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Rama II

Rama Series, Book 2

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Rama II

By: Arthur C. Clarke
Narrated by: Toby Longworth
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About this listen

The sequel to Rendezvous with Rama: the only SF novel to sweep all SF awards and one of the best sellers of all time.

In 2130, an alien spaceship, Rama, entered our solar system. The first product of an alien civilisation to be encountered by man, it revealed many wonders to mankind; but most of its mysteries remained unsolved.…

Sixty-six years later, a second approaching spacecraft was detected; four years on, the Ramans are definitely returning. But this time, Earth is ready. And maybe now, with the arrival of Rama II, some of the questions posed by Rama will at last be answered.

Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, in 1917. During the Second World War he served as an RAF radar instructor, rising to the rank of Flight-Lieutenant. After the war he won a BSc in physics and mathematics with first-class honours from King's College, London. One of the most respected of all science-fiction writers, he also won Kalinga Prize, The Aviation Space-Writers' Prize, and The Westinghouse Science Writing Prize. He shared an OSCAR nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was based on his story, The Sentinel. He lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008.

©1989 Arthur C. Clarkes & Gentry Lee (P)2014 Audible Studios Science Fiction Fiction War Time Travel
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Most relevant
Previous reviews if this book are right. There is a lot of irrelevant content that does not add to the story.
My concern is whether it is worth reading the next in the series.

Disappointing sequel

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Review of Rama II, Arthur C Clarke

This was the best book I've listened to for a long time. I put it on at every opportunity because I wanted to know what happened next. The story is well-constructed and thought-provoking, and the characters are clearly and convincingly drawn. It combines mystery, intrigue, adventure and romance, and now that I have finished it I am keen to go on to the next one in the set.

Arthur C Clarke describes the interior of the Rama II spacecraft, but the concept is not easy to understand – if I were reading the book I would have paused to think, and made a drawing to help me! However, nothing is so outlandish as to be unbelievable, and I'm hoping that some things will be explained in the subsequent books. I would like to think that details have not been introduced only to be ignored or forgotten later.

Rama II is the second Rama book; the first was Rendezvous with Rama, which I had not read before reading Rama II. I have just listened to Rendezvous, for completeness, before writing this review, but it wasn't necessary for my understanding of the story.

The narration by Toby Longworth was good, with voices clearly fitting the description of the characters. Sometimes his pronunciation was not perfect and it should have been corrected (for example, the avians live underground and for some time I wasn't sure whether they lived in a layer or a lair). I noticed more editing errors than is usual in Audible books, with several sentences being read twice and one instance, I think, of a sentence being omitted. Even so, these did not detract from my enjoyment of the book.

Better than Rendezvous with Rama!

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It didn't unfortunately live up to expectations, cliche characters, dull story. I hope the next one is better.

Average

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really struggled until midway I found it to be a bit of a mess and prefer it when Arthur C Clarke works alone. although the idea of a particular human bloodline being destined to travel through the stars was interesting.

meh compared to the first

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The original Rendezvous with Rama was the first Arthur C Clark novel that I had read, having previously avoided his brand of the genre due to my perception that, if 2001 was anything to go by, as a movie, then the book would be hard work to wade through.
I was more than pleasantly surprised, when listening to the original Rendezvous with Rama, to find that it blew me away, and was, for me, an absolute masterpiece. Thoroughly entertaining, well paced and filled with engaging characters and ideas, I listened to the audiobook several times and hoped that there was a sequel.

I have listened to this sequel three times now, and while I found it enjoyable in parts, for me, it is a little drawn out, with one dimensional characters compared to the original, and it only gets going in the last third of the book.

Well worth a listen, though, and I fully intend to seek out the third book in the series and immerse myself in that too.

This isn't the sequel I was looking for.

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