Such a disappointment after the first two books. Pages and pages of utter boringness that eventually just had me skip entire passages and pages. Nothing special is revealed in this book, after having so many questions and possible futures that the first two books offered. The vital information about the TechnoCore, the Ousters and Everything That Matters would come very scarcely and in, what seems, random babbling of Aenea between her random chores of setting up a camp site or brushing her hair. When ever asked to reveal ANYTHING about the bigger picture, the Why and How - her usual reply is just "oh, I don't know", "oh, I dreamt of it" bla bla bla - the usual crap we get from Simmons in this entire book, postponing all the important revelations for the last book in this series, The Rise of Endymion.
The Shrike, that very thread of the Hyperion book that had me turn page after page and finish reading the book in an instant, that very Shrike is a pure joke here.
The 600 pages could have easily been condensed into 150-200 pages.
Very, very disappointing, to the point that I'm hesitant to read the last book in the series.

The level of coincidence plus the foreknowledge of the messiah in this story, coupled with the incompetence at the side of the authorities (not to speak of the near unlimited power of the Shrike) make this book of travelling an interplanetary river surprisingly dull
Once again we ignored common sense

Endymion nearly got me into a reading slump in terms of all the attention for inventory, fleets, troops, weapons and logistics Dan Simmons has. And titular Endymion is not only boring and not very observant/sharp, but most of the times clueless and kind of useless as well...

Basically the premise of the book, focussing on a messiah and with a narrator locked up (and so clearly alive despite all the adventures) already takes a lot of tension away. Overtones of Dune with the understanding of the future (not to speak of the fat is evil in chapter 2) are also clear.

The world itself is interesting, after the events of the Hyperion books the Church has taken over the role of great power in the interstellar human empire, powered by resurrection Cruciforms. Salvation is real and physical, and with that the Church has a near endless grasp on its subjects, since this sacrament can be withheld. Still I do wonder why you execute people if they can be resurrected anyways. Note that death is still a hassle, comparable to heavy jetlag, with resurrection also sometimes failing.
Technological development has basically stalled (I didn’t recognize the tune, but it sounded classical, maybe 26th century), with a centuries old flying carpet having a central role. Still there rages a war with genetically enhanced Ousters on the fringes of space.

All these workings of the Pax and Church were for me actually quite interesting, but couldn't save the overall story in my view. Maybe it is also because Simmons his writing in this book is not as tight as I remember it from Ilum and Hyperion, with him using the word gossamer every other chapter. Also the level of coincidence plus foreknowledge of Anea combined with the seeming total incompetence at the side of the Pax authorities (not to speak of the near unlimited power of the Shrike who just pops up at seemingly random) make it hard to be invested in the river Tethys journey of the motley crew.

Also the size difference fixation of Endymion in comparison with Aenea (not to speak of the fact that there is a 15 year age difference and that the girl is 12) is rather icky.
Endymion realization every few chapters that he is a hero is also tiring. This is further compounded by the many what ifs and plan explanations, before events unfold, whereby the reader sees some things from three different angles, and sometimes even an additional flashback.

Somewhere Endymion thinks to himself: It’s easy to do, to rush this tale but Simmons clearly disagrees.

Near the end the pope turns out to be psychic and has visions, which he conveniently could have had earlier? On the same note, why wasn’t the ultra killer not been released earlier?
This all builds up in a rather weak plot twist at the end of this volume, with an underutilized kind of terminator and A. Bettik the android who has more emotional depth than our narrator Endymion.

Sorely disappointing and a lack of usage of interesting settings and worlds.

Terza parte della saga di Hyperion, ovvero la miglior saga fantastica che abbia mai letto.
Scritto magnificamente dalla prima all'ultima parola, zeppo di personaggi memorabili e di idee a dir poco geniali.
La Fantascienza al suo massimo.
E no, non sono d'accordo sul fatto che i seguiti non sarebbero all'altezza dei primi due volumi: Endymion e Il risveglio di Endymion devono essere letti per comprendere appieno le vicende e godere fino in fondo della smisurata inventiva di questo straordinario scrittore.
Non si può non adorare Raul Endymion, forse l'unico uomo comune (per non dire mediocre) rispetto alla immensa statura dei personaggi che popolano la saga.

