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.

I loved this book. It was the first one by this author that I had read and was not disappointed.

It was in fact several stories in one and just as it felt like the story was ending, off it went again in another direction!!

A really compelling story and exciting to read!

This the last Tom Clancy book I will ever try and read. I'm afriad that as of today i have Black Balled the author and will be removing all his books from my collection.

In this next book by Tom Clancy, he departs on a tangent from the Jack Ryan saga to follow John Clark, as he did earlier in his book Without Remorse. As part of the new post–Cold War world, terrorism is rising to be a major area of threat, as evidenced from Clancy's two earlier books, and also from our world situation today. In response to this threat, Clark, with the endorsement of President Ryan (who basically doesn't figure in the book), starts a special international squad, Rainbow, of highly trained special-operations troops to be a terrorism response squad. Joining him are Chavez, another of Clancy's favorite characters, and a broad cast of troops from the US, Britain, and other NATO countries.

They are quickly put to the test. Terrorist activity first at a bank in Zurich, and then at the home of a prominent businessman in Austria give the team a chance to show what they are worth. They carefully coreograph a response and decisively put down both incidents. Their third response is to a terrorist takeover of WorldPark (a EuroDisney immitation), and again their action is impressive and decisive. Each episode is full of Clancy's vivid descriptions of tactical maneauvers, technological advances, and personal stories. Vintage Clancy.

Part of the impetus behind these terrorist attacks is coming from John Brightling, head of Horizon Corporation. Brightling and a group he calls the Project are out change the world. They want to eliminate all but a chosen few humans from the planet, in what they see as the only way to save the Earth from human destruction. To do this, they want to raise global awareness of terrorism, in order to get their guy a consulting contract for the upcoming Olympic Games in Australia. That will be their delivery point of Shiva, an engineered form of Ebola that will spread from there throughout the world. Once the outbreak is known, Horizion plans to step in with a "vaccine" that is actually a virulent form of Shiva, thereby infecting most of those who haven't yet been reached with the epidemic. Only their own people and those they deem worthy get the real vaccine.

The last terrorist attack they plan before the Olympics is a direct attack at Rainbow, which they see as a threat to the success of their plan. So they carefully set up an ambush of Clark's wife and daughter (Chavez's wife) at their place of employment, the hospital near the base. They plan to ambush the Rainbow troops as they respond. But the plans fall apart when Noonan, the Rainbow tech-guy, disables all cell-phone communications and disables their ability to act in a coordinated fashion. Wife and daughter escape unharmed as Rainbow is again able to act decisively to counter the terrorist plot, but this time taking two losses and a few injuries in the process.

Their plan is working, until Dmitry Popov, the ex-KGB agent they have enlisted to set up the terrorist attacks, gets wind of the big picture for the Project. He is horrified by Brightling's intentions, and finds his way off of the Project facility in Kansas and heads to New York. He contacts Clark, and asks for a meet, and even though he set up the hit on Clark's wife and daughter, Clark accepts. As soon as he learns of the plot, Clark informs Chavez, who is consulting at the Olympics with a few other Rainbow troopers. They stake out the fogging system room (the planned point of deliver for the virus) and nab the Project member who is going to plant the virus.

As soon as Brightling realizes that he can't reach his man, and that things are falling apart, he orders all physical and electronic evidence destroyed, and gathers up the members who know the whole story of the Project's plans and flies them off to the Project Alternate facility in Brazil. But the FBI and Air Force are able to track the plane, and Clark decides that Rainbow will follow the planes down. Because they are sure most of the evidence has been destroyed and because they fear making the details of the plot public, FBI agents aren't sure about if the group can be successfully prosecuted, and if it should be. In face of this, Clark faces them head on, sending in his troops. He gives them an opportunity to surrender, but Brightling sends out armend men to counter the force. Using an advanced people-finding gadget that Noonan has been plaing with, Clark is able to vector in the Rainbow troops to neutralize the threat from the Project defenders. Once it becomes clear that the battle is won, Brightling and his group surrender. Instead of taking them back to the States, Clark destroys all of the facilities at the Project compound and releases the members into the jungle to try fend for themselves (to commune with nature, as he puts it).

