Another solid entry in the Hyperion Cantos. This story is set some centuries after the Fall of Hyperion which saw the destruction of the far caster network and is a different story from the that told in book one and two.
After the collapse and fall of the farcaster network and the AI Technocore - space travel is now limited to FTL travel (mostly)and the Hegemony does not survive. Replacing the old system of government is the "PAX" which is basically the old Roman Catholic Church who have somehow (one of the mysteries) managed to perfect the technology behind the cruciform parasites to be able to sustain perfect resurrections ie no genetic degradation as seen in the first two books. The PAX having a monopoly on the cruciforms have been able to rise to power by offering eternal life via the parasite.

Endymion is told by two POV characters - The first being Raul Endymion a Hyperion citizen who is sent on a quest by a thousand year old poet (guess who) to rescue and protect and transport a human messiah (Brawne Lamia's daughter) along the old Tethys river which ran through multiple planets via farcaster connection.
Pursuing them is the second POV character - PAX officer Fedirico De Soya commissioned by the Pope to stop them at any cost.

I found interesting and novel that one POV is told in the first person while the other is told in the third person.

I gave this only four stars instead of the 5 I gave to the first two books because most of the concepts in this book are already introduced in the first two books so the WOW impact of reading something new is not there to the extant it was in the first books. Having said that there are some new concepts and expansions of the old concepts which are very interesting for example the application and role of the cruciforms, The new government, some new technologies and some new revelations about the Techno core. And we also get to meet a few old (very old) friends from the previous books.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the fourth and final book in the series.

Loved this third book in the series, better than the second, and as good or better than the first. Dan Simmons writes world-building, expansive, far future science fiction like I enjoy, with quirky characters, humor, deep philosophical notions, and thrilling action in spots. The story is told in flashback mostly in first person, and settles into a character study between the three principals, Annea the precocious child, android A. Bettick, and Raul Endymion, our narrator. Simmons also uses omniscient narration for the other portions of the story, the religious/political intrigue, as pursuit of Annea, the developing super human, by Captain Father DeSoya and cohorts in the spaceship Raphael is ongoing throughout the story. I really enjoy Simmons' allusions to philosophy, poets, and other artists throughout. Of course, the terrifying Shrike are involved, especially toward 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. Looking forward to reading that next!

Pretty big letdown after the first 2 books in this series. This book had none of the tension, mystery or brilliant world-building of the first one and none of the complex military and political shenanigans of the second. The first half to 2/3 of this book was especially slow and although it picked up a bit towards the end still wasn't enough to redeem it. Hoping that the fourth book picks the series up again in a big way.

The start of this book was really frustrating and slow with lots of bad stuff being piled on the protagonist (in fact it reminded a bit of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ngYA... ) who I didn't really care about. His reactions to such terrible and unexpected events seemed underwhelming. Having read the Riyria prequels just before starting this I had been hoping for some Royce style fucking people up on a revenge mission but he pretty much completely forgot about the whole thing. This was a recurring them with the central characters of this book: They just didn't capture my interest or even sympathy. Aenea was a typical precocious 12 year old, Bettik boring as fuck and De Soya was equally dull and his complete devotion to the obviously shady Catholic Church was really frustrating.

The secondary characters were quite a bit better fortunately. This would have been a much better read if they had been more prominent. Silenus from the first books returned and was as foul-mouthed and ridiculous as ever. Cardinal Lourdusamy was a menacing presence when he appeared. Father Glaucus was a warm and sympathetic and the swole tunnel-dwelling midgets (you read that right) had a really intriguing and unique culture established.

Which brings me to world-building. I had really been looking forward to the world in this one. The world-building in the first 2 was among the most vivid and unique I've read and I was really looking forward to seeing how the events of the second book would effect the inter-planetary society that humanity had built.  I expected a cool Dark Ages type of set up with pockets of civilization struggling to survive after being isolated by the downfall of the farcasters, instead the rise of the Pax had pretty much restored society to what it was in the first 2 books  The only main addition was the Cruciforms from the first books becoming a key part of society. While I found this really creepy I was interested to see how the impact on a society of people being granted immortality would be shown. Surely birth-rates would sore to unmanageable levels? And there would be power struggles between people who had been in power for 200 years and the younger generations. But none of this was really shown.

