I am truly amazed by the remarkable differences among the first three books of the Hyperion Cantos.

This particular installment is indeed an exciting action/adventure tale. It is set approximately 250 years after the events that took place in the second book.

The story is filled with wonderful characters. There is a protagonist whom I really relished, and a prescient young girl. The prescient child trope is one of my favorites. She engages in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase with a three-dimensional antagonist.

In addition, a great number of interesting science fiction concepts that were introduced in the previous book are incorporated, resulting in a truly enjoyable read.

Moreover, the Shrike, who remains one of my all-time favorite mysterious characters encountered in literature, adds an extra layer of intrigue and excitement to the story.

Overall, this book is a captivating and engaging addition to the Hyperion Cantos series.

4.0 Stars
I truly enjoyed this one to a much greater extent than I had initially anticipated, especially considering my rather lukewarm feelings towards the first two novels in the series. It's quite remarkable how this particular installment managed to turn things around for me. After reading it, I have come to the realization that I really need to go back and reread the entire series. This will give me a better understanding and a more comprehensive perspective of the overall story arc and character development. I'm excited to see how my perception of the series will change upon rereading. Stay tuned as I embark on this rereading journey and share my new thoughts and insights with you all.

A solid three, if not 3.5 stars.

It marks the beginning of a new and captivating tale.

After commencing this book, which is the third in a four-book set, I suspected that this "series" by Dan Simmons is actually composed of two, two-book sets. That is to say, books one and two form the first part of a series with excellent closure in book two. So, if one wishes to stop there, it is quite possible. While it is beneficial to have read books one and two prior to reading three and four, it is not an absolute necessity. All four books are set in the same universe or worlds, thus one can indeed refer to them as a series. However, books three and four tell a separate story.

Not unlike the historical fiction writer, Ken Follett, who has the ability to continue a series centuries after the first book.

"Endymion" takes our new characters on a journey down the lazy river. Have you ever visited a water park filled with all kinds of thrilling slides and attractions for your amusement? There is always that lazy river, where you can float along, bobbing your way around the park on a slow-moving stream of water, supported by an inflated tube or something similar. Such is the case for our characters as they flee from a threat. But as they raft the river, they are unexpectedly tossed into different worlds and various situations, constantly on the run. And the question of what they are running from becomes a central mystery.

Simmons once again delves into religion as his side muse.

This beginning tale does have a slightly slow middle part. However, if you manage to persevere through that, you'll find yourself eager to read book four. And so, off to #4,
  
The Rise of Endymion I go.

Neko sam kome fantastika bukvalno teče kroz vene. No, nije to naučna fantastika iz prostog razloga. Za mene, naučna fantastika nije istinska fantastika. Sve što se nalazi u njoj mi je realno i nešto što se već dešavalo ili što se dešava.

Na primer, dovoljno je samo što je Mars razaran termonuklearnim ratovima pre 6 miliona godina. Možemo samo zamisliti kakva su to razaranja bila, kakvi su bili ratovi i svemirski brodovi.

Istorija naše planete i galaksije je zanimljivija i luđa od bilo kog SF romana. Imam sreću što sam za ulazak u SF pročitao remek delo Artura Klarka - Kraj detinjstva.

Kakva je to knjigetina koja se zauvek pamti! Nakon pročitanog Točka vremena, osećao sam veliku prazninu, koju osećam i sada, verovatno zato što mi se čita taj serijal opet i nisam znao šta dalje.

Uzeo sam Hiperion i nije me oduševio. Neke fine priče, Štrajk Bog bola i tako to. Not great not terrible. Nije me oduševio Hiperion, zaista nije, iako sam silno to želeo.

Pad Hiperiona mi je dosta ozbiljnija knjiga, u kojoj se vidi Simonsova mašta i mnogo mi se više svidela.

Dođoh do Endimiona, gde dosta ljudi nije oduševljeno. Mene Endimion nije oduševio nego me je raspametio. Simons je jedan neverovatan pisac i skidam mu kapu za Endimion.

