The Garden of Rama

If this were written by some fairly unknown writer, I might have given it 2 stars - but the bar is set higher for anything by Clarke, in my opinion.After the huge disappointment that was "Rama II", I feared this would be no better - and I was right, unfortunately. I am baffled as to why ACC lent his name to the sequels, as there are only tiny slivers of what could be his writing. The rest must have been penned by Gentry Lee who, I assume, usually specializes in writing pulp fiction and teenage melodramas. In fact I agree with another reviewer who opined that a bunch of teenagers may have actually written the book. (Could he not find other terms of endearment besides "darling"? Maybe teenagers from 1945 were transported to the future to write this?)As with Rama II, we are subjected to the sanctimonious Nicole, who may be one of the most annoying characters in recent memory, at the center of things - still creepy...still thinking about how her various children would inter-breed. Too-perfect Richard is there, too, although at least he has some accomplishments beyond petty local politics.The time spent in the Node was one of the few interesting parts that seemed more in tune with what I'd expect from ACC. Some parts of the latter portion of the book, involving Richard outside of the human "module", showed some real science fiction imagination that could have been written by Clarke. A book that expanded upon those two portions alone would have been excellent.Other than that, the book is simply a cheesy melodrama that just happens to be set in "Rama Land", so to speak. Throughout most of the story there is little mention of anything Rama-related except in passing - perhaps that is why the scenes in the Node and with Richard towards the end of the story stand out so much. One could flip to any random page on the book and assume this is simply an everyday soap opera set in our current or near-future Earth.There are long, drawn-out, unnecessary background details on characters (some of whom aren't at all important). Major questions are left unanswered not consciously but merely because such discussion didn't pertain to the politics, sex, war, or other interpersonal parts of the story that took center stage.Too much of the story is undisguised lecturing on the world's current woes and humanity's shortcomings.The Ramans act totally out of character when it suits the author. For example, the Raman intelligence has seen humanity's predilection towards mistrust and violence during the visit of Rama II. Yet, this "superior intelligence" creates a message for Earth that an idiot can see has hostile and threatening undertones - even when advised by their star human pupil as to how it would be interpreted by Earthlings.I only finished this book because I felt compelled to at least see it through. Maybe that makes me the idiot...or just a masochist.

Yawn!!!! You want SCIENCE fiction? Don't read this. Rendezvous with Rama is, like so many firsts in a book series, is the only novel worth reading. The next two are long tedious religious/political/sex/incest/race/crime expositions so outside of the expected AC Clarke hard science fiction, that it finally forced me, a reader of SciFi for over fifty years, to give up on this, the third book and ignore the fourth. I really lost interest in the characters involved, could care less what happened to them as everything was obviously going to be bad.There is minimal exploration of a great theme of an alien world construct and the science was dated even for the 1990's. I am going to reread the Ringworld trilogy by Larry Niven just to get these exercises in pointless, irritating efforts to avoid the science in science fiction out of my mind. Waste of time and money. :-(

I read the Rama series from the public library eight years ago and remembered the first book was amusing, so bought the entire series on Kindle. I was wrong. Either I've become more picky with age, or I wasn't remembering correctly.The basic Rama series idea is refreshingly creative, but I found the writing greatly inferior to writers like Robert A. Heinlein and John Scalzi. This book in the Rama series, especially, gives the impression that Clarke handed Gentry Lee a story outline, and he in turn hired middle school kids to fill in the blanks. The writing was so poor, and the plot seemed so improvised, I skimmed through the book to get it over with, but I've found that most people are less critical than I am.

Here's the book breakdown:20%: Good sci-fi that you'd expect from humans exploring a gigantic alien spacecraft and its base.20%: People's dreams. And not just Nicole! So many dreams.20%: Flashbacks and backstory! Nicole rehashes that night with Prince Henry, still. Nicole rehashes things that happened earlier in the book, that you were there for. We get to learn a lot of detail of the family life of new characters who are killed off fairly quickly.20%: Allegory to AIDS and global warning and lamenting how awful humanity is and is there any hope for how rapacious and "hegemonic" and insensitive and horrible we are as an entire species.10%: Richard and Nicole calling each other "darling" and telling each other how much they love each other.10%: Shakespeare quotes.This book gets it right when it focuses on the mystery and exploration. The most fascinating thing about Rama is the exploration—the puzzle of trying to figure out what things are and what they do, how to survive, how to adapt.This book gets it wrong when it tries to be a sensitive character drama. The author tries to build connections with the characters by showing us their dreams and thoughts and feelings, trying to get us to empathize with them. But that approach doesn't work here. Characterization does work when it's focused on action—when we *see* the character going through a conflict, facing a challenge, and struggling with what to do. Instead of *showing* us the characters, the author tells us about how they're thinking and feeling about things. Some of this odd focus is just baffling; for example, there's a major criminal trial that impacts one of the main characters—but we literally only see the final minutes of it.Overall, this book is a 80% Space Melodrama that misses the mark. Skim to find the good parts (the first section, through leaving the Node, and Richard's adventure outside New Eden). But do take time to enjoy the dialogic gems. "Who brings me delicious food and wine and pictures of my family to soften me up for the self-inflicted knife that will surely kill me with much more pain than any electric chair? Why, it is my own daughter, the beloved issue of my womb." If that isn't good sci-fi, I don't know what is.

