Rainbow Six

Tom Clancy

No cover — Tom Clancy: Rainbow Six (2002, Penguin Audiobooks)

Over the course of nine novels, Tom Clancy's genius for big, compelling plots and his natural narrative gift (The New York Times Magazine) have mesmerized hundreds of millions of readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Rainbow Six, however, goes beyond anything he has done before.

At its heart is John Clark, the ex-Navy SEAL of Without Remorse and well-known from several of Clancy's novels as "the dark side of Jack Ryan," the man who conducts the secret operational missions Ryan can have no part of. Whether hunting warlords in Japan, druglords in Colombia, or nuclear terrorists in the United States, Clark is efficient and deadly, but even he has ghosts in his past, demons that must be exorcised. And nothing is more demonic than the peril he must face in Rainbow Six: a group of terrorists like none the world has ever encountered before, a band of men and women so extreme that their success could literally mean the end of life on this earth as we know it.

It is Tom Clancy's most shocking story ever-and closer to reality than any government would care to admit. As Clancy takes us through the twists and turns of Rainbow Six, he blends the exceptional realism and authenticity that are his hallmarks with intricate plotting, knife-edge suspense, and a remarkable cast of characters. This is Clancy at his best-and there is none better.

14 editions

1 pages

Published March 28, 2002 by Penguin Audiobooks.

ISBN:: 978-0-14-180370-8
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Reviews

aolfreetrial reviewed Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six has not aged well...

2 stars

Content warning High-level plot spoilers

...or maybe it was never great to begin with. I'm trying to identify when Tom Clancy jumped the shark, and it's clear that Rainbow Six is post-shark-jump Clancy - too many pages of "look at how good and handsome the good guys with good guns are" and copious amounts of references to previous Clancy books sprinkled in there for flavor. Perhaps The Hunt for Red October was lightning in a bottle - whatever the magic was has since been lost.

This is a pre-9/11 book about terrorism fighters who, as the book reminds you over and over again, are fantastically talented and athletic and smart and love kids and have loyal wives and fly around the world making bad guys' heads explode. And the bad guys are the evil commies and socialists and especially the environmentalists who manufacture an epidemic and produce a fake vaccine to kill off humani... yuck, this book really hasn't aged well has it?

Maybe reading this book in 1998 merely signaled poor taste. Now, reading it makes you feel like a QAnon believer. Clancy could have left this book up to his ghostwriters and it wouldn't have come up any worse.