Rendezvous with Rama

TL;DR

This is one of the classics science fiction stories and I can see how it inspired other books. I liked a lot about this book. The only negative I have is that at the end you're left with a lot of questions. I felt a bit unsatisfied with it but I do believe that if this were to happen in real life it would go down like this and we would all have the same feeling.

My Scoring System

I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:

✓ - Main Story: You don't need to know much because it's better to go in blindly. Know that while the story is good and it's well written, I think it will leave you unsatisfied because we don't get much answers.

X - Side Stories (if it applies):

✓ - Characters: I liked every crew member of the ship, they were all how I expect a crew of astronauts on a special mission to be. Methodical, calculating, calm under pressure, not doing dumb mistakes that probably cost them the life of other. Great job on the writing for them to the author.

✓ - Setting/Ambiance: The inside of Rama was amazing, I can't wait for Denis Villeneuve's vision of how Rama will look because the way I imagined it was breath taking. The author did a phenomenal job at describing it. Don't want to talk specifics so that you go into it blindly but know that it will be great.

✓ - Ending: At first I didn't like it but after a few days have passed and I kept thinking about it I think I like it more and more. I don't want to talk more about it to not spoil it but I think that if we had a first encounter with extraterrestrial beings it would probably go down like this ending. We're not the center of the universe as much as we humans like to think so.

Extensive Review

Even though it ticked all the boxes I can't give it a 5 star rating because...I don't want to spoil it but we're left with a lot of questions and I think that's exactly what the author wanted. I believe it's exactly how it would go down in real life if it happened. But this is not real life, it's a book and I like to feel some sort of fulfillment at the end of a story. It is frustrating because you constantly keep discovering new things about this object, more and more and you're thinking soon you will get the reveal but it doesn't happen. It did answer one of the biggest questions of humanity though, we're not alone in the universe.

One of my favorite books "The Last Astronaut" is literally this story but with a bit more answers, I didn't know it at the time but I'm thankful for this book to have inspired that one and probably many more that I haven't read yet. Great book if you into it knowing you probably won't get your questions answered, many people don't like that myself included but it was still a good story.