Toliko me je opčinila knjiga da sam juče čitao knjigu krišom, iako je cela kuća bila prepuna gostiju zbog slave. Šta više da kažem?

Oduševljen sam svakim slovom, svakom rečenicom ove knjige. I jedna je od retkih knjiga +600 strana a da ništa nije suvišno. Endimion je remek delo naučne fantastike.

Sa istovremenim osećajem tuge i radosti idemo na završni deo "Uspon Endimiona"!

Fall from grace but still not a bad book


I have an intense love, an absolute passion for the predecessors of this book, namely Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. In fact, you can simply cease reading this review and promptly go and devour those two masterpieces. They are truly among the finest works in the science fiction genre. Regrettably, Endymion failed to reach the same lofty standards. However, overall, it is not a terrible book. It commences extremely well, several hundred years later, presenting a great cast of characters and numerous callbacks to the previous two books. For the initial 20%, I was completely engrossed. But what began as a somewhat stagnant pacing ultimately deteriorated into a lackluster cat and mouse story that failed to resonate. There is an excessive amount of dead air in the book, with characters idling in a spaceship or simply lounging on a raft and chatting aimlessly. The McGuffin was insufficient to maintain my interest. Additionally, there were some rather cringe-worthy moments involving a 12-year-old girl that I truly disliked. For instance, why on earth would the narrator explicitly describe the nude body of a minor and then state that he is not attracted? It's just gross.


I don't envision myself reading the last book. I'll simply peruse a plot summary and call it a day. My conclusion here is that Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are must-reads. As for Endymion, you can either choose to read it or pass it by.


Here's my reviews for those two books:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Although it occurs centuries after The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion appears to commence immediately after the conclusion of the previous book. This is the third installment in Dan Simmons's "Hyperion Cantos." As it is the first book of a second duology, one could begin reading from this point, as the entire universe is more or less reintroduced. However, there are numerous references to events that transpired in the first two books, which are now part of the history in this one. Consequently, you will likely have the sensation of missing a great deal.

At the end of The Fall of Hyperion, the Hegemony of Man was in a state of decline due to the attack of the Ousters who were not actually Ousters but constructs of the TechnoCore. As Endymion commences, the Hegemony is a thing of the past, and human space is now ruled by the Pax. The Pax is a resurgent Holy Roman Catholic Church empowered by the cruciform parasites we encountered in Hyperion. These parasites enable anyone to recover from any injury and be resurrected from nearly any fatality. The Pax has discovered how to control them so that those who receive the cruciform are not transformed into mindless idiots, meaning that the Church now literally offers eternal life.

The child of Brawne Lamia and the cybrid Johnny Keats emerges from the Time Tombs, and the Pax perceives her as a threat to all of mankind, for reasons that remain unclear until the end. So, they dispatch starship captain Father-Captain de Soya to "retrieve" her. Meanwhile, that cantankerous old man Martin Silenus is still alive and kicking, and he enlists Raul Endymion, a native of the planet Hyperion who has had some difficulties with the Pax, to rescue her. As he tells Raul, he desires not only for Raul to save his god-daughter from the Pax but also to destroy the Pax, uncover what the superhuman artificial intelligences known as the TechnoCore have been up to in the past few centuries, and, oh, take down that enigmatic, invincible alien killing machine known as the Shrike. No problem.

Endymion alternates between the perspectives of Raul Endymion and Father-Captain de Soya, adversaries yet both ultimately good guys, albeit not always serving good ends. There is an abundance of interplanetary space opera drama and action, but for me, it did not truly become engaging until the final few chapters when the conspiracies began to be unveiled, and, of course, we finally witnessed the much-anticipated battle with the Shrike.

Like Hyperion, Endymion concludes very much on a "To be continued" note. Either of the two duologies can be read independently, but it is definitely advisable to read the first book of each first (and if you enjoy it, you will surely have to read the second).