Wow-I have a new favorite!

I truly loved this book all the way through. Have you ever read a book where right away you just knew you were going to love it, and tried to read it real slow so you could savor it? that was me with Endymion....

Here we follow the story of Aenea, the child of Hyperion characters John Keats and Brawnia...who we learn is destined to be a major prophet.

This is the story of how she managed to be 3 centuries into the future after the events of Fall of Hyperion, and her pilgrimage to Old Earth, as told by Raul Endymion, who will someday be her true love.

Although this is all a precursor to whatever destiny she will fulfill (I assume that is the story in Endymion Rising), this story bring new clues to some of the events and happenings of the first two Hyperion books, creates some beautiful new characters, and resolves the fates of some of the old ones.

Highly recommended!

I finally got to the second half of this amazing series!! I love me some Dan Simmons. Rich, epic world building, engaging storytelling, teaming with ideas, concepts and adventure. Loved reconnecting with the Hyperion universe. Not quite as engaging as Hyperion or as densely packed with ideas as Fall of Hyperion, but for me this is great continuation of a fantastic series. Can't wait to find out how this ends.

4.5 Stars

Listened to Audible. Victor Bevine did an excellent job.

Šī grāmatiņa ir Hyperion cikla trešā grāmata. Darbība norisinās 274 gadus pēc Hyperion aprakstītajiem notikumiem. Galvenais varonis Raul Endymion nodarbojas ar medību organizēšanu uz planētas Hyperion. Pasaule pēc hipertelpas portālu krišanas ir mainījusies, Hegemonijas vietā ir nācis Ordenis jeb nākotnes Romas katoļu baznīcas tiešie pēcnācēji. Spēkus Ordenim dod krustaforma (Cruciform), kas ļauj jebkuram īsteni ticīgajam augšāmcelties pēc nāves burtiskā nozīmē. Galvenajam varonim sanāk saķerties ar kādu no jaunajiem ticīgajiem un, apstākļu vadīts, viņš nonāk situācijā, kad viņam jākļūst par jaunās mesijas vārdā Aenea pavadoni.

Grāmata sarakstīta vēstījuma formā, galvenais vēstītājs ir pats Raul Endymion (uzvārds starp citu grieķu mitoloģijā sakrīt ar kāda aitu gana vārdu, arī grāmatas varonis bērnībā bija gājis ganos), kurš kā tāds Jēzus māceklis stāsta par savu dzīvi kopā ar mesiju. Tomēr, atšķirībā no evaņģēlijiem, šī grāmata mums atklāj jaunizcepto mesiju kā cilvēku nevis kā Dieva sūtni. Patiesībā jau arī nav nemaz skaidrs, ko tad īsti Aenea pārstāv. Un lai grāmatai būtu arī filozofiskāka noskaņa, daudz un dikti tiek spriests par mīlestības būtību.

Šī grāmata man šķita vairāk kā kosmiskā opera. Ir liels ceļojums cauri visai galaktikai, viens cilvēks tiek nostādīts pret Galaktisko Impēriju, arī impērija šajā cilvēkā saskata ienaidnieku un mobilizē visus resursus viņa iznīcināšanā. Šis cilvēks ir meitene vārdā Aenea, kas ir kibrīda un cilvēka hibrīds. Viņai sevī nes vecās kārtības iznīcību. Tad nu šādā sliktie pret labajiem dekorācijā noris visa grāmatas darbība. Darbība mums tiek parādīta gan no labo puses, gan no ļauno Ordeņa vajātāju puses. Kā jau labā kosmiskā operā pienākas pat ļaunie (šajā gadījumā Tēvs de Soya) sāk apsvērt savu rīcības pamatotību un nosveras labo pusē. Lai arī sižets šķiet visai banāls, un varētu pat teikt nekas oriģināls, tomēr spilgtie personāži to atdzīvina un padara interesantu.

