I wasn't really that interested in solving the puzzles of the game. I actually dislike adventure games. But I am a huge fan of the Rama series of books and I bought the game so I could explore Rama myself. After getting frustrated from getting stuck, I bought the book to help me get through the puzzles and get through the rest of the game. The book is easy to follow, descriptive, and shows helpful screen shots. The trouble is, I still get stuck, even when I follow the book to the letter. At a certain point, if you supposedly have done everything right, a certain event is supposed to happen in the game, after many tries, it never happens and I can't get any further.

I picked up a copy of this excellent guide through the game out of desperation, when technical problems (not related to the game itself) caused me to have to reinstall Rama and start over. At the time, I had made my way through about 85% of the game's plot line and puzzles, over the course of several months of casual game play. The walkthrough format is very easy to follow, and it allows you to decide how much help you use, because it is broken down according to the various areas within the game that you must explore and solve your way through. A word of caution--the walkthrough is so concise, you may find it hard to put down, and rely on your own skills. If used sparingly, you will enjoy all of the rewards that Rama offers, without getting hopelessly stuck in some of the more difficult areas of the game.

The RAMA game is an excellent game for anyone who enjoys the plot-and-puzzle game type. If Arthur Clarke is already an author on your shelf, you will additionally enjoy taking a tour of his RAMA spaceship and the diverse life forms encountered therein. You are a replacement astronaut on a mission to explore the RAMA spaceship and assess whether it compromises earth's security. The original commander died mysteriously before you arrived. You must explore the ship from end to end, solving puzzles and collecting everything in sight, to find out whether RAMA is a marvel or a menace and to unravel the intrigues whirling around you as you interact with the rest of the crew.

The puzzles are challenging and it's easy to get stuck. That's why the strategy guide is a great companion to the game. Use it judiciously to extend the play and surprise of the game, or follow it step-by-step as a walk-through, this book will provide the clues, answers, and order of events required to complete the game.

During the first half of the story, when everything is taking place on Mars, "Bright Messengers" is a wonderful tale. As the story reaches its midpoint, however, things begin to rapidly go downhill. . . .

In the second half of the book, the characters become implausible and the situations wholly unrealistic (or, more acurately, how the characters react TO the situations becomes unrealistic). Gentry Lee asks us to believe too much; I just couldn't swallow it.

The main characters accept being ripped from their former lives and essentially put in a prison with barely a wimper. It seems as though Lee just wanted the story to end. He rushes the plot and it comes down around his ears.

Agreeing with another reviewer here, "Bright Messengers" is very much like the "Rama" books Lee co-authored with Arthur C. Clarke: they're essentially "people" stories (i.e. not "action" or "suspense" stories). And, like those previous books, at times, it becomes tedious in the extreme ("Rendevous With Rama" was the only true masterpiece).

Overall, this is a decent book, considering how much sci-fi trash really is out there. Still, take a LONG break between the "Rama" books and this one; if you don't, you'll bore yourself to tears. We can only hope that the sequel will be better. . . .

Personaly I don't plan to recomend this book to anyone until the sequel comes out because the book is incomplete, none of the plots get solved, not one of the characters grow, you know... it feels like just a detailed explanation of the situation in wich earth and mars where during some of the RAMA books. I'm just hoping that the sequel does not try to fix everything up by having some variation of the RAMA ship or THE EAGLE show up... or worse yet the species that "almost reached earth" that we heard about at THE NODE in RAMA REVEALED. I don't know about the copies at amazon.com, but the book I have in my hand reads: "And coming in late 1996. Double full moon night. The conclusion to the story". It's late 1997 and no sequel in sight. Mr. Lee: We've read the first 20 chapters... are those your last?

