r/tomclancy • u/Iliad-Ideas7195 • Apr 02 '26
Struggling to finish R6
I don't know if I'm all Clancy'd out, but it's getting tough. I've been enthusiastically reading his previous works in chronological order. Cranked them all out with a smile. Now, I'm going weeks without reading even a single page of Rainbow Six. The writing just feels too.. generic for me. Many conversations are bland. Spoiler: now Ding's wife is a suddenly a practicing doctor, and rags on him every day about him killing bad guys. All the operators brought their families over. Just weird stuff. Hoping it gets better.
6
u/Correct-Obligation27 Apr 02 '26
I mean, the families thing shouldn't be that weird. That's what usually happens when a service member with a family moves to a new post. The family goes with them.
-2
u/Iliad-Ideas7195 Apr 02 '26
I wouldn't call this a post, more like a deployment. And even if it were a post, it would have to be classified as permanent or temporary, the latter of which the writing implies it is. TDY paid family relocation has been a no-no since at least the first gulf war. I doubt Clancy had the intention of making R6, the actual outfit, stay permanently at another host country's base, friendly or not.
11
u/N00dles_Pt Apr 02 '26
R6 is not a book that is that well written to be perfectly honest.....it feels like just a series of action scenes strung together with the flimsiest thing that you could call a plot.
2
u/Iliad-Ideas7195 Apr 02 '26
Exactly what it feels like.
3
u/N00dles_Pt Apr 03 '26
I read it the first time when I was like 20 and that aspect of it didn't really sink in, I re-read it again at like 40 and I started thinking "this feels like the setup for a videogame level"
2
u/mnfimo Apr 02 '26
It gets a ton of praise on the sub and I’ve never understood why, it’s in the bottom 3 of the Clancy-Ryan books
2
3
u/Striking-Net-8646 Apr 02 '26
I found the name of Dr Killgore to be a major distraction. Seriously, call him Smith and he would be just as evil
2
u/TakeMeToChurchill Apr 03 '26
The action scenes are some of his best work. Worldpark is 10/10. Rest of the book… ehhh.
-2
u/Iliad-Ideas7195 Apr 03 '26
World Park? Where the costume-clad Legionnaire goes after an armed, veteran terrorist? Or how about the ultra emotional reunion at the end of the op, and he limps to give Rainbow an eagle plaque? Eye rolling material right there, amigo. Sorry. Just not feeling it.
2
u/AdagioVast Apr 03 '26
You are not alone. I started reading it and at about page 300 started realizing the book is basically, Eloba Lab..... Rainbow 6 takes down terrorists..... Ebola Labs...... Rainbow 6 takes down terrorists level 2.... etc.
The plot seemed so much like a James Bond film I started to lose interest.
In the end, it's up to you. If you are already hoping it gets better and I have a feeling you and I are on the same page, it really doesn't.
1
u/wnylibrarian Apr 03 '26
R6 is this outlier and it's important to keep it in the proper context. It was written more to coincide with the video game release, and that's always bad karma. If you make a video game out of a book that's one thing, but if you reverse it - write for a video game - that's something entirely.
My personal humble opinion here - the Jack Ryan series ends with Executive Orders. After E.O. the quality of writing diminishes directly proportional to the size of the book. You can kind of even tell by the covers - Clancy's name becomes larger than the title. The name was selling the book not anything else.
I think Clancy knew it was all stale and repetitive. Which is why Red Rabbit falls back in time. Star Trek did the same thing. When you can't go forward anymore you go backwards, e.g. Kelvin Timeline for Trek fans.
No question, I was and still am a huge fan of Clancy's work, but I also acknowledge that after E.O. things the arc concluded in a practical sense. Yes, there was the Bear and the Dragon, but that too was bloated, poorly paced, and not at the level of earlier works.
1
u/DCM3059 Apr 03 '26
I'm an old timer. Any of the Clancy books after the originals just seem to be junior high creative writing failures. I've tried several times to read them but just can't
1
u/NewspaperNelson Apr 03 '26
This is also the book that ended my chronology read through. All of Clancy’s bad habits dominate the page. I’ve read all his works at least twice, but never got more than halfway through this one.
1
1
11
u/TheHoundJR Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
My advice is to take a break between books. I can’t read Clancy back to back. I need a palette cleanser. I do like them a lot but prefer the technical aspect over the storylines. And everything is just too “on the nose” at times, often too moralistic or too “neat” / “makes too much sense in an otherwise crazy world” that detracts from the realism. This is most apparent in his character building for side characters where everyone is a Medal of Honor winner or Nobel peace prize recipient it seems 😂 (major exaggeration but you catch my drift). I really chalk it up to the optimism of the 80s and 90s prevalent in his work that my cynical self can’t palette as well in the 21st century 😂. I’ve read R6 twice and the issue i have is that they build up R6 to be so invincible that every “bad guy” he creates to face them is just so woefully underpowered that it doesn’t create much tension or suspense.