Clemens
David Foster Wallace appeared on my radar when "Infinite Jest" was all over the internet as the best Sci-Fi novel you have to read, while reading it the parts where he wrote about the Tennis where absolute fascinating. A friend of mine told me I should try to read this.
Well many years have passed and I finally read it and it was so amazing, especially for me who was a huge Tennis fan back in the '90s this is all so amazing. The writing is great (be aware of many many foot notes) and it was all over too soon.
Would I recommend this, hell yeah, those short stories are amazing!
Well, it was nice. But by far not as good as the first book. It started interesting, had a nice progression, but then it somehow dropped off and never really recovered and suddenly it was all finished.
Would I recommend this? Sort of, if you have time and nothing else to read. Else the first part is good enough and also has its own finished story line. So there is that.
Very positively surprised by this book. I wouldn't call this a hard sci-fi story but more a mystery sci-fi book. It has a really good story, great character arcs and a very interesting universe where this whole thing plays in. And to top this off, the whole book ends with a nice closing, so there is no forced need to read the next book.
Highly recommended
I haven't been that wowed by some classical sci-fi book in a long time. This book was really good, just overall really good. I now understand how Dune has such a big fan group. The only Dune I knew before this was the David Lynch movie and it was fantastic abstract. And this book is just so amazing ... and now I want to see Dune again ...
I read Book 3 before reading Book 2 and I never realized I read the last part because it was so boring. So horrible boring. Just one thing popped up and I was like “when did that happen” but the rest. Boring. Nothing happens. The ending is so … boring that I still thought I am in book 2 and then we get to the good end. But there is no good end. It is just so boring and horrible.
Just don’t bother, read something else.
I read the second book after the third book because while reading the third book I never realized it was the third book because it was so flat and boring and nothing happened.
Now after reading the second book it feels more like the third book in progress and happening and I would be even more pissed off if I would have read that in order.
Still this book is just flat and boring and horrible like the other two. The main character is this all good all can do everybody thinks he can solve the universe person that you just start to hate really well really soon.
It feels like some horrible teenage fantasy novel that should have never been published.
Don‘t read one of those books. Ever.
It barely made it over the three star hurdle
The good: Interesting characters, interesting world and interesting world building
The bad: A story that drifts off into utter boring rambling instead of getting more interesting
The ugly: She? or She? or He? or She? or He? Useless gendering that made no sense
Recommended? Honestly not really, I will try the second book because overall it was not too bad, but I will not keep my hopes up
I am sucker for sailing ships and I really liked the movie they made from these books. So I thought I gonna have to read them.
No idea how to judge this. I didn't hate it, I didn't like it, I enjoyed it, sort of at least. It was overall not bad. So I am going to read the next one, but not right now, this feels more like something I will read between other books to break up some writing type from one author, or get away from some too much read book type
Finally done with the whole series, what a ride. Amazing books, not so good books, page turners in good and bad, up and downs, Characters you love, Enemies you hate, stories that go this way and that way. Overall very amazing.
But how was the last book. Ok, good enough, not that great like the one before, but overall good. And the ending was very good as well. So, overall I can't complain and can only recommend the whole series to everyone who enjoys good Sci-Fi
When the pandemic hit I lost my daily two hours of reading on the train.
So it took me a full year to read this book.
This book overall is really fantastic, because I could pick it up after all the months and continue some more and I always remember where I was. I really like the writing style from Clarke, plus the story in here is really good too.
Very much recommended
This book holds all four Rama books, but only the first one is actually written by Clarke himself, the rest by some d-level author that just screws it all up.
Recommendation: Read only the first book, skip the rest.
Spoilers might be below
Rendezvous with Rama (Rama, #1): Five Stars
This one was written by Clarke and it is fantastic, amazing, awesome, well written, great story, good characters and all above and beyond.
Rama II (Rama, #2): Two Stars
Because the Omnibus does not tell you when one book is finished I was first really confused on why the writing style has changed so much. It turned into some personal drama-lama. Soap Opera. Worse than than some schlock sci-fi b-movie. How such a crew was ever selected that acts like they are in some big brother house is just beyond understanding. While in the first book the mission came first here it is everyone for themselves.
The Garden of Rama (Rama, #3): Two Stars
Same crap as above but now we travel away from earth. Small parts are interesting, overall crap, especially when have that time on that alien space station and the return trip. Forgettable. You realize this book is bad when you start skipping parts and not missing anything.
Rama Revealed (Rama, #4)
One one hand it is the best of the three other books, on the other hand it is the same crap again. It has some nice interesting parts, but it gets all crapped on top with some super-mega-god alien that are behind this. This is just stupid. Also I had to skip over parts because this was just unreadable.
One of those capital “B” books that. Written in one of the most wonderful german you can imagine, it is a story about a family over a view generations and their slow downfall.
Even the most dullest scenes are written in a way that you just cannot skip them and other scenes are written in such an amazing way that you can actually feel it.