Bright Messengers, while not having quite as believable characters as the Rama sequel trilogy, is a great book, and a must read. However, what most people ask is "Where the hell is 'Double Full Moon Night?'" Well, Gentry Lee got side-tracked with the Rama CD-ROM, and didn't quite finish it. He is once again at work on it, and is 70-90% finished. People have also asked, "What the hell does this have to do with the Rama series?" Okay, for those of you who didn't pay close attention, the baby born at the end is the same baby Nicole found at the end of the 2nd to last section of Rama Revealed. The creatures who constructed the ship, and the "zoo" on mars are the Octospiders, not the Ramans. The sequel will be about how the baby travels 120 years through time to Rama III. Presumably, then a 4th series of Rama books will detail what happens to Maria, Michael, Simone, Max, Eponine, Patrick, Nai, Benjy, Ellie, little Nicole, Marius, Kepler, and the eagle. I'm not sure what happens then, but I think it may have something to do with the "Prime Monitor", the super node at the center of the galaxy. E-mail me if you want to discuss this

The parts with the octospiders are interesting and also the ending part about the cosmic philosophy. But there is too much soap opera again...Bulls*** again! Read the first Rama book!

With messages of duty, responsibility and the value of family, it's likely that this book will apeal to a more mature reader. While this last installment of the RAMA tales holds all the magic of the past 3 books, it also holds some very real, if disapointing truths about mankind. We are not the creators chosen race, indeed, we are simply an eliment in one universe of many by which the creator seeks a simplicity only a god may aspire to. Some refreshing ideas on the origins, purpose and existance of the universe and our place in it.

I've read many books by Arthur C. Clarke, all of them were very good, clear, and right to the point. The Rama series (only the ones written with Gentry Lee. Rendezvous With Rama is an exception), on the other hand, are not written by our beloved scifi master. RamaII, Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed are all written by Gentry Lee, LITERALLY. I have read their online interview, and Gentry Lee said that ALL THE TEXT IS WRITTEN BY HIM, and that ACC only reads it and points out the corrections. I believe we all see what's going on here. The idea presented in Rendezvous With Rama is no longer of any significance in the book. Your eyes must endure the burden of reading BORING descriptions of main character's lives , feelings, memories, mystic visions of Nicole, and all that nonsense. The writing style is absolutely not consistent with Sir Clarke. Everything is so slow, so indirect, so allusive. The whole book seems like an unbelievable fantasy story. I am purposefully not commenting on what it is about, because you wouldn't want to read it. Many vocabulary words in the book are repeated much too often, it even seems that he(who wrote this) was sitting there in his study browsing in the dictionary, looking for words to put in. The plot at the core is very simple, it would interest many people, teens, and young adults. However, although there is nothing unknown for them in here, this book is not appropriate for younger readers, and even some of the more traditional adults. There are too many unnecessary scenes of sex, which you will never find in any of the other REAL books of ACC. Dillemmas about reproduction and human line preservation which the heroine has to face, are also too inapropriate for a book with Arthur C. Clarke's name on it. Nonetheless, this is a very interesting book to read, it's a real page turner at SOME parts. I sometimes got very involved in the story and was reading it late at night. In the end I was not happy, ending was disappointing. I even wish I didn't read this book at all, so that I'd still be guessing Rama's purpose. Please don't forget to rate my review.

This review concerns the whole Rama series, from 'Rendezvous' to 'Revealed'. I consider this series to be one of the great tales of our time. The concept is intriguing, to say the least. And while certain key questions are answered along the way, there remains a lot of unresolved mystery (as there should be in a tale like this). Each answered question poses at least three new ones: it's just like science. Rama may be revealed, but she's definitely not naked! Not everything is perfect, though. Clarke and Lee portray the human race as utterly xenophobic, totally paranoid, outright genocidal and undescribably stupid. While it's certainly true that we humans are doing a LOT of things wrong, I feel that the authors are over-emphasizing our destructive nature. This also leads to a certain predictability in the plot. That said, I think the series is a masterpiece, and I've read it from start to finish in one, long breath. Some will find the books to be on the 'soft' side, but I consider it to be SF of the highest level.

It's actually been a long time since I read this book, much less the series. The first review that I wrote here was incomplete and was written in a mood that was only temporary, juvenile and confused. I write again only to fully explain myself.

I now realize how much Gentry Lee helped with the character development. Anyone less than a complete moron ought to realize realize how much skill it takes to conjure up so many characters, make them real, and have such a heart-wrenching tale to tell with them. Clarke made a good move taking in Lee.

What fascinated and pleased me the most was the aging relationship between Richard Wakefield and Nicole des Jardins. Not only them, but their children's vastly different paths in life were shocking, heart-warming, and sobering. The fact that the characters were so real, so personal, so THERE, made the science fiction plot that they resided in far better than it would have been without them.

When you reach the end of the book, it is as if you're losing a friend. Through thousands of pages you have followed these characters; seen what they've done with their extraordinary, fictitious lives.

The sheer scale of the story is something I will treasure for the rest of my life. The constant discovery, awe, and mystery of: Where did this ship come from? then What are these creatures inside? and finally What in Heaven's name is going on and What's going to happen to us now??

Granted, the series has its moments of unwarranted quote-unquote "smut," but I guess the ultra-liberalism with the writing of character activity only helps develop them further, at a more "personal" level.

In conclusion, I think that the old preacher's explanation of the whole "Rama Mission" was not only satisfying, but awe-inspiring and it held mystery to ponder even after the story in writing was concluded.

I had forgotten what I didn't like about Lee's Rama books until I began reading this. The Rama books were all full of underdeveloped, oversexed characters.

This book was heavily laced with gratuitous sex and nothing but gratuitous sex... There was no plot, there were no characters. I read about 100 pages, put the book down and picked up the Orson Scott Card book I had waiting.

When I finally got the nerve to finish the book I found even more gratuitous sex and even less plot. I did manage to finish the book... well, I think I finished it. I'm wondering if there may have been missing pages at the end or maybe one or twelve missing chapters. There was no climax to the book (well, so to speak) and the ending just... well... ended.

Unless the author is planning a sequel to answer all the questions left at the end of this book (like "what was the plot?") don't waste your time. You'll be disappointed.

Set four hundred years in the future, when a large part of humanity has moved into space, Tranquility Wars is a sci-fi/adventure story. Not much of the story can be told with out taking away part of the fun of the book. But the basic idea can be told. The main character is Hunter Blake, a 20 year old who lives with his parents on an asteroid in our solar system. Out side the asteroid, the solar system is split between two governments. The first controls the south side of Mars, and every thing within Mars' orbit, including Earth's moon. The second controls the north half of Mars, and everything outside of Mars' orbit, including the asteroid that is home to the Blake family. The book follows Hunter on his first trip to Mars, to become one of a few selected government scholars. The book does a good job of describing some of the problems of living in space, and how they could be dealt with, along with creating a vivid and complex political system.

While the book is a fun read, in general the story is lacking that which turns a fun read into a good book. As stated before, the book follows Hunter on his trip, and while we see him make a few choices, the key decision are made for him. But the reader is still given pages of inner thought on key issues, ranging from how far science should go, to how much control the government should have. But these segments on key issues feel forced, and don't fit with the characters' other traits, almost as if Gentry Lee was trying to address key topics with a story along side. (In his other books, he wrote a good story that had important topics on the side.) There were also several cases of irrelevant side stories, that neither advanced the plot (as they suggested during the reading), nor helped develop the characters. This proved frustrating, as some of the suggested plot developments were more interesting than what really happened.

Overall this book was fun to read, but not worth a great deal of praise. And it is most definitely not at the same level as the Rama series or the Bright Messengers story.

An engaging story... This is one of those books that you just can't put down! An excellent work of Science Fiction... and a plausible outlook on things to come. Save this one for vacation... otherwise, you will not get any sleep!

