Book-report:
by Tom Clancy
About the Author:
Thomas L. Clancy, the so called master of techno-military thrillers, was born on the 12th of April 1947 in Baltimore, Maryland / USA. He was educated at the Loyola College in Baltimore. Then he worked as an insurance broker.
He is now living in his second marriage after his divorce in 1998. With his first wife he has four children.
In college he dreamed of writing novels. In 1984 this dream came true and he got his first novel published, namely "The Hunt for Red October", which was a great success.
Other also well-known works followed, e.g. "Red Storm Rising" (1986), "Cardinal of the Kremlin" (1988), "Debt of Honor" (1994), "Rainbow Six" (1998) and "The Red Rabbit" (2002). Almost each of his books has been a number one best-seller.
"Rainbow Six" is part of the so called "Ryanverse collection" that means that in all of these books the main character is Jack Ryan or that the other characters have something to do with him.
Clancy has also worked with other authors, e.g. with Steve Pieczenik to create the mini-series "OP-Centre" in 1994.
All of his stories deal with military, warfare, intelligence, politics and terrorism.
Tom Clancy also wrote non-fiction books about submarines, cavalry, the US Air Force and about the Marine and Airborne corps of the US Army.
Four of his novels, namely "The Hunt for Red October", "Patriot Games", "Clear and present Danger" and "Sum of all Fears", have been made into quite successful movies.
Important characters: - John Clark: CIA agent, head of "Rainbow Six"
Domingo Chavez: CIA agent, leader of 2nd team of "Rainbow Six"
Dmitriy A. Popov: former KGB agent
John Brightling: rich boss of pharmacy-company
Contents:
The story is set in the year 2000, in the year of the Olympics and it takes place in the USA, in Europe, Australia and in Brazil.
An international counter-terror-group, "Rainbow Six", is set up in Hereford, GB. The leader of it is John Clark. But there are only approximately 100 people, who have knowledge of this project.
In the first time of its existence there are three terror-attacks in Europe, but all of them they win with great success. Two of these attacks are arranged by an American pharmacy-company because John Brightling, the boss of this, wants to get a contract with the Australians to look after their fogging-system in the Olympic stadium and he only can reach this when they think there is an attack planned. The further goal of Brightling is to kill the world's population to restore nature. Only about 5000 civilised people will survive and their aim is to protect nature.
To achieve the death of nearly the whole population, the pharmacy-company develops a lethal, Ebola-like virus called "Shiva" and a vaccine against it for the members of the project. They test the virus on guinea pigs and on persons they kidnapped in the streets of New York.
To get in contact with terrorists they "employ" Dmitriy Popov. After some time he finds out that "Rainbow Six" really exists and Brightling gets worried. So he orders to attack Hereford to kill the organisation. Popov asks a splinter group of the IRA to do so, but this attack fails fatally. The leader and some others are caught and asked, the rest is killed.
When Popov learns the final aim of Brightling by a member of this project he kills this member and meets with Clark to tell him everything he knows about this project.
So the collaboration of the FBI, the CIA and "Rainbow Six" slowly gets one hint after the other and in the end they find out, what Brightling really wants to get happened, namely to spread the lethal virus through the fogging-system of the Olympic games.
A team of "Rainbow Six" can prevent that and finally the world can still live and the members of the project are left naked in the jungle to "live in ease with nature" because this case is too big and too unbelievable to take it to court and get it published.
Interpretation:
The novel "Rainbow Six" is divided into 39 chapters. It is told in an auctorial way - the narrator knows everything and also characterises the persons, which causes a rather neutral point of view for the reader.
The period of time is approximately one year, it is set in the future, namely in the year 2000 (the novel was written in 1998) and mostly it is told in a chronological order. Many things happen parallel to each other, but one always knows what Clancy is talking about.
The setting changes really often because "Rainbow Six" is an international anti-terror-organisation and quite a few countries need its help. So the story takes place in America, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Spain, France, Ireland, Australia and Brazil.
As usual the main topic of this novel is that the good defeats the evil. Clancy describes this process in nearly every book, at least in these I have read. But the way this process happens is really interesting and thrilling.
Although the story sounds really unrealistic, one gets the impression that it is possible, though, because the reader has insight to all the things going on and so one can understand, how and why things happen and so, in the end, it does not seem that unrealistic suddenly.
Clancy has a really good knowledge of these "terror-things". For example, he introduces terror-organisations like the IRA or Baader-Meinhof from the 1970s and one wants to get more information on this subject, at least I did, so his book is at the same time a reflection of the 20th century's history and one hears or reads about things one does not learn in school.
One has to remind oneself that the things Clancy describes are not real, so there is mixture of reality and fiction taking place: fiction is the whole story and the idea of killing the world's population, which is of course frightening enough, but I do not think that this will come true someday. On the other hand the reality of this book shows that terrorism is not dead and won't ever be because there are always people, who are in contact with former terrorists to "activate" them. Clancy is of the opinion that once you killed somebody (in this case when you are a terrorist), you are bad and there is no turning into someone good possible.
"Rainbow Six" is part of the so called "Ryanverse", which is a term for the books centred around the character of Jack Ryan. This name is not mentioned in the book, but from the "historical" background one has to know that Jack Ryan is President of the United States and he gives the order to set up a counter-terror-group.
In the meantime there are twelve "Ryanverse" books published, but the published order is not the story-line order, which can be a little bit confusing. All in all one is able to understand the context from former books because it is well explained.
Statement:
I really enjoyed reading this novel. It was exciting from the beginning and there was always something thrilling going on.
But I have to admit that the ending was to be foreseen: the "good" wins and the "bad" is punished. It is the same scheme in every single book of Tom Clancy.
What is also very striking is that he is very against the Communism because in nearly every book he wrote there is a comment on this sort of society and it is always described as bad. But there is also hope that these bad people change into good ones when they turn away from this kind of government.
There is not that much technical stuff in this book as in others, so I would really recommend it. Although there is no deeper sense in it, it is worth reading it because of the entertainment.
Used sources:
Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six"
http://collectbooks.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tcic.org%2Fwebs%2Ftcic%2Ftcic.nsf%2FDocs%2FSummaryRSR
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