Customer Reviews

Double Full Moon Night (A Bantam spectra book)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

I enjoyed this book and its companion Bright Messengers but I would like to see some of the Rama mystery resolved already. Mystery gets frustrating and boring after a while if no light is shed. I still really love the stories and hope for more from Mr. Lee.

Tell the story! Don't bore me to death with details. This was a waste of time, in my estimation. No continuity, no real story line, little value.

I read Bright Messengers and loved it, but this one is slightly below par. I had a hard time with the descriptions of the various aliens, possibly because I was always expecting them to be octospiders. Lee has some excellent characterization at times (Johann, Sister Beatrice, a few others) but many of the other characters, especially the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, simply have nothing to set them apart from the others. Furthermore, to get nit-picky, it was confusing for Lee to name one of the children Beatrice, while still referring to Maria's mother by the same name.

Still, it kept me on my toes. I had assumed that the Maria born in BM and the Maria Nicole found in Rama were the same person. I had assumed the arch-intelligences were the same between the two series. I was fully surprised by the tie-in to Rama at the end, although I would've liked Lee to have expanded that at the cost of some of the earlier parts. (I was also intrigued by the parallels between DFMN and Garden of Rama and Rama Revealed - mostly that the main character(s) in both spend lengthy episodes moving from place to place; i.e., the lair, the Node, New Eden, prison,the octospiders vs. the first island, the second island, the nozzlers, the DFMN planet, etc. Also, there was the parallel between Richard Wakefield's sojourn in the sessile and Johann's imprisonment by the nozzlers.) Overall, an excellent book that could have been made better. I agree with an earlier reviewer who said that there's a lot of loose ends between the six books and someone should write short stories to fill in the gaps.

I adored the Rama books and thought Gentry's first solo book Bright Messengers was promising although unfulfilling. I hoped Double Full Moon Night would elaborate and inject some badly needed ideas but left the book very disapointed. Gentry develops his characters very well and then does nothing interesting with them. All they seem to do is wander around, not knowing anything, and finding out precious little more of any interest. There is a never ending description of their environment but I find it similar to road movie where you never see outside the car. At least now its clear who contributed what to the Rama series. Arthur is a visionary, ideas filling every page whereas Gentry is a competent character developer with no imagination at all.

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.

While this book is well written and the characters and their relationships are well expored, that is really all there is to the book. Also, large amounts of the novel are spent on detailed descriptions of the fauna of the worldlet even where these were not really relevant to the story (eg, the Maskets). There are too many discontinuous jumps, that leave the reader floundering. Only right near the end do we get into some real hard science fiction, where we are suddenly transported to Rama space, with the assumption that the reader has read the Rama series. The most frustrating thing for me was that, despite Maria having been fitted out with sub-atomic detectors and recorders, for when she enters the particle being's ship, we never discover what was found -- is this another long-awaited sequel Gentry? This novel is not a patch on Bright Messengers. If a novel needs to be lengthy and complex then do what Donaldson did in the "Gap Series" and warn everyone that they are in for five separate novels. Sorry to be so negative Gentry. But you are a fine writer and could do much better.

Peter J

I am sad to tell you that you should not waste your time. I waited many months after the promised printing date, every week harrassing the people at the book store, trying to figure out when this book would be out. I felt betrayed at the partial development of characters only to have them vanish with minimal effort and suspense. This was not science fiction. Lee was trying, very unsuccessfully, to show the struggle a human has with identifying his place in the universe with the concept of GOD and God's place. These issues were touched on briefly inbetween crisis' almost as an after thought. I choose this and his previous book due to my love of Rama series. I feel robbed and deceived.

This book was a great disappointment. I had eagerly awaited the sequel to Bright Messengers. Although the author delves into the life of Johann quite throughly, it was really disgusting to read about his almost incestious relationship with his surrogate daughter, Maria. I also felt that I was being emotionally jerked around by Mr. Lee, who seemed to capriciously kill his characters by placing them in situations that were meaningless and stupid. Please, Mr. Lee, no more sequels; give it a rest.