Status Updates From Rama II (Rama, #2)

The help Nicole gets from the creatures within Rama seem to me a bit far fetched. Hitching a ride on the back of the centipede is okay, but the gift of food from the bird likes creatures is never explained. Also after she escaped the pit, Nicole seems to forget Takagishi.

The movement from despair to emerging hope. The mythic vision she has seems a bit out of. Large’s taste but there it is.

Richard Wakefield’s good luck gift to Nicole of his robot Prince Hal, Shakespeare’s most chivalrous figures is taking on more suggestions. And what about the drug she plans to take?

Alone, abandoned in an utterly alien structure Nicole prays. Again a sharp line between her character and that of Francesca. Also Richard Wakefield concern for her is becoming overt.

Crime seems to come from not overt acts of murderous evil but from self serving choices. The death of Commander Valeriy Borzov was not intentional he was just in the way of a desired spot. Francesca did not push Nicole into the pit, but she was happy to have the doctor and her suspicions eliminated.

Dr. Takagishi’s death in the midst of his desperate lone exploration of New York is a bit surprising. Nicole des Jardins desperate attempt to find him and her rebuff of Dr. Brown and Sabatini’s concern for their own credit is interesting. Revealing to them while they are out of range about her awareness of their secret media contracts was a mistake.

Classic literature quotes turn up throughout the text. Richard Wakefield, the British engineer’s hobby of miniature shakespearean robots allows the author to quote the Bard in critical moments. (1@8) Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s murderous ambitions play out before real crimes are revealed among the crew. Francesca Sabatini’s casual abortion suggests that her choice to “unsexherself.”

Shigeru Takagishi has also complicated things by drawing in the sympathetic life science ship’s doctor who helps him conceal that he has heart troubles. They manifest themselves in the last chapter. Because he had nothing to lose, he begins chapter 32 sneaking off to explore the area dubbed New New York. Gentry Lee has added an assortment of nuts to this tale!

Francesca Sabatini was raped by her stepfather and the seduced and became the seductive and dangerous woman she is.

Francesca Sabatini is revealed to be one of the conspirators who brought about the death of the commander along with Dr. Brown. The death was unintentional. Brown was just desperate to be in the first excursion into Rama, so the gave him the drug to create a False diagnosis of Appendicitis. The ship’s movement and the computer miss-programming continues the crime. Still Francesca Is revealed to be a real snake

Another death: the steady efficiency of the first expedition had been utterly derailed. However this death seems more like a terrible accident, something a hunting expedition might encounter when going after a lion. Only this time the lion is a biot that was being hunted and killed the young American journalist.