If Rama II disappointed, avoid this one. The entire plot line is silly (as Nicole and Co. go back and forth between star systems, mostly asleep but aging) and at the end the reader is no where -- third-rate 'cliff-hanger' to get you to buy the next book. It will take another 400 pages in Rama Revealed to get to the so-called revelation. Fans of ACC will not recognize any of his ideas in this volume which basically assumes humans have learned nothing over the years: just plain ignorant, easily manipulated by political leaders, guided by superstition, and usually kill anything in sight. Most of the lead actors are mere caricatures, no personalities or redeeming features and you'll probably despise the heroine, Nicole, who is portrayed as perfect. You're more likely to be entertained by an old B-film from American International than this sludge.

Allow me to be a little retrospective . The first book was a gem. Not often are there books which concentrate purely on the technological side and get away with little or no character development . The second was pleasing only towards the end although I found the need to explain life stories of characters profoundly irritating and often irrelevant . Who cares if Francesca is a slut ? I was hoping for a redemption of sorts in this third book but nope , didn't find it . If this book were set in an urban 20th century environment , it would be a mid-day soap opera with sex and drugs thrown in . As a science fiction novel , it somehow manages to discard most science . Maybe it was Lee's influence , maybe I just lost patience with the black and white characters . This book could have done with better characterisation , less politics , less pointless sex , less Shakespearen quotes and finally , a helluva lot more science fiction . Ultimately I was disappointed since I started reading this series with much enthusiasm and ended up flicking chapters just to see who would cark it next.

Overall, the book does not lack anything. It stays more or less true to its predecesor, Rama II. If any problem is to be mentioned, it is the seeming lack of faith that the authors have put in humanity. Though the appearance of "human evil" is no doubt neccesary for the final turn of events in the last book, Rama Revealed, after moving through a near dream-land of an "idealized" world to being faced with the stench of humanity in the end I was faced with a bit of a shock. Perhaps that was the idea. If it was, perhaps the authors should be applauded for it. It served as a good wake-up call of sorts.

The gradual revealing of the true purpose of Rama and the slow, guided tour of alien worlds offers a good guide for those looking to start writing their own works. Pleanty is left unanswered, but the desire to know what its all about will keep a person reading.

For anyone looking to buy this volume, a little advice: buy the last book together with it (Rama Revealed). If you've gotten this far through the series, you'll want to finish it off when you've finished this chapter.

This book is a mess. If you read RAMA you should avoid this book. Gentry Lee has the skill of a third rate romance writer. He plops in all the drama of a TV soap opera with abandon. How much did Arthur Clarke had to do with this? Who can say but not much since all that made RAMA such a good and interesting book is gone. Silly one dimensional people populate the book and keep doing cringe worthy things thorough. They would seem to be more at home on a NBC movie of the week then in a book like this. I was disappointed that someone could take a simple and classic book like RAMA and mess it up so badly. A shame really.

I enjoyed rendevous with rama, and therefore thought I would like this book. No such luck. The writing is really bad and the characters are one dimensional. About 50 pages into it I realized that around 30 pages were missing from the book. I put it down, disgusted, but not disappointed. I'm glad I didn't waste my time finishing it.

In the year 2200, a second of the alien spacecrafts designated "Rama" enters our solar system, sparking another expedition to try to learn the secrets of its mysterious purpose and origin. This book is the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's landmark First Contact novel Rendezvous with Rama, that showed an intrepid team of Earthmen exploring an apparently abandoned alien spacecraft that passes through our system. This is the second book in a series that will continue with The Gardens of Rama, and Rama Revealed. This time around Clarke is writing with NASA scientist Gentry Lee, whose knowledge of space engineering adds some details that the first novel had missed.

The first half of the book is fairly interesting, showing how the beautiful, ambitious, unscrupulous newscaster Francesca Sabatini manipulates the decision-makers who are nominally in charge of the racially, religiously, and nationally diverse expedition. Squared off against her is the heroine, Nicole des Jardins, the French-African Life Sciences Officer, who has secrets of her own. Once underway, a deadly accident causes a shift in the expedition's power structure. Then, once the remaining crew is aboard the Rama spacecraft, Clarke and Lee's scientific skills come to the fore, describing the peculiar features of this enormous vessel, and the seemingly inexplicable activities of the creatures (?) found within.

