Rama Revealed

The Rama trilogy is really worth your time and attention if you like Sci Fi.

Bottom Line: I enjoyed reading this series every evening over the last few months. Some of the books were great and others were just ok. I read that they are going to make Rama into a movie and hopefully a series. It will be interesting to see the screen adaptation. Here's my quick take on each book: Rendezvous with Rama: Best of the series. Love the mystery and suspense. It was tailor-made for a sequel and has the potential to be a great movie. Rama II: A very different book than the first. Think "The Expanse" for political intrigue. Not as compelling as the first. Garden of Rama: I felt this was the weakest book in the series, though the final quarter improves and sets the stage for the conclusion of the series. Rama Revealed: I really liked the author's imagination and overall I felt that this book was the most creative in the series. It was also a bit of a page-turner for me. I would ignore the negative comments and definitely give the series a try. I think that any screen adoption will need to modify the plot line and some of the characters to keep things moving.

This ending was a far more even book than the previous one and tied up everything really nicely and beautifully.

Nicole and all of the Raman species awaken in the Node and the war is over. Now aged and feeble, still manages to resolve conflicts and there are happy reunions and pointent good byes. I love how the intelligence that governs the species survey is explained. Nicole faces one last choice at the end. Like her family, I didn't like her choice, but understand. Her relationship with the eagle and Dr Blue deepened and I enjoyed learning more about them. A satisfying end of the Rama series, but the experiment continues.

Having been burnt by buying co-authored sequels of popular works, I should have stopped with the first Rama novel, but I bought all three. I found the beginning of Rama II unreadable and put them all aside. Crediting a reviewer who said it improves after the first 100 pages, I returned. I didn't find it tolerable until about 150 pages had been skimmed, but I continued after that. Neither Rama II nor Garden of Rama are bad enough to trash (a personal threshold difficult to satisfy), so I intend to give both to the local library. Rama Revealed (hopefully the final installment) is, however, worth keeping even though at least one other reviewer finds the works of ever-dwindling value, It summarizes a prolix tale that, taken as a whole, contains interesting ideas. Yet, if I get desperate enough to reread Rama Revealed, I hope to recall that it should end several chapters before it does.

I read first book in Rama series long time ago and found it fascinating (5 stars). Second book was so disappointing (2 stars) that I gave up on the series and only recently decided to read reminding two books. They are both better than book two but not as good as book one. The book reads like it was written by two different people (as it actually was), each of them concentrating on different aspects of the plot. The first one deals with alien civilizations and human reactions to the contact. The second describes a bunch of personal stories and relationships. I enjoyed the parts dealing with aliens, the most fascinating being a society of octospiders. I also liked to read about isolated 2000 humans building their society on Rama. But I found most of the other human-oriented plots boring, repetitive and bordering on cheesy. The African and Japanese heritages of protagonists were brought up too often, reading for the 20-th time about Prince Henry made me almost gag and I would gladly omit all dreams of the main heroine. I was strongly tempted to just skip these parts but I was afraid I will miss something important to the main plot (I would not). So I plodded through them and was always eventually rewarded; the story switched to the other track and became interesting again. Except for the very ending that was dragging forever. Bottom line: Science fiction parts were great; I will never forget octospiders (5 stars). The in between parts dealing with human personal relationships were just 3 stars. It makes 4 stars average.

It isn't just science fiction. It is a philosophical masterpiece. It allows the reader to try, a little, to understand the meaning of life. It shows the greatest strengths and weaknesses of humanity. It puts everyday life in perspective.

What an astounding epic! Pure science fiction brilliance. I wish there was more than 600 pages. If you ever wanted answers to the mystery of life, albeit from a fictional standpoint, this book satisfies that craving. Thank you Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee.