Rama Revealed/the Ultimate Encounter

no problems at all with the retailer, price, packaging, delivery, physical quality of the book etc, all fine, so will use the supplier again.The problem was with the story.I wont go in to details and spoil it for anyone wishing to read it. Indeed it was well written and to be fair fairly compelling. And as a story stands up well enough alone. In fact I'm tempted to say that that could be one of the causes of the problem. Perhaps in an effort to make the story good enough to be a stand alone. story and not just the concluding saga in the trilogy it doesn't satisfactorily conclude the trilogy. - At least for me.Perhaps another contributing factor to it's problem is that it is written by two people ( the same two who wrote the first two volumes) and that given that the core of this story is so different from the first volume could it be that one writer did more of the first and the other more of this one (and incidentally volume two in the series which I also found to be less enchanting than the first but not less so than this volume).The first volume was more detailed and descriptive of the THE EVENT of all time in terms of human history and sense of sci fi and wonder and awe and mystery were well and truly set, leaving me agog awaiting the answers.Volume two sustained that need to know and branched more in to the lives of the protagonists and other 'struggles' setting the scene for the by then known about third volume that will answer it all. To be fair, some of the concepts and imagery conjured up in this volume could only have come from Mr Clarke's mind and those parts were great. the 'back story' however took over in places and didn't just wander, but took a route march, through almost Cartland-esque territory. I can see why this was done now (because it sets seed for a rather flimsy and unimaginative cop-out (in my opinion) way out/answer/solution in vol 3. A bit like trying to persuade someone to a point of view with the blindingly wonderful reasoning of 'because'. it's only slightly better than the last line being 'and it was all just a lovely dream'.Volume three (this one) continues the motif and develops it. In fact, if weren't set in space it the 'sci-fi' tag could be a bit of a stretch. My biggest gripe is the (to me) the highly unsatisfactory 'solution or fact' that is revealed, but is in itself an infinitely regressing version of the puzzle initially mooted. Indeed, at times it felt more like an academics attempt to write a tome of social commentary than an attempt to advance an imaginative thought out possibility.From this 'review' you might get the impression I didn't like it. well, I loved volume one and get less ands less enchanted with vol 2 and vol 3. I consider the 2 and 3 opportunities to put forward spellbinding ideas, well and truly missed. Further, I consider the title Rama REVEALED to be disingenuous. And I should point out that all the 'puff' I eagerly read about the longed for 3rd volume ' The secrets of Rama finally revealed... ' and so on, to be highly exaggerated at best. It would have been much better to call it something more accurate and bill it as 'the 3rd great volume in the Rama series'. I think then I would haven't have felt so cheated. Yes I said cheated. Cheated of what could have been.Other than that the story will appeal to a lot of people and (for it's kind) is well told.ACID TEST: Would I buy it again - tricky - I like complete sets and would replace my copy if needed, but I can't glowingly recommend it

The whole RAMA series is a masterpiece! I do not think that each book should really be rated separately, except maybe for the first one, which was like a prelude, or the basic raw idea, on which the other 3 epic masterpieces were built upon. But in any case, the ideas go beyond plain science fiction, they deal a lot with psychology, the human nature, the main characteristics of our civilization and so on.. I was more than happy to discover that the amalgam of Clarke and Lee was an extremely successful one (Clarke himself had doubts regarding the success of this project). It is an extremely intelligent, well written and carefully presented novel/series and I definitely recommend it to everybody - not only to SF readers!