Overall this was a pretty mediocre read, especially given the high bar established by the first 2 books. Hoping the standard will be picked up again for the series' conclusion.

Leído en 2001.
Simmons es reconocido sobre todo por esta saga, Hyperion. Alabada, reconocida y elevada al rango de "culto" la reconozco virtudes (originalidad sobre todo en ese monstruo evolutivo) que sin embargo no me llegaron a emocionar. Leí los trews primeros y no pasé de ahí. El IV le tengo en pendientes pero me da mucha pereza tener que re-leer los anteriores para retomar la historia.
A ver si leo algún comentario que me anime a hacerlo.

P.D. Del autor me quedo con su bilogía de Olympo.

I’ve read thousands of books in my lifetime, and hope to read thousands more. I sometimes joke I’ll have to live to 150 or so just to read the books I already own, not to mention the new books I keep on buying regardless of lack of shelf space. But of the many books I’ve read — and there have been many memorable ones, many that have literally changed my worldview — this series is shaping up to be at the top of my list of Most Memorable books of all time.

In this one, book 3, we meet an old friend, Martin Silenus, the only surviving (at least in this timeline) member of the Shrike Pilgrimage, now almost 1000 years old, thanks to anti-aging treatments. We also meet the Shrike again, although ***********SPOILER ALERT***********, it is on “our” side this time.

We also meet some wonderful new characters. Raul Endymion, a young man who is a native of Hyperion, a former soldier, who runs afoul of the powers-that-be, but is saved by Martin Silenus for a particular mission: to rescue Aenea, the young daughter of Brawne Lamia and the Keats cybrid, and keep her safe from capture by the Pax and the Church who have taken control of many of the former Web worlds. The whole storyline of the Pax and a new iteration, or new corruption, I would say, of the Catholic Church, is a fascinating one, and one that isn’t completely explored in this book. I have a feeling we’ll learn more about that in book 4.

An android named A. Bettik also accompanies Raul and Aenea on the interstellar trek whilst being chased by Pax officer and priest, Father Captain Federico de Soya, and his special 3-man squad of Swiss Guards. A. Bettik is a bit of an elusive character; we never see his POV and he doesn’t say much about his background. We do, however, see some of the POV of Father de Soya, who has been tasked by the Pope with capturing Aenea who allegedly poses a threat to the Church. Father de Soya is a wonderful and complex character and it is hinted we will learn much more about him in book 4.

I loved this book every bit as much as books 1 and 2 and am starting immediately (well, immediately as soon as I do a bit of housework) on book 4, The Rise of Endymion. I’m sure it’s going to be another wild ride!

The protagonist is put in charge of protecting a 12 year old girl but establishes that, in the future, these two characters fall in love and we are repeatedly reminded of this fact. There is an uncomfortable scene where the child is naked and swimming and it doesn’t matter if the protagonist says to himself “I’m not attracted to this!” I don’t know how else to interpret the scene other than that Simmons was attempting to create sexual tension, which is bizarre and inappropriate.

Other than that element of the story, Endymion is an okay adventure space fantasy. The world building is good, like the other two, and to see where this universe is at after the intense events of the last one after hundreds of years was really cool. It took an underutilized element, the cross shaped parasite that makes its host immortal known as the ‘cruciform’, and explored it, which I appreciated. The story is stylistically more conventional, I would describe it as more cinematic feeling. The story is a little more fun and lighter than the others as well. Point is, it is a different beast. While it is very much a sequel, it is not a necessary continuation of the first two.

I would recommend stopping at Fall of Hyperion. Endymion is missing most of what made the other two great. The mysticism, the weirdness, the literary-feel to it all. The references to mythology and poetry are more sparse feel more surface level. The plot doesn’t have the wild unpredictability. It’s all fine, it’s fun, but if the first of the series was like this, I wouldn’t continue it. I definitely am only going to continue on to the last novel out of my enjoyment of the first two.

Abyssmal. Should never have been written. Hyperion & Fall of Hyperion were magnificent; this and its companion book are examples of when an author should know when to quit.

I'm so impressed with how different the first three books of the Hyperion Cantos are. This installment was really an action/adventure story, set around 250 years after the events of the second book. This was full of great characters, including a protagonist I really enjoyed, and a prescient young girl (one of my favorite tropes is the prescient child trope), in a cat-and-mouse chase with a three dimensional antagonist. Throw in a great deal of interesting science fiction concepts introduced in the previous book and you get a really enjoyable book. Plus the Shrike, who is still one of my favorite mysterious characters I've met in literature.

"If there is a God, I thought, it’s a painkiller."
- Dan Simmons, Endymion

Enjoyed it, just not as much as Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. This is the equivalent of the Return of the Jedi for me. Still buzzing from the first two, but not as good as the first two either. There are certain parts I enjoyed and somethings that just seemed a bit overdone. I'll review more later.

Centuries after the events of n  The Fall of Hyperionn, and three and a half years after I read that book, Endymion takes place and I read it. I had actually forgotten that there was a book between this one and Hyperion; I described this as the second book in a series when friends asked me what I was reading. Oops! And it has been so long since I read the first two that my memories of the series were distant and vague.

That proved not as much of a barrier as I worried it would be. I’m still trying to figure out why I am so ambivalent towards Dan Simmons’ other work but loving the Hyperion Cantos. It isn’t the classical allusions—as much as I love the classics, that doesn’t work so much for me. But the books in this series are just so well constructed, characterized, and compelling in their depth and scope, that I’m happy to claim that this series represents some of the finest far-future space opera of the nineties.

It took me a little while to get a feel for Endymion. I wasn’t enjoying the introduction to Raul, his meeting with Martin Silenus, etc. Once Simmons introduces Father Captain de Soya and the hunt for Aenea, however, things pick up considerably. The way in which he cuts between the two perspectives of hunter and hunted works quite well. Ideally when an author does this, they manage to make you constantly yearn for both perspectives: just as it switches from Raul to de Soya we’re supposed to wonder how the fugitives will get out of their latest cliffhanger. I admit to some preference for de Soya’s story—but that’s mostly because I was so intrigued by the internal affairs of the Pax.

When we last saw the Pax, it was a growing political movement on Pacem—but now it has taken the place of the Hegemony in the former Web worlds. Thanks to the collapse of the fatline and data spheres, the Pax has an information monopoly that allows them to manipulate public perception (e.g., of things like the Ousters). Yet Simmons hints that, despite the piety implicit in Pax life, there are more sinister elements in the upper echelons of the Church. In Father Captain de Soya he creates a great antihero: sincere in his belief and devotion to God and the Church, de Soya nevertheless has enough independent thought to begin questioning when the facts stop adding up. He is an antagonist in the sense that he is working against our protagonists’ ends—but he is not a bad man or a villain by any means.

I didn’t really warm up to Raul. He’s not a bad character, in that he isn’t too whiny. He’s just not the type of main character I want to identify with too much … I never got any grasp on his personality beyond a sense of competence and occasional references to his grandmother. I found that I best enjoyed the chapters with him, Bettik, and Aenea touring the River Tethys if I ignored the overall plot and just focused on the dangers they faced on each planet.

These subplots turn Endymion from what could be a weak-but-sprawling space opera into a fluid-but-lengthy adventure story. The three fugitives face a new challenge on every world, always escaping by the skin of their teeth. Simmons finds the right balance between no exposition and too much as he reveals just enough to keep us guessing about the identities of those who are helping Aenea and their relationship to the Pax, which is so concerned with apprehending her. There are plenty of allusions to the events of the past two books—and I’d recommend reading them before reading this one—but by and large, Endymion is much more about Aenea’s personal development than wider galactic affairs.

