Rainbow Six - A Review

     In procrastinating reading Mr. Buchanan and His Administration of the Eve of Rebellion I picked up Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. This is my second time reading it, and while it is a fun read, it has some flaws. 

    First of all, the mile world record in 1998, when the book was written was 3:44, set my Morceli of Algeria. In the book, they state that each of the men in the unit can run a mile within 30 seconds of the world record, which would be 4:14. However, later in the book, their "hard" run was five miles in 40 minutes, or at 8 minute mile pace. I understand that running training has changed, but if you can run a mile at 4:14, your long runs would most likely be closer to sub seven. 

    Going on a brief tangent here, it could be that they are training like Klaebo. Klaebo, the decorated Norwegian Nordic skiier, when he runs goes quite slow, saying that running in zone two (which would probably be around 7 minutes for him, or faster), causes his fast-twitch muscles to degrade. So it could be that they are training like Klaebo. However, Tom says that this run is hard for them. Its most likely that I am making a mountain out of a mole-hill, but it bothered me. 

    Moving on. I love that the plot of this book is big pharma, communists, and the Sierra Club teaming up to take over the world. It just seems so ridiculous and also kind of exactly Tom Clancy would dream up. It is an interesting plot, but I don't feel like it honestly makes too much sense. I feel like Tom just needed a reason for the rise in terrorist activity and this is what he came up with. If I wrote the book, I would perhaps have the primary villain be a KGB holdout, or a religious extremist group, which I think would make more sense, and provide more clarity to the story. The Sierra Club is increasing terrorism to get their ally hired for security for the Sydney Olympics where they are planning to carry out their evil plan. Surely there are better ways to go about this. Furthermore, increasing terrorism fundamentally makes it harder for them to exercise their terrorist attack. Perhaps the Sierra Club and big pharma being the bad guys is more interesting than the obvious answer, but to me it seems like a lot of the writing is work to justify this decision. 

    My last reverence is with the dialogue. Some of the things these people say are so corny, and something that no one would ever say. After a hostage is killed we get this gem.

    "This isn't the guy who whacked the kid," the sergeant added.

    Who says this. Especially after watching a kid getting killed right in front of you. Nobody does. This is ridiculous. Tom really likes the word 'whacked' and it appears very frequently. Three times in fact, always by different people. This is three times too many.

     Overall, I would say it is a good book. But I think Clancy, just like Lucas has good ideas, but isn't great at writing dialogue. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a long paragraph lamenting sand in this book. But nevertheless, I think its a fun read. I've read it twice.