Customer Reviews

Rama Revealed

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

I can't think of another series that started with so much promise and ended as such a dud. It's a shame that Arthur C. Clarke allowed his name to be attached to this. Clearly this Gentry Lee co-author person carried the bulk of the writing on this installment and it just wasn't up to Clarke's caliber. The plot, the premise, the writing, the "I can't think of any real answer to all of the Rama questions so I'll just wave my hands and make up some religious mysticism" - what a dud.
No matter how much you loved previous Rama books, you don't want to read this. Re-read the first book or two and make up your own ending. Anything you can construct will be better than this.

Shallow, one-dimensional characters, an artifically convoluted plot that never satisfactorily resolves, and bombastic writing of the sort best edited with a shredder. What more could one ask for? Why, sententious spiritual pretensions, of course!

This is the sort of reading that makes you think longingly of scrubbing the bathtub grout with bleach and a baby toothbrush. I look at my stack of Rama books as I would five empty Pringle's cans - with a combination of nausea and self loathing.

Clark should be spanked, Lee caned, and the publisher fined.

I shan't repeat what has been said so viscerally before. Book one was a good and original book, not exceptional but very good; book two was not in the same vein filled with vapid, whiney and totally unappealing characters. Book three was an extension into absurdity of book two, and book four, well I have run out of adjectives to describe it. If I want to abase myself in the lives of self-centered brats with no redeeming qualities (for good or evil) I'll watch some reality tv. After re-reading all the books in the series I'm keeping book one and the rest go into the trash, I won't burden Goodwill with them. Save your money, you'd be better off spending it on toe nail clippers.

After reading other excellent works by Arthur Clarke, Rama Revealed is such a disappointment. Rendezvous with Rama was such an excellent book, and Rama II was not all bad either. Garden of Rama and this last one in the series can only be considered progressive deteriorations. Where Rendezvous was a page turner, I endured this book so I could get to the end. Too many pages spent on inane sub-plots and not enough on the overall story. After reading Rendezvous and then the rest, I came away with the feeling that only the first one bears Clarke's stamp.

There is no Arthur Clarke book which would get less than 3 stars from me. There is no Clarke collaboration with Lee Gentry that gets more than 1 star (because that is the minimum). Read "Rendezvous with Rama" and stop there. Well, if you think that an SF book is automatically great and has a "human" element because it frequently involves women, or troubled relations, or bad things happening to family members, than maybe you will like the Gentry-Clarke collaboration of Rama books. Even then, you should be disgusted by the unending series of contrived situations which substitute for a plotline. There is nothing in these books which does not happen in order to set up another stupid or unpleasant situation, and they are totally boring - nothing like the greatly interesting "Rendezvous with Rama." What can I say specifically about "Rama Revealed," since the authors had nothing to say? I've been spoiled by the Clarke books which were not messed up by Lee Gentry. Compared to any other Clarke book, in "Rama Revealed" nothing special is revealed. They had to whip up a conclusion and they may as well have published a 1-page book which said "The End," it would have been as logical and satisfying as this mess and saved everyone a lot of time

After reading the first book (Rendevous with Rama) I was looking forward to finding out all the answers to the questions raised. What I discovered was that in some cases, it is better not to know. The three books where Arthur C. Clarke collaborated with Gentry Lee just got worse and worse as I went through them, but the concept of Rama is so good that I'll still give 2 stars to this book. The Rendevous was a classic science fiction novel, but the ending of this book is hardly science fiction at all. Please, I beg anyone out there, read the first book and keep it at that! It's much, much better that way . . .

After the pathetic ending of "Garden of Rama" there really was nowhere to go but up. This book went up. Some. Not much.

The crisis situation in the human colony on Rama has been mitigated (and the humans are pretty pathetic); everyone goes to sleep again for a long, long time; Nicole is reunited with family members she never thought she'd see again (and a rather weak reunion it is, too!); a final "segregation" is made between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" based on a strange, Raman determination which preaches free choice on the one hand -- and no taking of personal responsibility for behavior on the other; -- AND Rama is revealed for what ACTUALLY is.