With Rainbow Six, Clancy again demonstrates his narrative sense, as well as his ability to tell a great military story with a moderately complicated plot. He also builds some interesting and clearly flawed characters who just try to do the right thing. And the reader clearly wants to empathize with them. But there are some clear weaknesses in the book. One, a weakness that has cropped up in a few of his other novels, is torture. Clark is a character with a dark side, and torture, or the threat of it, is a necessary instrument to elicit information and serve a greater good. And at first blush, in Clancy's narrative world, that may seem true. But who should be allowed to weild this terrible sword, and decide when it's really serving a greater good. The fear that evil will win out makes it seem easy to do whatever we can, and at whatever cost, to make the good triumph. But we should never allow torture to be justified. It violates the basic humanity, of both the tortured and the torturer. And it most certainly flies in the face of our most basic Christian convictions about right and wrong, and about sin and reconciliation. Which brings up the other major flaw in Clancy's story: retribution. The one unasailable fact that seems to drive his logic as the story concludes is that the perpetrators of this ghastly plan deserve full and complete punishment for their intentions. They must be delt with, decisively. And if the law might have trouble doing that, or if we don't like all of the consequences, it's justifiable to bend the rules a bit to exact "justice" in a slightly different way. Again, the line of thinking is tempting, but it again sees retribution as good, and sees all actions toward that end as justifiable. The victims become the perpetrators in a new act of violence. Where does it end?

I always enjoy seeing John Clark doing John Clark things, even though in this one it was more Ding Chavez (and others) doing John Clark things.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if someone somewhere tried to engineer a "save the world" solution that crosses all kinds of moral and ethical lines. In that regard, it felt very much like The Future by Naomi Alderman (though 25 years earlier).

Rainbow Six has a different connotation now. Damn, Clancy wrote thick novels, better watch out Sideshow Bob, haha.

In which an incredibly silly plot by a group of Environmental Extremists is put down by a super-team of anti-terror special forces. Clancy was quite clearly losing his grip on reality by the time he wrote this. The villains are so over-the-top as to be ridiculous and the lantern jawed heroes (all very clearly conservative family men) are just too unstoppable that the whole exercise is daft. Clancy also seems to think that British and Australians all talk like Biggles and that an outsider cannot distinguish between British and Irish accents. Oh, and he's clearly never seen a marathon either. Is it a good book? Not by any means. Did I enjoy it? Yes, quite a lot :) Rated MA for violence and coarse language. 3/5

Solid, and researched.

Not quite the finesse of Brent Weeks or Patrick Rothfuss, but these authors would not publish their masterpieces until 10-15 years after Rainbow Six was written. For me, the sometimes clunky and testosterone laden writing style was trumped by the scope of the plot-which I certainly found mind-expanding, and no doubt skull crushing for its day-and the pace and rising intensity leading up to the climax. There were a few inside military references I did not understand but maybe I just have not read enough books.

I remember the NU64 adaptation of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six as intense and enjoyable 2-player action with my best friend at the time (with GnR Live also playing on his dad's boombox in the basement as background music). I remember one level or map that seemed to reflect an event in the book, but that would have been 15 years before I would read what would later turn out to be the inspiration for the game.

Going even further back, and for the record, I called this way back during sophomore year of high school. Everybody thought I was crazy, but the major part of the plot, I said would happen. Although I said it would happen in China, not where it did in the book.

I think there was potential for the author, god rest his soul, to have explored the actual shape of a double rainbow in the book with the plot, metaphorically speaking of course, or even in the form of writing style. Create an event, or have a character appear in the very beginning, or write at a certain angle or flare, then leave a huge space,and refrain from using it, and then tie it back in the end, like the ends of a double rainbow road. Neat! Maybe even figure out how to write sentences in the shape of a double rainbow. The dog ran home. Noun, verb, noun. I don't know, just an idea, but a potential cherry on top with a beginning/end rainbow.

Anyways, speaking of shapes, like Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, I was struck by the geometric shape of an "A" in summation of the contents of this novel. Both groups were headed in a similar direction of what they believed was for the greater good. Anyone else similarly perceive this shape?

