The novel “Rama Revealed” by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee was published for the first time in 1993. It’s the sequel to “The Garden of Rama“.

Nicole des Jardins Wakefield is helped to escape the prison where she was locked up awaiting execution by her husband Richard and together with some other opponents of the Nakamura regime that holds absolute power in the human colony. The group takes refuge in the area of Rama where the aliens called octospiders live.

For Nicole, her family and her friends it’s a period which is very interesting for what they discover about various alien species but it’s not an easy situation. For some of them it’s difficult to live among aliens who have a lifestyle very different from that of humans and what they discover about what’s happening in Rama’s human colony adds further tension.

“Rama Revealed” is the third and last novel that forms a trilogy created by the collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee set in the same fictional universe of “Rendezvous with Rama”. In this works Clarke gave mostly ideas leaving the actual work of writing especially to his colleague even if on the book covers his name was written in a larger font for advertising reasons.

This novel begins right where “The Garden of Rama” ended because the two books together form a single big novel. Nevertheless, it begins with a great change of scenery since Nicole Des Jardins Wakefield’s escape moves the narrative focus to another area of the alien spaceship called Rama inhabited by alien species.

As if to make up for the triviality of the human colony’s story told in “The Garden of Rama”, the initial part of “Rama Revealed” deals with various alien species. In particular, Nicole and the other opponents of Nakamura’s regime get to know the aliens called octospiders.

In many ways, this is Richard Wakefield’s story with his studies of the aliens. There are long pages about the aliens’ physiology and life cycles. With a joke, I could say that this part of “Rama Revealed” looks like a novel by Arthur C. Clarke for the importance of the scientific element.

For the readers who appreciate hard science fiction, I think this part of the novel is the best in the Rama trilogy written by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee. At times the events related to the human colony are almost forgotten and the protagonists are immersed in an alien environment and in particular in the octospiders’ society.

Unfortunately, in “Rama Revealed” there’s a part that concerns the human colony and in my opinion its flaws are the same as in the previous book. The human beings’ decisions are driven by their lowest instincts and sometimes they’re obtuse in an absurd way, to say nothing of their xenophobia.

Most humans seem incapable of handling a relationship that is not hatred with alien species. Many don’t even try to have contact with aliens. The authors had the chance to do some reflection on humanity’s dark side and their relationship with the aliens were an excellent metaphor of the existing problems with other humans different for race, religion or any other arbitrary reason. However again everything was told in a trivial way.

What’s more, the colony’s story is in my opinion weakened by the fact that the dictator Nakamura is rarely present directly. What is supposed to be the main villain is often mentioned but actually appears very little while a well developed villain strengthens a story. On the other hand, when Nakamura appears he’s dressed as a shogun, the military dictator of the past centuries’ Japan, but in my opinion that makes him a pantomime villain weakening him even more.

“Rama Revealed” is the last novel in the Rama series credited to Arthur C. Clarke too. Instead, in the following years Gentry Lee wrote on his own two more novels set in the same fictional universe: “Bright Messengers” (1996) and “Double Full Moon Night” (2000). At least so far I haven’t found the courage to read them.

Overall, I found “Rama Revealed” full of ups and downs, an uneven novel that brings together many elements in a way that to me didn’t seem at all amalgamated to close the story. I recommend reading it only to those who read the previous books and want to know the end.