Double Full Moon Night (Mass Market Paperback)

by Gentry Lee (Author) "JOHANN CAREFULLY PLACED eight thin twigs in the cake..." (more)
Key Phrases: double full moon night, quilled creatures, forehead indentations, Sister Nuba, Sister Beatrice, Brother Johann (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Gentry Lee, who has inherited the Rama mantle from SF legend Arthur C. Clarke, continues the story he began in Bright Messengers. In the first book, mysterious clouds of sparkling white particles beckon Beatrice and Johann into a strange craft that whisks them, and nine other colonists, from their homes on Mars to a deserted island inside a huge alien sphere. Beatrice dies after delivering a child, Maria.

As Double Full Moon Night begins, Maria has just turned 8. Their idyllic island life is suddenly ruined when a deadly creature threatens their lives, so Johann leaves his little paradise to find the other colonists. Their happy reunion is short-lived when they are transported to a strange place where they must start over and learn to survive. Lee effectively captures the sense of mystery and excitement that characterize the Rama universe. This long-awaited sequel will please fans of his first solo Rama book. --Adam Fisher --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Bizarre aliens and mysterious technologies are rife in this sequel to former NASA scientist Lee's first solo novel, Bright Messengers. Lee got his start in SF by co-authoring four novels with Sir Arthur Clarke, three of them sequels to Rendezvous with Rama, and the two books he's written on his own are both set in the Rama universe. In Bright Messengers, a group of colonists was rescued from certain death on Mars by a gigantic and mysterious alien spacecraft. Deposited on several islands within the spacecraft's inner sea, the humans have barely survived, fighting off hostile aliens as well as their own worst impulses. Now, led by Johann Eberhardt, former engineer and champion swimmer, the colonists are transported to a distant, seemingly benign planet with two moons. Eberhardt, however, is in periodic communication with someone or something that claims to be his long-dead love, Sister Beatrice of the Order of St. Michael, and this apparition has warned him that their new world will turn deadly in the near future when the two moons are full simultaneously. The colonists' survival evidently depends on Johann's ability to convince them that he has indeed spoken with Beatrice. Although this novel may appeal to admirers of the earlier Rama books, there's little here to attract new readers. Lee's prose is leaden, particularly his dialogue, and he exhibits a poor sense of pacing. Neither Johann nor any of the other colonists comes alive on the page?a flaw that robs the novel of emotional depth or power, despite its handful of moderately successful action sequences.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553573365
• ISBN-13: 978-0553573367
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #666,695 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 5 in The Rama Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What an utter waste of time, April 17, 2001

By A Customer

I waited so long for this book, I had nearly forgotten what it was supposed to be about. Apparently the author did as well. The last half of the book is a haphazard collection of incidents with very little to do with any sort of plot, except to, perhaps, explain the title of the book - which by the way, ultimately had little to do with a consistent plot other than to kill off some inconvenient characters. Lee at least had enough sense to raise some questions that I as a reader needed to have answered, otherwise I would never have finished reading it. But he should have stopped raising the more complicated questions somewhere before the final section. Had he done so, he wouldn't have had to tie things up in such a neat, improbable little package in the final 3 chapters. Don't even get me started on thin character development, and an unhealthy tendency to insert a new life form merely to lengthen the novel as a whole. And as an atheist, I found being preached to on a regular basis rather insulting.

When Lee was co-credited for some of the Rama novels, I hoped I'd found a new author whose work could at least partially fill the void left by Clarke's declining output and the total loss of Asimov's. I'm afraid I'll have to look elsewhere, because I won't subject myself again to this kind of drivel.

Frankly, the 2 stars I gave this book are generous, but unfortunately, worse books than this exist and I needed to save room for them.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Garden of Rama #2, December 8, 2000

By A Customer

Gentry Lee created an intriguing plot in Bright Messengers, and totally lost it in Double Full Moon Night. Although the beginning on the first island with Maria was good enough, it went downhill from there. After creating more alien species than I care to enumerate (some seem to have been created for their own sake) and horrible charaterization (is it a coincidence that everyone has merely one character trait?), he seems to take us out of the grotto with no idea of where he is headed. Consequently, from that point on, he falls back almost completely on "Garden of Rama" to finish this book. Johann has every good trait of Richard and Nicole, Vivien becomes a watered-down Nicole with absolutely no initiative, and Maria has every bad trait of Katie, right down to the final split into East and West Villages, which he could have copied from "Garden". Johann's experiences with the nepps and Richard's adventure in the sessile habitat on Rama are almost the same. The end of the book, however, is the worst part. With no way apparently to end his book, he goes to the (excellent) last chapters of "Rama Revealed" and tries to incorporate them into his book-mainly by killing everyone except for Johann and then creating new characters (which appears to be his favorite thing to do). Johann in the last chapters seems to even think the same thoughts as Nicole did at the end of "Revealed". The ending, unlike that of Rama or anything Clarke has written, was disappointing, unbelievable, and totally inconclusive. It raised more questions than he hoped to answer. I expected better.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fun read, December 16, 2000

By	noravasc (Earth) - See all my reviews

Having waited almost four years for this sequel, I must say I was rather happy with it. It made for a very interesting and fun read. Most of the story deals with characterization, but the descriptions of the alien landscape are wonderful. The story moves at a very fast pace, and although there is not much of an external plot, the character interactions are never dull. While this book could be read and enjoyed without having read the first one, the ending would probably not have the same meaning to someone who had not read the entire Rama series. Overall I would say this is a good choice if you are looking for a fun story.