Clemens

Yeah, shrugging, I don't know. Not bad, not super great either. A solid read, with a nice story and that's it. Very likely I will forget everything in a view months I like I completely forgot about the first book.

If there is nothing else to read, then yes, else put it back for some other time

My second book from Thomas Mann and another amazing story written in one of the best german I have read in a long time. It feels that this was written at an even higher and more complex level than Buddenbrocks. Short and wonderful. A must read.

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.

Abstract.
Strange.
Wonderful.
Interesting.

You could even say

Kafkaest

Note that I read that in the german version. No idea how a translation works with this.

Another amazing Kafkaesk story. I really love this style of literature and should read more of this in between my “other” books

Although it starts not really very well and the writing and conversation feels very wooden and clishe like after about half into the book the whole story picks up to a really nice finale.

A very good book, a very interesting book, but also a book that has some parts that are really really really hard to read because it is written in like “spoken slang” english. Like u hav 2 imagin tis is ritten like tis and @ ti moment u get so confused abut tis.

Yeah, hard to read, especially if you are not a native reader.

Anyway, would still recommend to read :D

Overall a very satisfactory read, but missing this slight part that would have made it outstanding. Especially when you can never really shelf off those deep mind Culture book thoughts. But overall a fantastic book absolutely worth reading. Recommended

How Vonnegut writes is just simple amazing. Every sentence a pleasure to read, every page a pure enjoyment. The whole book sounds even more important when you look at the world today. Just amazing. Highly recommended

A fantastic story in a fantastic universe with fantastic things. Miéville again has proven that he can come up with some absolutely fantastic universe with fantastic things and an amazing story.

Highly recommended

Another collection of short stories, but this time I am not very convinced by the quality. There are some slightly connected stories in the middle that are quite good, but the rest is really just mediocre. A bit of “can skip” book.

A lot of short story collections have stories that range from meh to really good, but this collection holds pretty much only really amazing stories.

I put of reading this book because, as said, short story collections are often so much hit an miss. But not this one.

All the stories are in the Relevation Space universe and here and there you find some characters coming up that are also in the normal novels.

Highly recommended

I did not enjoy this one as much as the previous two. Parts of it were fantastic, but overall it was a bit weak.

The ending was good and probably saved the book from an ever worse rating

A crowning end to this fantastic story on the remote planet. Wonderful intertwined with the backstory of earth itself.

Absolutely fantastic trilogy.

Highly recommended.

As equal amazing as the first part, the second part plays mostly in a different region on Helliconia and also circles back to the place of the first book. Again we get amazing story telling and wonder writing. Absolute perfect.

Like there are good B Movies there are good B Books. And this is one of them. But after all I can't give it more than three stars. Nice story, nice characters, but overall not much depth to it.

That was a surprising good book. Much better than the previous two books. The characters through this book were kept on a normal level and not overloaded with stereotypes, the whole story was very well written. Yeah, that was really nice.

I have no idea if I even understood what was going on in this book, but I enjoyed it. It was truly strange and abstract and sometimes hard to follow, but it was great.

There is not much more to say, just that this is a book very hard to recommend. If you enjoyed books like Catch 22 or Gravity Rainbow, then yeah, this could be worth reading, else, no.

When you catch yourself in skipping paragraphs because they are just utterly boring and don't do anything to the story and the story itself is just this very thin ribbon that is almost not there then you realize that this book is not for you.

I just didn't like it. It had some good moments and the writing itself was solid but I could not attach to any of the characters and didn't care about them not where they go.

Whenever something interesting happened that might be interesting it was just cut short.

Not recommended.

Pretty much what I expected, although I thought it was not as good as the first book, but then they are only very loosely connected and completely different story lines anyway.

Overall it was a fantastic fantasy novel as a fantasy novel should be. Fantastic fantasy.

Overall very satisfying, although on some points very philosophical novel, but at the end a very good one. Sort of a wonderful “end” to the Culture series. Another view of the whole universe, more interesting background. Just sad that there are no more and never will be any more. By far the best Sci-Fi series out there, especially in variety of the content.

Highly recommended. All of them. Even the less “good” ones.

It is good, but far from the amazing level his previous books were. It sometimes felt like a short story collection that is somehow interconnected. Still looking forward to the next book.

A very satisfactory read, an amazing closing to an amazing story. I truly enjoyed this book from the first to the last page. I am also very glad about the ending that really explains pretty much everything that needed to be explained.

All my complaints I might have had about unexplained parts at the end of the second book, they are all explained in these two books.

Highly recommended, a must read if you read the first two books. And if not, read the first two books before reading this one. Obviously.

I never read the second two books of the Hyperion Cantos because I read some reviews how horrible they are.

Those reviews lied.

This book was amazing from the first page to the last one. It felt a bit like reading the first book of the Hyperion Canots, perhaps not 100% on the same level, that is unreachable, but very close. I fully enjoyed it.

So if you read the first two books, I recommend that you read this one too.