On a personal level, I think its high time the rainbow was liberated from the symbol of the LGTB community. I recognize their intent to represent their...lets say LGTB ways, or rather, different colors of lifestyle, orientation, or biology, but the backlash has been a stigmatization of the rainbow by those of conventional or straight orientation. I bought a winter hat one time that was rainbow colored, and sure, it was bright, but I liked the style, especially because it fit my big head, which can be rare. Well, it only got worn a handful of times because like a lighthouse, it was a beacon, attracting attention from the wrong team. Look, we're all a team okay, so lets legalize the cannabis, connect major cites with bike paths, start using renewable energy sources more, and stop hassling the LGTB community so we can all enjoy the rainbow no matter what our orientation. I offer the idea of using all possible variations of 2 male and 2 female symbols, and 2 "other" symbols as the LGTB flag in return.

You're homosexuals, you can have ONE color. 1.

I mean, c'mon, lets get real here for a second. What does a rainbow mean? It literally means, "the reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow)

That's literally what the rainbow means in terms of science.

One of the scariest and most threatening situations to be in is being a hostage. You’re life is put into the hands of others who see you only as leverage in getting what they want. The people who take you against your will in these situations utilize terror and fear to get what they want, whether it’s based off money, politics, or anything else they have to gain from your life. Any attempt that is made to stop these terrorists may very well end in your death or the death of other innocent people. Luckily, the people trained for this are more experienced, funded, and trained than any terrorist, and unlike each individual terrorist, they will see more than one situation like this.

In the book Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy these threats are just as real all over the world, from a failed bank robbery in switzerland turned to a hostage situation, to German terrorists capturing a wealthy businessman in Austria. These situations are handled by a black organization under the codename “Rainbow,” originally proposed and run by the now middle-aged veteran John Clark. It consists of soldiers from all around the world, mainly from the US who founded the organization and from Britain, where the members of Rainbow are housed at Hereford base.
Rainbow is known by very few and are able to be deployed rapidly at the scene of a terrorist attack or international crisis from the first call. They’re is still more at play, though, when both attacks were organized by one former KGB agent who is part of a much larger conspiracy remaining hidden to even him.

I found the book to be very well organized and found the antagonist’s end plot to be very well laid out in how the book presented information. They had linked up different points of view from either members of Rainbow to the former KGB agent to a almost distant and surreal perspective of scientists experimenting on humans. The book had connected all these points of view just before the ending climax in a bigger plot against the whole world than could be expected. The amount of detail and description in the book had allowed jumps from character to character just to describe something like a call to a base or tracing information. This story allows readers to follow every part of these processes rather than just what the main characters see.

However, there were a few plot holes and negatives in the book that kept them from being truly great. The book seems to drag on and on at times without action and feel like they are not needed in the whole story. They may take a chapter explaining the process of how Rainbow arrive to a country to face the ongoing terrorist attack and the planning behind it, while taking only a page to describe the action of the attacks. There may also be points overlooked like how they say the organization is “blacker than black” but will deploy in public in countries outside of the US and Britain. They even allowed themselves to be linked by the former agent to multiple attacks across Europe by staying out in public after they stopped each attack.

Overall I found the book to be very enjoyable to readers who may enjoy spy and espionage stories and even action stories when they describe the attacks. The story may feel like it drags on at times but it’s all part of the build up towards action in the novel. I enjoyed how they built up the information for each perspective slowly linking them all together to the ending. Many readers who don’t enjoy slow buildup and prefer action may not want to read through so many pages of exposition and explanation but for people who like knowing how people and procedures may operate in these situations the book explains these processes very well. All in all the book is a very good read for those who enjoy the genre and the antagonists intentions will keep you guessing what they will do next. I recommend this book to anyone who likes action and espionage and really enjoyed the story.

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!

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…

This book tells the story of the formation of RAINBOW, an elite NATO counterterrorism special ops team in Tom Clancy's universe. The first 2/3rds of the book was slow--this is probably the most episodic Clancy book I've read so far in the Jack Ryan/John Clack universe (the book neatly fits into 5 terrorist attack sequences that are only understood as a whole at the end). Most of the subject matter is also a repeat from earlier Clancy--Ebola as a bioweapon, Provos shooting up our CIA hero, and even again grandiose plans for bringing back the bison to the American plains. Almost 20 years after Clancy wrote this book, his contemporary conceptualization of the terrorist threat as underground European Marxists who took hostages for political points seems quaint.