Joe Rocklin

Much better than the movie - in fact, if you've seen the movie you have no idea what the whole story is!

Finished in 2008-02
Finished in 2010-08
Finished in 2013-08

I thought the final installment in the Rama series was an improvement over the previous. If you can make it through “The Garden of Rama” then you will be treated with more science fiction as we meet alien species. It veers into an interesting social commentary when comparing the actions and behaviors of those species when compared to humans. Overall, it is a worthwhile end to the timeline - not altogether unpredictable, but a good story nonetheless.

This was good, but I debated between 3 and 4 stars. I went into the book thinking it was young adult fiction. It is not. But it was a good story that kept me hooked. I listened to an audiobook version and appreciated the presentation of the different narrators with different actors. In general, I would recommend this but probably only to adults.

I gave the series a try, but I'm giving up a couple of chapters into book four. The plot holes are massive, and each book follows the same pattern: gore, miraculous survival of the protagonists, everyone else dies. Lather, rinse, repeat. Maybe I'm seeing them through a lens of having just finished a long time with Terry Pratchett novels, but the story here couldn't hold me any longer.

The information contained in this book interesting though only a snapshot of what I was thinking might come from it. About halfway through I realized this was just going to cover 1776 (with a brief play of some events of 1775 in the beginning). The last pages race through some key events and spoilers leading up to the British surrender, which leaves me with a feeling that the book had reached its intended word count and then the author tried to finish it quickly.

That said, it's obvious that the presented material had extensive research. There are many quoted letters to present opinions in (mostly) the words of first account witnesses. The author does take some liberties to add or comment on words or phrases, though it is in an aide to the modern reader unfamiliar with phrases or abbreviations of the time.

On the whole, it's a good book. But I do not think this is a great book.