The second half functions as a more straightforward space adventure story, featuring Nicole des Jardins' perils aboard the Rama. All the intrigue gets lost in the excitement of wondering how Nicole will escape her doom on Rama, and while the resolution may be satisfactory enough for some, perhaps, it does require a good stretch of the imagination. Unfortunately, this book's ultimate conclusion really cuts the entire first half adrift, and the whole is less than satisfying. Perhaps the next volume, The Gardens of Rama, will once again pick up the plot threads that are left dangling in Rama II. One can hope so, at least, and the three-star rating reflects that expectation to a considerable extent, because without any further resolution this book would be very weak indeed.

I waited so long for this book, I had nearly forgotten what it was supposed to be about. Apparently the author did as well. The last half of the book is a haphazard collection of incidents with very little to do with any sort of plot, except to, perhaps, explain the title of the book - which by the way, ultimately had little to do with a consistent plot other than to kill off some inconvenient characters. Lee at least had enough sense to raise some questions that I as a reader needed to have answered, otherwise I would never have finished reading it. But he should have stopped raising the more complicated questions somewhere before the final section. Had he done so, he wouldn't have had to tie things up in such a neat, improbable little package in the final 3 chapters. Don't even get me started on thin character development, and an unhealthy tendency to insert a new life form merely to lengthen the novel as a whole. And as an atheist, I found being preached to on a regular basis rather insulting.

When Lee was co-credited for some of the Rama novels, I hoped I'd found a new author whose work could at least partially fill the void left by Clarke's declining output and the total loss of Asimov's. I'm afraid I'll have to look elsewhere, because I won't subject myself again to this kind of drivel.

Frankly, the 2 stars I gave this book are generous, but unfortunately, worse books than this exist and I needed to save room for them.

While reading Bright Messengers, the predecessor to Double Full Moon Night, I couldn't decide what to make of all the Rama series parallels. Did they reflect an inability to write a different story, or were they intentional? That question still hindered Double Full Moon Night until near the end, when I was genuinely surprised by a fully logical direct tie-in to the Rama story. Mr. Lee does well with action sequences and character development, but all the philosophical points that get raised are left up in the air. Perhaps he feels they were already (beautifully) answered in the Rama series, which I consider to be a true masterpiece of science fiction, fantasy, and literature in general. He would be right if this is why he didn't re-answer those questions of purpose, in that they were answered there, but he should have re-answered them so that these two books could stand on their own. For someone who did not read the Rama series, or does not read it soon after reading Bright Messengers and Double Full Moon Night, the ending to Mr. Lee's two books will be confusing and almost meaningless. Overall, this is a well-written book, but much of the Rama magic is missing. I have read the entire Rama series three times, and had more enthusiasm for it on the third reading than I had for Double Full Moon Night upon the first reading. I never re-read Double Full Moon Night; I sold it auction.

While reading Bright Messengers, I couldn't decide what to make of all the Rama series parallels. Did they reflect an inability to write a different story, or were they intentional? That question still hindered Double Full Moon Night until near the end, when I was genuinely surprised by a fully logical direct tie-in to the Rama story. Mr. Lee does well with action sequences and character development, but all the philosophical points that get raised are left up in the air. Perhaps he feels they were already (beautifully) answered in the Rama series, which I consider to be a true masterpiece of science fiction, fantasy, and literature in general. He would be right if this is why he didn't re-answer those questions of purpose, in that they were answered there, but he should have re-answered them so that these two books could stand on their own. For someone who did not read the Rama series, or does not read it soon after reading Bright Messengers and Double Full Moon Night, the ending to Mr. Lee's two books will be confusing and almost meaningless.

Gave up after 220 pages. Hidden plot, cardboard characters, disjointed storyline. Clarke must have had little to do with this yawner.