I recommend reading the first two books first because, frankly, they are superior. Endymion is not bad, but it earns a solid 3.5 stars - it is a great epic space opera if you are a fan of the genre. However, while Simmons presented a wealth of exquisitely crafted worldbuilding with star-spanning conspiracies and multiple existential alien threats in Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, in this third book, there is not as much new content as there is building upon what he introduced previously. If you are a dedicated consumer of space opera, this is above average for the genre but falls short of greatness, and I truly believe that the series could have ended with Fall of Hyperion. Nevertheless, I will proceed to read the fourth and final volume.

In the distant year of 3126, within the 32nd century, in a secluded corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, some two-hundred-seventy-four years after the fall of the Hegemony Empire, a remarkable sequence of events unfolds. On the once-thriving planet Hyperion, where he was born, a young man named Raul Endymion is unjustly sentenced to death for a crime that was, in truth, an act of self-defense. Raul, a hunting guide, was understandably enraged when a wealthy and spoiled jerk, along with his friends, disobeyed safety rules, endangering not only him but also others. They fired wildly, missing the flying ducks but tragically killing his best friend, a four-legged animal, his beloved dog. In a fit of anger, Raul threw the idiot out of his boat and into the filthy swamp. Later, when the gunman sought revenge, Raul barely escaped with his own life. Instead, the would-be assassin was killed.

After a hasty and unfair kangaroo trial, Raul was convicted. The authorities on Hyperion, in need of the financial benefits that hunters bring from off-worlds, and having bribed the right people, faked his execution. The confused Raul Endymion awoke the day after his supposed execution and was taken to the deserted city of Endymion (named after his family).

Meanwhile, the famous poet Martin Silenus, who wrote the Cantos, now forbidden to be read by the new rulers, the Pax (greatly influenced by a new Christian Church), is still alive. Thanks to modern medicine, the 1,000-year-old poet has been preserved, although he looks rather awful, with wrinkles covering his whole body, a faint and weak voice, and unable to walk. He is like a living fossil from the distant past of the long-gone Earth. Martin has an impossible mission: to save his "niece" Aenea, the daughter of a late friend, from being eliminated by the Pax and the Church. The 12-year-old Aenea is some kind of enigmatic messiah who will pose a threat to them in the future. She is about to arrive at the Time Tombs, where the killing machine, the unstoppable Shrike, has its home. The Shrike has not been seen for centuries.

A flying carpet, straight out of an Arabian Nights fantasy, will prove to be of great help to Raul and his new companion, Silenus's former servant, the blue man A. Bettik. Well, he is partly human and still more human than many humanoids. However, a large and lethal Pax Army awaits the duo, as does the Shrike. Unbelievable carnage erupts in the Valley of Death, with thousands perishing. Miraculously, the three (now joined by Aenea) manage to flee in the vast confusion, through a "Farcaster" (an instant transportation apparatus). They then ride a small raft they built from planet to planet, traversing ice, desert, jungle, and even water worlds, always in search of the next farcaster to find. And the relentlessly pursuing Father Captain, Frederico de Soya of the Pax, never gives up in hunting them down. Wherever they go, he will follow, along the immense, endless, and treacherous River Tethys, on a long and perilous journey. Their unknown fate awaits, and still another menace lurks about. This is a terrific read and highly enjoyable for the adventurous crowd. Dan Simmons is a superb writer, and this series undeniably shows that fact.

Boring. Seriously, it's truly astonishing how someone could pen such an incredible first book and then take such a disastrous turn thereafter.

The pace of this subsequent work is agonizingly slow and gets bogged down in the most mundane details. There is an absurdly excessive amount of time dedicated to discussing packing and unpacking, preparing for a mission, and setting a trap. I suspect this is Simmons' rather painful attempt at building suspense, but alas, it fails miserably.

I simply couldn't force myself to invest any emotion in any of these characters. There is virtually no character development to speak of. Revelations occur in a haphazard manner, lacking any sense of discovery. People would just randomly start spouting information without any explanation of how they obtained it or why they hadn't disclosed it earlier.

He creates these truly remarkable worlds, yet spends precious little time truly exploring them. Instead, they are reduced to simplistic nothingness. I believe I'm finished with Hyperion.

