Rating: 
Summary: Half a book... Full price (exept with amazon discount) ;-)
Review: 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?
Rating: 
Summary: Sadly, it all falls apart at the end. . . .
Review: 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. . . .
Rating: 
Summary: Loved it
Review: It took a while but when I finally got into the book, it was truly captivating. Unlike others, I was not annoyed with Sister Bea. The story of her and Johann was a good one, tedious at parts. Does anyone else ever notice that religious folks of the future, particularly Catholics, seem to hearken back to the Middle Ages in dress, custom and manner. Toward the middle of the book they are taken in an alien craft and whisked to the stars. The action was riveting and not at all derivative of Rama. Too bad that the sequeal was the pits.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Effort, But Falls Short of Rama Quality
Review: If I had not read the Rama series, I would have been tempted to give this book 5 stars, although I probably would have resisted that temptation. The characters are well-written and fairly deep, and the plot is complicated yet coherent enough. What kept bothering me, though were the frequent parallels to the Rama books - parallel characters, parallel themes, and even parallel scenes. I could never decide if these parallels were stylistic and simply reflected the fact that Mr. Lee co-wrote the last three Rama books, if he was intentionally creating these parallels, or if he was just not original enough to really create a different story from the Rama story. If you have not read this book or the Rama series, I would advise you to read this one first, to avoid the overshadowing effect. I also found that, even though the characters were well-written, I had difficulty caring about any of them, except Sister Beatrice. Also, maybe I was dense at the time (or always), but I didn't realize that I was reading Part 1 of a sequel until almost the end, when I realized that nothing could get resolved in the fifty or so pages I had left. I hope the sequel answers my questions -- and is more original.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome! I can't wait for the sequel!
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: review
Review: fantastic book up to the very end. drops off at the end.
Rating: 
Summary: A frustrating waste of time and trees
Review: This book is ok during the first half. Interesting characters are facing mysterious happenings. Then the characters board a magic space shuttle to loonie-land, where bizarre and pointless (and eventually violent and sickening) things happen to them with no explanation whatsoever. And then... it ends abrubtly. Like the author was writing a high school term paper and just passed the minimum pages his teacher assigned, Lee throws a couple paragraphs of bizzarre happenings on the pile and says "To be continued..." I would read the sequel, but i have no hope that he will be any more likely to explain why the bizarre events happen than he was in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Insipid plot with page turning effect
Review: Just like watching a train wreck, I couldn't help but to finish reading this book. I read and enjoyed the RAMA books--more so earlier in the series before Gentry Lee really added TOO MUCH to the stories. By the end of this book I was really tired of "Sister Bea". She should have been named Sister Perfect. The characters were shallow despite the mountains of dialogue that was spewed. I found the book easy to read but I found little to no connection with the characters as they were 2D. Sister Beatrice was extremely annoying. When I completed reading this book, I was happy. No more Sister Bea.
Rating:
Summary: Grossly Disappointing
Review: Take all the best parts of this book and you end up with a c-grade short story, at best. Character development is 2-stars, sci-fi development is 1-star. Saddest of all, given the fact that Gentry Lee was so intimately involved in the Rama series, he absolutely dropped the ball. This was, without reservation, one of the worst books I have ever encountered.
Rating:
Summary: It's Just Not RAMA
Review: This work is loosely based upon the RAMA series of novels Gentry Lee co-authored with Arthur C. Clarke. Lee has boldly attempted to achieve something new within the RAMA universe, but the reader familiar with the earlier books will not forgive. The time of the Great Chaos is a superb backdrop but it is not enough of a parellel for the books to be considered part of the RAMA Universe. We never see RAMA or any of its inhabitants, just something similar. There is, however, an extraordinary scene aboard the spacecraft where the main characters are forced to endure a simulation of the Hiroshima bomb blast. Yes, it is a wonderful book with some wonderful elements, but in the end it is simply a poor attempt to copy the breathtaking feel of the original RAMA story.
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