She keeps referring to being guided towards an architect who can teach her. Simmons hints that Aenea will be a messiah, someone special with “powers.” Fortunately, he avoids the temptation of turning her into a creepy child who manifests those powers early. Aside from a psychic episode here or there, she has to rely on her own determination and resolve—plus the help from Raul and Bettik—to survive. I loved the moment where she pointed out that, from the moment she stepped from the Time Tombs, it has all been one “very long day” for her.

Endymion is long. But I actually like that about it. My weariness was sympathetic with the weariness the fugitives felt after their long journey, and with the weariness of de Soya and his minions for their constant deaths and resurrections. Simmons underscores how gallivanting through the galaxy is not a game for the merely human: space travel of any kind places demands on us that exceed what our bodies and minds evolved to handle. Though the TechnoCore’s role in this book is greatly reduced, Simmons reminds us that the existence of AI is a thorny existential issue for humanity.

In some ways, this book feels like filler between the conflicts begun in The Fall of Hyperion and what will hopefully be the resolution in The Rise of Endymion. I still enjoyed it, though, and heartily recommend it to those who read the first two books.

My reviews of the Hyperion Cantos:
← The Fall of Hyperion | The Rise of Endymion →

n  n

This was a GREAT piece of sci-fi. I loved the first two books of the Cantos, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, but was worried that the two Endymion ones would not capture the same crazy newness and crisp atmospheres of them. I was wrong because Endymion carries through on its promises to give us more insight into the Shrike (well, actually not that much), but especially into the world after the Fall. The New Catholic Church reminded me a bit of the Orange Bible in Dune and it was fun to see a return of the Inquisition (however terrifying). The resurrection tech was completely crazy and fun as well. But mostly, the ride along the farportals on the broken Tethys is what made this such a great read. I loved the principal characters, the action, the narrative pacing, and the hard sci-fi ideas. Truly excellent sci-fi!

Not unreadable, but a whole lot of dull after the depth, complexity, and scope of the first two books. Reads like 563 pages of largely uneventful prelude to the final installment. By the time Nemes enters the picture (a tantalizing yet ultimately under-used and anti-climatic inclusion), the book is all but over. And then it is over. And one wonders why about 500 extra pages were needed to set up the galaxy post-Fall, the role of the Church and it's connection to the TechnoCore (evident almost immediately for anyone with half a brain who devoted even a quarter of their diminutive gray matter to the previous book), and the foundation of our protagonists' relationship.

Not to mention the ill-used Shrike, once such a formidable force, even in threat, reduced to a handful of clumsy deus ex machina cameos. At least Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion made clever and even conscious use of such convenient plot interruptions.

Another thing that finally began to wear on me was Simmons' penchant for jumping between character perspectives. Done right, it's a fabulous tactic. Done as it is in this book, it's overkill. I approached the eye-rolling, sigh-inducing point toward the end of the book as I realized again and again that I was starting a new chapter only to re-hash the scene from the trio's perspective, say, or to relive the moment as viewed in fasttime by Nemes.

Overall, I think Simmons' future post-Hyperion suffers from the sudden and conspicuous absence of the TechnoCore threat. Previously, the Miltonian weight of the issues at hand was palpable. Now, 247 years after the supposed triumph of humanity, in a universe where the Church has sold its soul in a massive, perverse bargain of Faustian proportion (which is so tantalizing a morsel I can't believe Simmons handled it so sloppily)...a reader is supposed to care about trip itineraries and how adept Aenea is at folding a microtent?

If this is supposed to be the figurative and literal "calm before the storm", I don't think 563 pages needed to be devoted to it.

And I only hope The Rise of Endymion makes something of the potential squandered here.