Like A Rainbow, A Book Review

September 2007

Rainbow Six Review


Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy is to long by at least 300 pages, and maybe more.The book is about an elite group of guys from different nationalities (thus the Rainbow) that are organized to fight global terrorism. The group is lead by John Clark who I believe was introduced in the Tom Clancy book Without Remorse. Rainbow Six started off great, terrorists attacked a rich guy at his mansion, terrorists took over an amusement park, terrorist tried to hijack the plane that the Rainbow team just happened to be on, and of course each time the Rainbow team kicked ass and stopped the terrorists plot, but after that Tom Clancy just rambles on and on. I mean there must have been over 200 hundred pages of: Guy goes into bar, meets another guy, they talk about secret stuff, one guy leaves the bar gets on a plane, the flight is long and boring…not unlike this book. Two hundred pages of this. Occasionally Clancy would follow the actions of an organization working on a “Project” that involves a plot to kill most of the entire population of the planet Earth, and even these scenes got really boring. It seemed to me Clancy kept repeating himself. You don’t have to hit us over the head with the notion that these are real bad people we are dealing with here Tom. We get it when you tell us that they are going to unleash a deadly virus that will kill all the people on Earth.
I can’t lie. I loved about the first 333 pages. Terrorists do something. Rainbow stops them. Just like the game. I mean how can I even compare a book to a video game? I played the game and I read the book so that’s what I’m going to do. In the game it got pretty repetitious, even monotonous, but it was still fun. Terrorist would do something, and you would take your Rainbow team in and take out the terrorists, rescue the hostages, disarm the bomb, or whatever. It was fun, but after a while kinda dull at the same time, but not nearly as dull as Rainbow Six the book. At least with the video game you had the whole Xbox Live Online play action that made the game so damn cool. That shit never got old if you ask me.
The book jumped the fucking shark when terrorist go after John Clark’s family. Yawn. How come they use this plot in every freaking book or movie? How come? I hate to tell you this Tom Clancy, but some people would Pay to see their family rubbed out!
Clancy is known as some kind of techno geek, but even this techno crap was just a case of to much information. It’s cool to have detail, it’s cool to have facts, but there is a point where too much of a good thing is not a good thing. This book ran 897 pages and could easily been about 500 or less and been a much tighter action packed book. I hear they are working on the movie. The movie should be great if they just use the first 333 pages and the last 50 or so.
The ending was great and for me a bit of a surprise. I just didn’t see it coming. But did we really need all that crap that was in between. I mean how many times are you going to tell me about a guy who gets on a plane and the flight is really long and boring. I get it already. This is not Tom Clancy’s best by a long shot. Try The Hunt for Red October or Without Remorse if you are just getting into Tom Clancy.

KGD
09-16-2007