However, I want to emphasize that the first book remains an amazing read and is COMPLETELY worth reading on its own merits. It stands alone as a literary gem, in stark contrast to the disappointment that follows.

Almost three centuries after the Fall of Hyperion, the Time Tombs open and Aenea, the child of Brawne Lamia and Johnny Keats, emerges. Alongside a former hunting guide named Raul Endymion and the android A. Bettik, Aenea embarks on a journey to fulfill her destiny as the one who teaches. However, the Pax has different plans. Will Aenea be able to reach her goal without being captured by Father Captain de Soya of the Pax?

With so many two-star reviews, I didn't anticipate any magic from Endymion. But to my surprise, I ended up enjoying it a great deal. Reading Endymion felt like rummaging through a box of old possessions that evoke fond memories yet have been forgotten. In this case, the memories include the hawking mat, the Consul's ship, the deactivated farcaster portals along the old river Tethys, and good old A. Bettik. And of course, there's The Shrike, who is still as efficient a killing machine as ever.

While not as mind-blowingly awesome as the first two books, Endymion was still an engaging read and didn't mar the memory of the previous installments. The former Web has changed significantly in the 274 years since the Fall of Hyperion. Without revealing too much, the Catholic church and the cruciforms have merged in a logical way to form the Pax, which has no intention of letting Aenea fulfill her destiny. This makes for a captivating story. Endymion, Aenea, and A. Bettik visit some exotic former Web worlds, endure numerous harrowing experiences, and end up in a position that sets the stage for the next book, Rise of Endymion.

As engaging as I found Aenea and her companions' travels on the raft, I was more intrigued by the bad guys, de Soya and the others. De Soya was efficient yet conflicted, and I almost found myself rooting for the poor cruciform-bearing bastard.

Don't let all the negative reviews deter you. All franchises tend to lose some momentum by the third installment. At least there were no Ewoks in it. For fans of the first two books, Endymion is a must-read!

I need to re-read this installment by print. The audiobook is great, but I had a stronger response to the story when I read parts of it compared to listening.

The story has great concepts. The use of time travel, precognition affect/effect, and a twisty plot make it really engaging. I also enjoyed the contrasts of being on a planet, station, or spaceship.

The younger character added a youthful wonder to various events. It was interesting to see how they experienced and reacted to different situations.

The exploration aspect of learning a new environment was also a highlight. For example, being in zero-g in space or a spatially controlled environment that could make a glob of water to swim in was really cool.

However, when tampons were mentioned, I was a bit thrown out of the story. I started wondering what exactly would be the "normal" for females and menstrual cycles in the future.

The religious/enemy aspect was less obtuse than some of the things that are considered normal within the world, like resurrections. It was relatively easy to understand the concept and how it was used, but I wanted more in-depth exploration of the effects of being resurrected.

Overall, I love the layers that are packed into the story. The author does a great job of presenting the pieces in isolated phases, giving the reader time to absorb before adding more to the web. This installment is currently my favorite out of the first three books in the series.

I absolutely loved this third book in the series. It was even better than the second one and just as good, if not better, than the first. Dan Simmons has a remarkable talent for creating world-building, expansive, and far future science fiction that truly captivates me. The story is filled with quirky characters, humorous moments, deep philosophical notions, and thrilling action in certain parts.

Mostly told in flashback and in the first person, the narrative delves into a character study between the three main characters: Annea, the precocious child; android A. Bettick; and Raul Endymion, our narrator. Simmons also employs omniscient narration for other portions of the story, such as the religious and political intrigue. The pursuit of Annea, the developing superhuman, by Captain Father DeSoya and his cohorts in the spaceship Raphael is a continuous thread throughout the story.

I truly appreciate Simmons' allusions to philosophy, poets, and other artists throughout the book. Of course, the terrifying Shrike makes an appearance, especially towards the end. The ending introduces a new female character, Nemes, who will be the centerpiece of the fourth and final book, The Rise of Endymion. I am really looking forward to reading that next!

You ever get those novels that just truly provide endless consternation and cognitive dissonance when you're trying to slot them into one of the somewhat restrictive Goodreads rankings?