Again, Clarke and Lee delve into theological suppositions in which, frankly, they demonstrate that they are WAAAY over their heads. This was a serious mistake.

Finally, Nicole makes some choices at the end of the book -- which I won't spoil in this review -- which, frankly, reveal her to be as selfish and shallow as most of the rest of the characters -- a real disappointment.

Why the 3rd star? Because it was better than "Garden" which received 2!

My suggestion? Read "Rendevouz" -- and skip the rest of the series.

I won't enumerate the specific problems with this book, partly because I know I couldn't possibly provide an exhaustive list in the modest space available, and partly because most of the major crimes have already been mentioned in other reviews.

I will restrict myself to commenting that this book is so bad that I actually stopped reading it ten pages from the end - a first for me! Furthermore it is only my love of books that prevented me from ceremoniously burning this (along with its turgid previous two installments) - it now resides disrespectfully in the garage gathering dust, waiting for someone to throw it out in an absent-minded moment (I can't even give it to the charity shops, as how could I offer this for someone else's torture in conscience?)

I would make the following recommendations:

- read other Arthur C Clarks books - they are excellent
- if you want complex "other-cultures" along with genuine character development, read Iain M Banks
- never never buy any Gentry Lee books. (How he managed to dupe ACC into a partnership would make a better novel than any he could ever dream up)

.. and it is the fact Nicole would NOT star (hopefully) in any of the future Rama books, if anyone would be stupid enough to try and revive it, that is...

All the characters, that were tiresome and unbelievable about 2 pages after entering the scope of the series come to their predictable end. The human race is of course destructive to everyone including itself, and is certainly not as enlightened as much as most species, especially the wonderfull octospiders, except for a sacred few humans, such as Nicole, most of her family, and most their closest friends. It seems that the co authors 'fell in love' with the octospiders, and made them all they thought the human race should aspire to...

This book stretches the ideas of the previous 2 books in the collection TOO far, and is by far the worst of the series. The plot continues to deteriorate, and so do the characters - especially the ones introduced earliest in the series. The 'total understanding' we are supposed to reach through Nicole is quite useless and over dramatic - by this stage, no one needs THAT much understanding of what's behind Rama. All the original questions behind the original Rama ship were given the most predictable and banal answers, which is to badconsidering they were excellent questions to start with.

From the title of this novel you'd expect that all the mysteries of Rama would be revealed. If so, you're likely to be disappointed. The saga of Nicole des Jardins and her family continues exactly where the third book left off. Nicole escapes from prison after a few harrowing close calls and reunites with most of her family. They eventually end up in section of Rama controlled by the octospiders. They (and we) learn a great deal about the history and physiology of the octos, and perhaps some insights into what the ultimate goal of Rama is. Trouble develops between the octos and the other human colonists ultimately leading to a genocidal war. The Eagle (from book 3) steps is to prevent the extinction of one of the two races, and Rama is sent to another node for the big finale where we learn about Rama and its creators. The ending was reasonably well done, probably the best part of the entire novel. There is finality with a certain level of ambiguity that I thought was particularly intelligent. If you're reading this review and you've read the three previous books, I'd say that you're in for pretty much more of the same. Lots of dialog about the ups and downs and comings and goings of Nicole's family, some interesting discussions about the octos and human/alien interaction, a few tense moments, etc. If you haven't read any of the other Rama books (or at least either of the other two written by Gentry Lee), I'd highly recommend that you think carefully (and read other Amazon reviews) before you start. There are a lot of good ideas in this book (and in the three written by Lee generally), but there is so much irrelevant fluff (3 novels at 500-600 pages each) that I can't really recommend that anyone take the time to read them when there are obviously better books to work through. The three Lee novels are really more of a soap opera/family drama and not hard sci-fi. Lee had about 1-1.5 novels worth of good stuff that he stretched into three tedious tomes. Bottom line - there are some good ideas here, but probably not enough to spend the time to plow through three bloated novels (my rating of 3 stars is a generous roundup of 2.5). Read Rendezvous with Rama (one of the best sci-fi novels ever), then don't bother with the rest.