Lieku 9 no 10 ballēm. Iesaku lasīt visiem.

Part of my 2020 Social Distancing Read-a-thon

3.5 stars

An interesting exploration of the nature of heroism. Raul becomes a reluctant hero, often plunging into things (sometimes literally) because he has been told that is his role. Would he have done all these things without that subtle coercion? Maybe.

I'm still kind of surprised at how many books set in the far future still include influential religions from Earth, especially the Catholic Church. I have The Sparrowand The Reality Dysfunction in mind. I'm far more interested by the survival of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in this future.

Book number 358 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project

Going into this, I kept telling myself that this book is not Hyperion. I don’t think I believed myself until about the halfway point and because of that, I was hate-reading. I also usually take breaks between books in a series to avoid burnout, which I didn’t do here. I was almost purposefully refusing to like any of the characters and actively hating the plot (don’t get me wrong they/it could be pretty bland at times). But somehow Simmons got me through it and it ended up being pretty great. I think his philosophical themes work, I think his world is one of the best I’ve read, and I think that even his characters have a way of making you love them, even when they can be stupid and boring. I subconsciously wanted to hate this and couldn’t.

- HYPERION ★★★★☆
- THE FALL OF HYPERION ★★★★★
- ENDYMION: I have very mixed feelings about this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the parts I liked and detested the parts I didn’t like. Right off the bat, it has one of the clumsiest kick-offs in any book I’ve ever read. It takes way too long to get going, while all Simmons does is set up what’s essentially a hero’s journey, only he’s too afraid to play it straight and so wraps it in layers and layers of self-deprecating self-aware nonsense. In fact, at this point in the saga Simmons seems to have developed a strange fear of not being original enough, so his clichés (which, be warned, are back with a vengeance) are now always delivered with awkward justifications, along the lines of “I know this sounds like something that might happen in a bad movie, but…”. Honestly, I preferred the clichés played straight. This new approach just confuses me. In this book we accompany three of the most boring and uninteresting characters in the entire saga on an interplanetary cat-and-mouse chase, which, at its worst, reminded me of the dated goofiness of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Raul Endymion is a sorry excuse for a protagonist. His eclectic resume reads like the backstories Dwayne The Rock Johnson’s characters get assigned in action thrillers to conveniently justify why he knows how to fly a helicopter, pick a lock, hack a satellite and build IKEA furniture. I rooted a lot more for their persecutor, Father Captain De Soya, one of the saga’s more complex and interesting characters. Anyway, things do eventually pick up. Simmons is still the same old Idea Lunatic and he’s far from being out of ammo. The adventure on Sol Draconi Septem ranks high among my favourite moments in the saga. ★★★☆☆
- THE RISE OF ENDYMION ★★★☆☆

Occasionally, I encounter this idea that a large – maybe even a majority – slice of science fiction media involves immature stories that focus heavily on pew pew lasers, explosions, and sex with attractive alien women (Darth Talon, Liara). For example, Ted Chiang says that Star Wars forever made the genre synonymous with “adventure stories dressed up in lasers.” Or, as another example, NPR Book’s review of Ancillary Justice read, "If you don't know the Ancillary series by now, you probably should. Ann Leckie's sociopolitical space opera almost singlehandedly breathed new cool into the stereotype of spaceships trundling through far-off systems amid laser battles." In other words, there’s a perception that much of science fiction is aimed primarily at teenage boys, who are supposedly largely interested in action and sex.

For the sake of focus, I’ll not dispute that claim in its entirety (though in my experience every part of it is more often untrue than true), but when I see this claim applied to science fiction LITERATURE, I become truly confused.

Cause, um, what in the nine hells are these people talking about?? I’ve never read a science fiction novel or short story that was more focused on pew pew lasers or xeno-copulation than on sociology / science / technology / culture / ideas. Have you? Even YA sci-fi like Ender’s Game is far more interested in the psychology of a young genius or children in general than in space battles.