I am amazed by all the negative reviews of this book. I didn't review book 1, but would give it 5 stars. Book 2, I gave 4 stars - because it was a bit tedious in places, but compared to many books out there, it would really deserve 5. This one, I found fascinating, throughout the whole 1000 pages. I totally disagree that the characters are 2 dimensional.. I am not religious so, like with book 2, I found some of the religious elements a bit off-putting, but in this book, it was more integrated into the whole story (although I find it hard to believe that in hundreds of years, there will still be devout Catholics who believe birth control is a sin, and to imagine it annoys me, to be honest). The story was so long and contained so many different elements that I found it hard to remember they were all within this one book - I kept thinking I must be remembering book 2, but checking, would realise my error. I was not disappointed with any part of this, neither the reveal about where Rama I and II came from, their purpose, or the follow-on from that. I found the 3rd part an excellent description of humanity's worst failings, and find it depressingly easy to imagine that our greed, xenophobia and selfishness would have the story play out exactly as described, if this were to happen tomorrow. Sadly.. And this story evoked in me the same utter sadness and anger as when I contemplate the situation on earth today. Nevertheless, I did not find it a depressing read, overall. Yes, I found main Nicole character a bit annoying all along, but it's also worth considering that this book was written decades ago, so it's not surprising we'd find some aspects of personal experiences a bit outdated or sanctimonious - despite our many failings, humanity has moved on somewhat, culturally and socially, since that time, and my annoyance was not nearly enough to put me off the story overall. Plus, she's her own hardest critic, so it's hard to be too annoyed.. And I found her character anything but lacking in depth. Overall, I found this an excellent book, and would definitely recommend it, if you like classic Sci-fi.

'Rendezvous with Rama' is among my favourite books. I love the 'hard' sci-fi, the slow, deliberate pacing, the unresolved mystery, and the utter indifference of the alien mini-world to human presence; Garden of Rama could scarcely be any more different.I grew to hate most of the main characters in this book, they were so two-dimensional. The clumsy 'high-mindedness' that infects practically every interaction between them is like something from a particularly bad piece of Star Trek fan fiction. The ill-conceived earnestness of parts of it left me reaching for a sick bag; Nai Watanabe sitting on the shore of 'Lake Shakespeare' with her twin sons 'Galileo' and 'Kepler'? Please, no more.The story rambles, characters are left undeveloped and then conveniently dumped or left to wander pointlessly in and out of the story, there are regular (and incredibly dull) excursions into Nicole's childhood, seemingly endless, hackneyed dream sequences, ridiculous mysticism, and some risible parallels are drawn between the Raman community and life on earth today. There is even a mention of 'psychic powers' at one point. The narrative displays some very old fashioned attitudes towards women (they are either saints or whores) and people who aren't white (often described as 'Orientals'). It is utter, page-skipping bilge.If I hadn't been reading this on an iPad, I would have thrown it out of a window. It is the worst book I have ever read, bar none.

The title is a little misleading.I don't know if you'd classs this review as containing spoilers or not so apologies to anyone this spoils it for - I wont tell you detail but as the title of this review says it doesn't exactly reveal Rama in the way I had envisaged.don't get me wrong it's another slice of the story and I had to read it as I wanted to know more. It's well written and the story holds together reasonably well.the things I'd like to know about this trilogy (I presume it is only a trilogy) is how much each of the authors contributed and which 'bits' were theirs?Id also have liked some answers - they might have been in there somewhere but I'm just to dense to realise it. However if they were in there I'd like them to have been simpler to spot.The truth is I doubt there are any answers in it. It would have been to difficult to explain in detail - a bit like God and the old chestnut ....;if there's a God who or what created Him?' and so it could have gone on with Rama - who knows how many volumes there would end up being.As for the over all story...Vol 1It started off just like I like them - mysterious and descriptive. ended on a bit of a 'what next?' moment - not a cliff hangar but close.Vol2More tension and background - I suspect written a bit later and at the same time as vol 3 because the 'style' is slightly different - perhaps more like any old story in a novel - setting up everything for 'the big reveal'vol 3more in the line of vol 2 (both of which seem less "awesome sci fi moments" and more politically correct love story - perhaps that's an over simplification but I did feel at times that 'yes, I get it now get back to the story'Perhaps I was bit miffed because the first book promised so much and the subsequent 2 each went further and further in a different direction and relied on a bit of a cop out of mysterious substances.....ACID TEST: Would I buy again - at the moment I doubt it

It's safe to assume that if you're looking at buying this book then you've been through the masterpiece of the original Rama followed by, in my opinion, the absolute crushing disappointment of Rama 2. To cut to the point - this book, while far from perfect, is much closer to the original and is head and shoulders above Rama 2.Don't be put off by the intimidating length - there's much more content, much less veering off into dream sequences (hooray!) and it begins in a way that really drew me in, just like the original. It maintains a fairly steady momentum despite becoming just a bit too far fetched in the middle in my mind. Without spoiling too much, I was quite let down by the explanation behind the Rama spacecraft itself, though there's plenty bigger places to explore.The last third of the book approaches the quality of the original despite being quite different in tone and subject. It becomes much darker as the ending approaches, culminating in a great cliffhanger. Unlike Rama 2 this was satisfying given what had come before.It would still benefit from some trimming down and a bit more explanation in parts though. But stick with it and you will be rewarded.

The beginning and end of this book are on a par with the previous books but the middle does drag on quite considerably and I really don't think that it's realistic to believe that anyone would be as naive as these characters were in choosing which 2000 humans to send up to Rama III and not expect the kind of issues they describe. I read this because the previous book were good and I really just want to get to the end of the story but I really did skim through this one as I just was not enjoying it.