They all asked themselves the same rhetorical questions, and reassured themselves with the same thought processes. All the characters thinking in the same voice pulled me out of the story every once in a while.

At first I found it too tedious - paragraph-long descriptions of training sessions of a multinational anti-terrorist military unit called upon to stop terrorist attacks at a moment's notice; however about 1/3-way through when it's revealed that the group behind setting up these attacks was none other than a most unsuspecting outfit closer to home, the story becomes rather exciting. It's definitely a page-turner - was able to plow through about 750 pages of action writing in 3 days.

I'm glad to have gotten through my first Tom Clancy book!

Fragile Masculinity series, #2. Some decades after the first book, the cold war is over, the USSR is gone, so John Clark needs a new enemy, so step in ... the KGB! Now doing terrorism! Then it gets absolutely batshit when it turns out the evil villains are environmentalists, scientists, and vaccine manufacturers. Seriously, this is a thing that happens. Also Tom Clancy seems very confused about what environmentalism means, so they spend a lot of time talking about how they think lab rats are cute, and exclusively watch the Discovery Channel. It further turns out that Tom Clancy knows quite a lot about military hardware and tactics, but very little about policing, jurisdiction, international law, or how cell towers work, so the procedural stuff is a bit bizarre for most of it.

Particular highlights for me:
Genocidal maniacs chatting (more than once) about how they want to wipe out humanity to save the environment, but these vegans, they take it *too far*.
The guy who gets some software to turn off cell towers, which will work on any cell tower anywhere in the world, regardless of networks, and it apparently comes on a floppy disk. Then it turns out there's two cell towers in Herefordshire, which he literally has to drive between to put the disk into them.
John Clark harranguing literally an IRA commando who literally just tried to murder his unit, that this was wrong because he and his wife are actually Irish-American, and he wouldn't mind if they stuck to British targets.
The FBI analysts who get an email from a girl saying "help, I've been kidnapped, I'm being held in a medical facility and they injected me with something" and compare it with previous emails and decide it can't be her because the grammar is bad, and its probably someone on drugs.

But the *absolute* highlight is the last section, where they've caught an agent for a multinational drug company red-handed with a canister of weaponised ebola virus he was going to use to start an epidemic, they get a full confession, then decide that they'll struggle to arrest the culprits because it's too hard to get a warrant to search their labs. So instead they decide to just shoot everyone involved.