Die Hyperion-Gesänge by dan simmons

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

The opening half of this novel is so, so good, but the second is so, so not. I love the lived-in feeling of the world depicted, and the cornucopia of ideas and images. The stories are compelling (some more than others) and the pace is addictive.

Alas, Simmons is not in authorial command of the material. In a similar work, such as The Book of the New Sun, Wolfe keeps the narrative in hand until the very end, captivating with a blend of exoticism and horror, and the reading of the book becomes an experience. Hyperion goes off the rails once all the plot machinations start churning away. The ideas are interesting, but the story isn't.

I loved, loved, loved this book when it came out, but time has not been kind...to either me or the book.

0 0 Reply

MXNIC

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

This review and the stars relate more to The Fall of Hyperion than Hyperion itself. The book is a beautiful masterpiece, capturing characters with depth and events on a grand scale, and all written before the advent of the internet (datasphere). The second book doesn't have the same creative and structured storytelling of the first book, but covers a lot of ground while explaining most of the apparent mysticism from the first book. I don't know how Simmons manages to keep track of the huge universe he has painted for us, while interweaving gems of philosophical pondering, but I've not seen much in the way of scifi that captures the true epic-ness of space the way Simmons does.

0 0 Reply

IzzyMK

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

This was a vast space opera. 8.2-8.3/10

0 0 Reply

Darryldarryl127

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Kann ich nicht empfehlen. Wirr und schwer zu lesen. Es gibt einen klaren roten Pfaden aber der ist versteckt unter einem Berg von Nebensächlichkeiten. Die Grund Idee ist aber trotzdem gut. Nur schlecht ausgeführt

0 0 Reply

DrinkWorms

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

This is one of my favorite love story lines. I have even thought to name my first child Raul,,,that is if i ever put down a book long enough to make soem children LOL

0 0 Reply

Tsuyo_Tsuyo

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Be warned: there are some spoilers here...

I really enjoyed many aspects of the Hyperion Omnibus and would certainly recommend it to anyone, however (isn’t there always one of those?), it was a bit of an up and down experience for me. The Priest’s Tale was excellent, with its cruciform parasites and how the horror of them for a catholic drove Father Dure to do what he did, and I quite enjoyed how that plot thread was woven in later on. But balanced against that, what later seemed the proselytising of the C. S. Lewis kind, with a bit of L. Ron Hubbard thrown in for good measure, had me gagging. Apparently love is a fundamental basis of the universe, whilst god, being woven in at the Planc level, transcends time and is the triune entity of the Christians ... and lo the messiah is to be born!

The Soldier’s Tale with its violence, military technology, mysterious woman (and with Kassad’s yet to be explained encounter with the shrike as the mysterious woman) I much enjoyed too, though later on this was a plot thread that tended to fizzle. The Poet’s Tale, whilst still enjoyable, suffered from a problem I felt was endemic throughout the books: too much in the way of literary allusions and pretensions. How often I found myself skipping the obsessing about Keats and pointless quotations of poetry. There’s much about the power and wonder of poetry and poets, and the implication that isn’t the pen mightier than the sword? Yeah, well, take your Parker to your next sword fight and see how you get on. The Consul’s and The Detective’s Tales were great too, but by then I was starting to get anxious about the proliferation of ideas and plot threads and the possibility of this not completing.

The setting of Hyperion was excellent, with this whole story taking place under a sky lit by interstellar war, as was the interplay between the shrike pilgrims. The tree of thorns is a horrifying image that sticks, and the time tombs were the kind of idea just about any science fiction writer would be jealous of.

The shrike itself was good whilst only glimpsed, but suffered under close inspection. My feeling was that it started out as a monster from Dr Who and was not cured of the rubber mask syndrome by the later add-ons from Alien. And, now I’m reading Endymion, by its Terminator II transformation into a good guy.

There were lots of ideas and threads needing to be tied together in these books, and so they were, sometimes very well and sometimes in a kind of soapish babble. Simmons did manage to pull the rabbit out of the hat, but it had lost one ear and most of its fur during its stay. Still, don’t get me wrong, there are hours and hours of science fictional reading pleasure here. I in fact loved the whole massive chaotic canvas of this story which, really, wouldn’t have been possible without that mass of ideas and interweaving plot threads.

0 0 Reply

Kalayo

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Ein großartiger Science Fiction Roman - ich bin froh, ihn endlich gelesen zu haben. Das Buch ist keine "harte" Science Fiction und konzentriert sich daher nicht auf technische Beschreibungen und Ausführungen der erzählten Wirklichkeit, sondern zielt auf die großen Themen wie Gerechtigkeit, Rache, Liebe und den Sinn des Lebens ab. Die Figur des Shrikes und das Spiel mit abgefahrenen Orten wie den "Zeitgräbern", in denen Figuren aus Vergangenheit und Zukunft umherstreifen, finde ich wahnsinnig interessant. Empfehlung :).

0 0 Reply

JonasBraganca

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

I wish this had stuck to its more somber tonal guns in the final moments, but apart the ending leaning more saccharine, there are hundreds of pages of perfection here. Written in the 80s but feels like it predicted exactly what kind of sci-fi stories and style would permeate the culture for the following 30 years. A truly impressive work, with an instantly iconic antagonist in The Shrike.

0 0 Reply

Leave a Review

You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.

Hyperion Cantos #1-2

Die Hyperion-Gesänge

dan simmons joachim körber alastair reynolds

This edition

More editions

About the author

dan simmons

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews