Alright I have finished Rainbow 6 and I got to say... one of the best books I've ever read. From the specific details to environment and... the shiny guns hehe, to completely awesome plot, Rainbow 6 delivers greatly. Clancy does a great job at the characterization of rainbow 6 and the detailing of a persons "limits" in terms of moral lines. While it was unfortunate to not be able to truly understand all of Rainbow 6's members, the ones that were shown were entertaining to read about. I'm not sure who my favorite Rainbow 6 man was, probably a tie between Vega(sounded like Heavy from Team Fortress 2) and Tim Nooman(badass nerd with the tech to save his men and took down 3 terrorists armed with machine guns with his pistol). I didn't really like Ding, he got on my nerves.
I'd say there was several themes in Rainbow 6. One was unity of family among both groups of Rainbow 6. Us men... we can't really show affection or caring these days, right? Neither can Rainbow 6 and yet one can clearly see the bond between men who have no blood relation to each other. Fighting together, training together, coming back "home together" is how the badasses of Rainbow 6 roll. One thing that was shown repeatedly was the guys going out to drink in the local pub after a successful mission. It's funny, a few weeks ago on One Piece, Ace said, ""When men share cups of alcohol, they become brothers!" and I'd say Rainbow 6 makes that quote awesome. At one point, Clark's wife/daughter were in danger and were saved. Despite owing the Rainbow man who saved both of them much more than a free beer, that's all he could do for the guy and one can just feel the warmth from that.
Another theme was intelligence is power for the greater good. Rainbow 6 always did what it could to figure out what was going on before sending its men to "take down the bad guys". In a way, you could say they "played unfair" such as cell phone jamming and using radar to detect enemy heartbeats. Life's unfair but in combat, you have to "cheat" inorder to keep people alive. Ideally you make the enemy feel so scaried that they just give up by denying themselves information and getting all the information you need. The very last battle of the book shows how much technology and intelligence can really make a difference vs people who know the surroundings. This time around laser beats rock. Sometimes giving a chance of mercy makes all the difference in who deserves to "win" a battle.
The last theme I want to mention is... having faith. For both the good guys and bad guys. Even if it's illogical, faith compels people to do things with a less than a 0% chance of working. In terms of Rainbow 6, the danger was always there in their missions with all of the safeguards put in place. Despite that, it didn't boil down to having faith in circumstances... it boiled down to having faith in their "brothers" and dad(John Clark). They trusted Nooman to keep them all safe with his tech and for the most part it worked. Nooman even risked his life in the WorldPark fiasco to "spike" the place the bad guys were in, putting down the risks to a minimum. For the bad guys, John Brightline and his merry band of idiots revolved around gambits that would ultimately "succeed" regardless of the outcomes but they failed to realize the man they hired wasn't like them at all. Dmitry, their "terrorist" man, dealt in absolutes that were logical. Sending in terrorists to fail for a goal that was insane troll logic was of course going to tick off a man like Dmitry. The final nail in the coffin was the proclamation of... vegens for the "survivors". Dmitry may not be a hunter but godamnit a "man needs meat". Sometimes faith is just misplaced and other times, it's just used in completely wrong ways. No offense to all of the vegetarians or animals out there reading this.
Another great aspect of Rainbow 6 was utilising something known as Chekhov's Gun. If the reader pays attention, things or people mentioned in early chapters are seen again later on. For instance, that one guy with a goldmine comes back 15 chapters later on, is killed, and his goldmine is used by Dmitry. Nooman's cellphone jammer and heartbeat radar are used in the hospital mission and brazil takedown, respectively. Yes it's cliche but nonetheless effective. In fact we may not notice it but a large amont of our lives have chekhov's guns. Anything and anyone that is important in our lives comes back regardless if we like it or not.
The "villainy" displayed in this book was spot on. Obviously the bad guys would make mistakes but they were human mistakes and not so much plot induced stupidity. Brightline knew about business but he didn't know proper planning procedures. He was completely out of his element which made Rainbow 6's eventually victory over him that much believeable. I personally enjoyed the ending of "taking a third option" by John Clark. "We humans learned how to do that about half a million years ago. You want to be in harmony with nature. Go harmonize." indeed. I'm not sure if a black ops team could do this in real life but hell, it's a break from reality I'll accept!
I'd like to say more about Rainbow 6 but it seems I have other things to do. Truly a great book to read, I'd give it a 4.9/5. It had it's boring moments but nonetheless the book was great. Reap the whirlwind!
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