You could really tell that Clarke didn't care so much about his characters. It was somewhat refreshing, actually, to not have the book bogged-down too much with character development when there's this whole world to explore.

Too bad about Rama II, I was wondering if I should read it or not.

I'd also like to see some discussion on Blindsight eventually, we may have to do that one soon, since at least a few have already read it. I'm not so sure I got the same sense from Blindsight's intersocietal politics as you did, but there are some turns in there that I'm not so sure where they came from. But Blindsight's narrative has an important quality that you don't really get in Rama. In Rama, it's either a mystery or it has a plausible explanation that is almost certainly the right one. In Blindisght though, particularly with regards to motivations, the characters are guessing as best they can, but they get it wrong multiple times, and in the end you're not sure if they were right at all about anything. Then it turns out your narrator is prone to projection and has been mischracterizing the other characters. Too many authors encounter the problem of making this world full of mystery, but then they have their characters muse about these mysteries and just happen to solve them all while the author gently prods you saying "See, see? He's got it!" It's one of the great folly of all fiction, really. Watts fucks with that notion. You get the whole story through a filter, and he reminds you about it over and over. Were the aliens ever really even hostile or just self-defending? I'm not sure.