More to the point, though, this entire dichotomy – adventure story OR science / depth / complexity / ideas – represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how science fiction operates. It uses the Trojan horse technique of hooking readers with a good story, so it can explore less immediately thrilling but ultimately more interesting complex science and societal concepts. Sci-fi is one of the few genres in which we get to have – and indeed must have – both the adventure AND the depth. To quote from Analog magazine’s submission page: “[Science fiction stories are those] in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse. Try to picture Mary Shelley's Frankenstein without the science and you'll see what I mean. No story!”

Well, Endymion is a perfect example of how adventure and ideas combine to form science fiction.

Now, yes, just to get it out of the way, I’ll add to that chorus of reviewers stating it’s not as good as Hyperion, but since Hyperion is one of the best science fiction books ever written, this is a bit like saying, “This ruby isn’t as good as this diamond.”

Cause Endymion is a real gem. It has everything I want and expect from my science fiction. It’s got romance (albeit a weird Lolita-esque version that I’ll talk more about in my sequel review). It’s got fantastical settings, from jungle planets with mysterious ruins to ocean planets with massive sea monsters to high-gravity frozen planets populated by yetis & ice wyrms. It’s got a flying carpet, prophecies and mysteries, a blue-skinned android, FTL travel, space marines, awesome battles, the return of the Shrike creature, dastardly villains, and more. In short, it’s unmistakably an ADVENTURE. Reading it is a bloody good time!

But to dismiss Endymion on those grounds would be to ignore its thematic foundations of religion, time, death, belief, love, space, and AI.

In Endymion, the relatively liberal values of the Hegemony have been replaced by more conservative anti-science, xenophobic ones – as one might expect given the catastrophic collapse of civilization at the end of Hyperion. The Catholic religion is back in a big way, and the primary means of their ascension is the adoption of the “sacrament” of the cruciform organism which grants immortality to all wearers. The pope (Father Lenar Hoyt from Hyperion) has died, revived, and been re-elected over and over. Meanwhile, the protagonist, one Raul Endymion, is recruited by our favorite poet Martin Silenus to meet a supposed savior, who has jumped forward some 250 years into the future via anti-entropic fields. And of course, lurking in the shadows and occasionally coming back into the light, is the AI TechnoCore. In fact, humanity’s interactions with the AI TechnoCore form the very basis of the plot, just as they did with Hyperion.

This is especially interesting to me because I’ve lately come to believe that the development and ethics of AI is the single most important topic for humanity. If I made the claim that by 2100, humanity will either be extinct or immortal, you might scoff and think I’m being wildly optimistic. You might think I’m committing the same sort of error that Back to the Future made by predicting flying cars and hoverboards by 2015. Well you’d be wrong. The 2100 date is conservative. The median expert guess at when we will develop an ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is about 2060. After which, it won’t be long until we’re either immortal (likely in machine or software form) or extinct.

Let me explain: if Moore’s Law holds true (and it has so far), then by 2025 a cpu that matches the computational power of the human brain will be available for a relatively inexpensive price. If we’re conservative, we might say it’ll take 25 years after that (at which point our CPUs will be insanely powerful) until we’ve sufficiently understood the human brain in order to make our first Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Once that happens, however, we enter a realm in which it’s no longer the HUMAN beings who will be improving the AI, but the AI itself. And as the AI gets smarter, the quicker it will be able to upgrade itself (which is also how human society works – this is called an accelerated rate of change and the recent US election shows how troublesome this is, since human institutions & corresponding values / morals are MUCH slower to change than technology). Soon after that, the AGI will become an ASI, which will be to us, like we are to ants. It will possess God-like powers, wielded with unfathomable motivations. [If you're interested in AI topics, see my reviews for Bostrom's Superintelligence, Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, and James Barrat's Our Final Invention].

Depending on how we introduce that ASI, it will either help us immensely or it’ll erase us from existence.