Endymion is perhaps the most frustrating of all of these kinds of books I've come across. I seriously think that two-to-four rankings are the least enjoyable to give out. When you're actually considering the book while reading and writing about it, you have to engage with it intellectually rather than just on a visceral level. It's difficult to be reasonable and measured when looking at a work closely and not just keep saying things like "it had good parts...but it also had bad parts" repeatedly. Whereas with one and five-star books, you can just go in with your emotions running wild and be easily inspired to new heights of adoration or derisive, inflammatory rhetoric, all the good stuff that we humans love.

See what I mean? I hardly even addressed the actual book in my first paragraph! I don't really want to talk about it. It's hard to say this without sounding arrogant or pretentious, but the first two Hyperion novels kind of went beyond the typical sci-fi work. Sure, they had laser guns and mind-bending time travel and all that, but they also had the author's ability to explore huge themes like the importance of literature and poetry and humanity's fate in the far future while still being compulsively readable! Endymion is basically an adventure story set in the same universe as the previous books but taking place about three hundred years later. It might sound like I'm being too critical right from the start, and maybe I am a little, but it just didn't have the same feeling and atmosphere of constant, simultaneous wonder and terror that the last two books evoked in me. I think this is mostly because the story is basically a really long, entertaining chase scene. I mean, it's still Dan Simmons writing, so I'll take a long space chase in the Hyperion universe over most other books any day.

Just setting up the world and characters of the book for someone who didn't read the first two novels would be spoiling a lot for them, so I'll avoid that in this review. I will say that I didn't like the characters nearly as much as I did the ones in the previous books. To be honest, I probably liked de Soya and M. Bettik the most, and the latter is a blue android - not the most relatable human character, but that might be my issue and not Simmons'. I can't help but mention my still-favorite character from the books, Martin Silenus. I was so happy when he showed up, even if he did look like a terrifying life-support mummy or something. Raul was an interesting and convincing narrative voice, and I was on his side, but he wasn't the most vivid or well-developed character, which was strange considering we were in his head for half the book. Aenea was... well, I like to think that characters like these suffer from what I call St. Alia Syndrome, after Alia Atrides from Dune. It's kind of like the Scary Child trope from horror movies combined with a kind of prescience, power, or knowledge that you would never, ever give to a child. Basically, I liked Aenea but had to keep her at an emotional distance because, you know... she is the messianic daughter of one of the chosen human pilgrims and a cybrid with mysterious ties to the TechnoCore and the Void Which Binds.

I think I'm done with my complaints now. With the main disappointments out of the way, this is still a great book and has some of the coolest space opera action you can find. The universe Simmons has created is still endlessly fascinating to be in, and you get to revisit several of the epic planets from the previous novels. The Shrike is still the best/worst thing ever, so that hasn't changed either. It was also novel to see the Shrike as kind of on the side of the good guys instead of its usual kill-on-sight self. All of the religious stuff in this one is also extremely interesting and well-done. With Simmons, when he writes about potential futures for humanity, I don't just enjoy it in a "that's a cool idea" way, I actually examine it as if it has a real possibility or plausibility. I mean, who can really say that the Catholic Church has absolutely no chance of a long-lasting future? Considering that the Church considers St. Peter to be the first Pope and he died in like 60 BC and the title still exists and holds religious power after the Reformation, the Enlightenment, "God is dead", and the sex-abuse scandal, why wouldn't there be a Space Pope?

Compared to most other books I've read, this is a masterpiece of fiction. But compared to the previous two novels in the series, this was a disappointment. I just can't be happy with any kind of letup because I was perfectly content with Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. I've experienced the glory of Simmons' best work, and I can't be fully satisfied with anything less at this point because I know it's out there, man, I've been there and seen it with my own eyes. Anyone who knows how much of an avid fanboy I've been of this guy's work in the past knows that giving this less than five stars was a feat of will and something comparable to realizing you love one of your children just a little bit less than the others. *Okay, that's obviously not true. But it was still painful.