Me parece que hacía mucho que no leía un libro de ciencia ficción tan apegado a lo que yo entiendo como ese género literario.

Primero que nada, la forma de escribir de Arthur C. Clarke es fabulosa, desde la primera página mete al lector a la historia y el nivel de expectación creada es maravillosa.

La historia es fabulosa, el nivel de creación de este "mundo" es increíble, no hizo falta en ningún momento nada más que el ambiente creado para darnos cuenta de que estábamos metidos en algo imposible pero real.

Si le he puesto cuatro estrellas es porque honestamente no me gusta que dejen a mi imaginación tantas cosas, el final, aunque poco predecible me pareció insuficiente, nos ha dejado a los lectores exactamente igual que a Northon, con esa sensación de falta de haber vivido algo increíble, pero con la insatisfacción de no haber podido llegar a más. ( )

A really good Clarke yarn, up there with 2001 for a sense of awe. The way it sets up inter-solar system rivalries presages later works like The Expanse, but interpersonal conflict is not Clarke's strong side. Nor are characters. He's preoccupied with ideas, and this novel has some good ones. Like the Odyssey series this also ends ambiguously and it'll be interesting to see if there's a definitive payoff in the sequels. ( )

I almost DNF'ed but pushed on. I'm glad I did. Seemed to start slow, but about midway through it picked up a bit. Interesting alien ship, interesting science, not much character development. I probably won't continue the series due to the mixed to poor reviews of the following books and that my satisfaction reading this book was somewhat muted. ***1/2. ( )

** Disclaimer: read this for a challenge **

SO I do like reading challenges. They push you outside of your boundaries and get you reading things you wouldn't normally read.

sometimes this is a good thing. Many times, however, it ends like this did. This one was just...odd. First, the writing style. It was written so you don't really get attached to anyone - at least I didn't. It hops around giving you odd back story of people that you may or may not know yet. The beginning was overwhelming with back story on odd characters.

Oddly enough, there wasn't enough back story on the planets. In a sudden and jarring sentence, you suddenly are informed that humans jumped from earth eons ago and people live on all kinds of planets now. It talks about how communication got slower instead of faster (opposite of when we all updated to cell phones and email) because there is a time delay between transmission and receiving between planets.

And then, we are given a quick story of asteroids, near misses and suddenly - we're with Rama. We're with Norton and he's been sent on a mission. Little back story, little current story. From there it just got ridiculous. I just didn't get behind it. Try as I might, I just couldn't imagine this was how we would ever react to something flying at us (with possible life on board). Then, I couldn't possibly imagine us searching it the way he did and then, when he discovered the odd "goes forever" area.....the way we handled it. I just....couldn't. It got really scientific but it still felt like junk science.

all in all, this was boring and I just didn't find the story believable (even for Science fiction) ( )

An alien spaceship the size of Clarke’s ego flies into the solar system. The only ship in the fleet that’s within range is the USS Endeavour, Captain Hook commanding.

Clarke does something very clever. We never find out how many crew members are aboard Endevour. Neither are the characters who do appear get introduced normally. We never find out all the secrets of the main character, Rama, and despite a series of revelations throughout the novel, it’s still a mystery at the end. As a new thing is discovered, or is about to be discovered, so is a new character introduced.

Clarke was 35 years into his career at this point. It amazes me that he was still able to take literary risks of this magnitude with something as fundamental to the novel as characterisation – and have it pay off.

There are some brilliant descriptions of the interior of Rama especially as the crew try to acclimatise to an alien world, but it’s not Clarke’s descriptions of the distances involved but rather that a small part of Rama is equivalent to a human that gives a true sense of scale.

There’s an interesting theme of sex and fertility that runs through the novel which reflects Rama’s awakening from near zero. It’s also worth looking out for recurrences of the number three in the relationship between the different characters. ( )