Having thoroughly enjoyed Clarke's solo works, especially Rendezvous with Rama, I thought I would give Cradle a shot as that story idea looked interesting. I would soon be disappointed however as I began sinking in the quicksand that is Gentry Lee. If you are looking for a really good science fiction book, you should pass on this one and continue your search.

The first few hundred pages are filled with more-or-less pointless character development, clearly written by Lee, that would be perfectly at home in a Harlequin romance novel. A few pages of sci-fi, clearly written by Clarke, are interspersed so that the reader may be reminded that they paid $6 for a Clarke novel and not $2 for a grocery store romance tome. To be fair, I will admit that the general character interaction and background does come into play later on. But it just drags on and on and is littered with unnecessary sex scenes. I fail to understand Lee's obsession with writing about sex in the middle of a science fiction novel. Once would be OK, but after about the 4th time I found myself dropping the book and thinking "again?!" In addition, Lee's obsession with race, with each character being introduced as being black, white, Arab, Mexican, etc. is very annoying. The way that the race is then portrayed in the most cliché way is increasingly so. Lee may be an able and accomplished scientist, but his writing does not belong on the same pages with that of Arthur C. Clarke.

For some reason, probably because I had paid 900 yen for the book, I decided to stick with it and see the story through to the end. Around page 250 (of 408 total) the book got interesting. From that point forward I found myself wanting to continue to see what would happen next. But 250 pages is a lot to plod through before hitting something worth reading. In the end, the book wasn't that bad. The story could have been rather good had Clarke gone at it alone and focused the book on the sci-fi. As is stands, the bulk of this novel has very little to do with! sci-fi. So all-in-all, Cradle disappoints. The back cover says basically that something terrifying lies at the bottom of the ocean and could mean the extinction of the human race. This whole concept lasts maybe a dozen or so pages at the end of the novel and is never terrifying. The "scary" part is introduced and resolved so quickly that there is hardly time to assimilate it. And as the final words were read, I found myself wondering if the duo had just grown tired of the story as it seemed to suddenly end with several issues unresolved.

I had a very hard time with this book. I was quite confused, as I had read the whole Rama series as they came out. While perusing lists for something to read, I came across Cradle.

The beginning vignette about the "zoo craft" was, IMHO, written moderately well, but as soon as Carol comes on the scene, it gets very, well, amatuerish. I even went back and reviewed the Rama books, thinking that maybe I had read them so long ago that maybe they [were bad] then, but no, alas, they were (mostly) well constructed plots, with characters with whom I could relate, and relatively few confusing sections. Rama (original) did seem quite different from the others, but that made sense, since Clarke did the original in 1979 (or so, I think), and Lee came on with Rama II.

The opening vignette in Cradle seemed as if it were written by a totally different author, then shipped across the sea to another author who finished the rest of the book.

Then, it dawned on me, Cradle was either a) Written by an amateur author (Gentry Lee), with very little involvement with Clarke, or b) written by an entirely different author than the Rama series, again with little Clarke influence.

The constant switching "mindpoints" (where in one paragraph you hear what Carol is thinking, then the very next sentence you hear what Nick is thinking) is a typical early "learning writer" syndrome. There is a lot of "telling" instead of "showing". The plot points are haphazardly structured throughout, with interesting tidbits thrown in here and there without an uberpurpose. I felt throughout the whole novel that it might not go anywhere, and sho-nuff, it really didn't.

In the Rama II and beyond series, these problems are significantly improved, and show levels of improvement over the evolution of the series. My hypothesis supported conclusion "A" above.

I thought it might just be me, and I was too critical (since I am learning about crafting novels and writing, and checking how well-written novels are crafted), so I looked on Amazon to see what others had said. A majority didn't rate this book well either, for reasons I primarily agree with.

I then looked at when the books came out, and realized that Cradle came out in 1989, Rama II in 1990, Garden in 1992, and Revealed in 1995.

So, my conclusion is that this is the work of an early, learning writer. I gave it a mercy 2 stars, not 1, because it is an early work, and (presumably) Lee has improved significantly, but I've certainly read better.