Francesca is viewed as beautiful, and, while needy - depending on her romantic relationship on Earth to an older guy or father figure - she is extremely intelligent.

He doesn't reveal the majority of his flaws until the sequels he has scars from his past, which he bottled up until he tells Nicole.

He builds robots which can be used for reconnaissance and which perform for entertainment, and he does this while being an affable, intelligent teammate. Richard Wakefield communicates with the alien intelligence which designed the ship indirectly, using his reasoning powers and coding skills, by hacking their computer interface.Might count as a Broken Ace if one counts her emotional entanglement with the prince which had aftereffects for much of her life. Her powers involved placating lions when young, and as an adult she uses them to escape a pit which would otherwise have been a death trap. As a young child, she gained mystical powers by going through the Poro ceremony - which she gained access to by being a Child of Two Worlds, as her mother is Senoufo and her father is French. She had an affair with the prince of the United Kingdom, then continued to raise her daughter and attend and graduate a cosmonaut academy, being chosen as life sciences officer on the only prepared expedition to Rama. In her youth in France, she almost won a beauty pageant but didn't because of (implied) racism. The Ace: Nicole, Richard, in their different ways, and then parts of the crew.Also, new alien species and their young, and the tension that results from attempting survival in a new and, surprisingly, already populated, environment. The book contain multiple character studies, two (or three) romances in space, and robots who perform Shakespeare with surprising human verisimilitude. POV character Nicole DesJardins is left with investigating a potential murder as the exploration continues and the team and Earth considers bringing them home. When they arrive on the craft however, things do not go well, due to unforeseen tensions among the human Party members themselves. Because the new spaceship was anticipated, a crew of humans, including some military personnel and some scientists, has been trained to perform reconnaissance. It covers the exploration of a new Rama craft, which appears after humanity has explored the first years earlier, and an ensuing crash and recovery of civilization has occurred.

Rama II is the sequel to the novel Rendezvous with Rama.

Les Jardins de Rama by Arthur C. Clarke