While most agree that the latter option is definitely bad, the prospect of immortality wouldn’t necessarily be well-received either. Regardless, it’s important for us to begin introducing real AI (not the anthropomorphized Hollywood version) into the collective societal consciousness now. We need politicians to begin considering what their stances will be on AI issues. We need our children (and future scientists) to begin processing the idea of artificial intelligence, robot psychology, and the pros/cons of immortality. And of course, the dangers of ASI – which meet and exceed the dangers posed by global warming & nuclear weapon proliferation – need to be a part of our conversation now because work that may/will lead to such a creature is happening NOW.

And those are only future concerns! There’s plenty of AI-related issues to deal with right now. There exists a hedge fund that is entirely controlled by AI. Is that fair or wise? [See Nick Wolven’s short story: On the Night of the Robo-bulls and Zombie Dancers]. How about the current loss of manufacturing jobs to automation? Ignorance about that issue (that is, many people falsely believe manufacturing job loss is more a result of globalization than of mechanization) changed the course of an election, which in turn will likely change the American political and moral landscape for the next fifty years.

So there’s a lot of great ideas in Endymion, which fills the spaces between its adventure set-pieces with moments of discussion and reflection. It strikes a wonderful balance between depth and plot, and I heartily enjoyed it. Perhaps more importantly, it made me EXCITED to explore both new sci-fi stories and non-fiction on AI and indeed excited about the possibilities of adventure and science in the future. What more can a sci-fi reader ask for?

This third book in the Hyperion Cantos series takes places a few hundred years after the dramatic final events told in The Fall of Hyperion. With the large time lapse it is perhaps no surprise that only a few familiar faces from the first duology remain. This book focuses on the story of Aenea, the child of Brawne Lamia and the John Keats cybrid, and her traveling companions as she seeks to travel to an unknown destination and evade the capture of those who seek her end.

It was an entertaining enough story. Raul and Aenea both proved to be interesting and likable characters. I found Father De Soya to be a bit less likable a character, but his POV segments remained interesting. Simmons Hyperion Universe is a well crafted one and it was easy to slip right back into it and observe how things have changed and evolved over the course of the centuries between the second and third book. I was glad to see Simmons expand on some interesting aspects of the earlier books that I felt were underutilized.

This was an engaging read for the most part, but it did suffer from the odd dull spot. That said, I felt the first couple of books in the series suffered from similar dull spots. The plot was possible a little less layered and complex than the earlier novels, but there are plenty of hints that will change in the final book.

I've got to admit that some of the late happenings in this one only confirmed my suspicions that Dan Simmons is a massive fan of the Terminator movies!

Rating: 4 stars.

Audio Note: Victor Bevine again did a good job narrating the audio.

This is a disappointing fall for Dan Simmons.

Endymion is a tedious and ultimately pointless sci-fi chase novel that recycles rather than expands the concepts from Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. Simmons starts by resetting the environment: it is 247 years later, and the reader no longer knows anything about anything. A bunch of travellers have to go on another journey of even more obscure purpose because one of them has "dreams", a completely unexplained plot contrivance. They are pursued by a new and one-dimensional galaxy-spanning organisation modelled on the Catholic church (how original). I would describe it as a story detached from Hyperion, but I can't say for sure because it ends before anything happens, but not before subjecting me to an extended dreary travelogue that gave me flashbacks to Tad William's idiotic Otherland series and the late Robert Jordan's excruciatingly described, neverending Wheel of Time treks.

I found the characters incredibly annoying: the narrator is not only ineffectual, he is prone to fits of hyperbole and enervating navel-gazing; the heroine is a badly sketched teenager who attracts dei ex machina like flies; and the pursuer is one of those annoyingly naive idealists, despite the fact he is supposed to be a hardened soldier and an implacable foe. The Shrike, once a figure of dread and horror, is trotted out whenever the protagonists get themselves into trouble as a kind of plot-crowbar, and in a dunderheaded reversal, the invincible killing-machine works to help them out of tight spots.

Hyperion worked as a partial story because of the interesting concepts and the steady revelation of the setting and situation. In Endymion, there are but a handful of new concepts and almost no movement in the derivative and contrived storyline. We've seen it all before, and better executed besides.

Simmons has a tendency to tell rather than demonstrate; it's a problem prevalent and harder to avoid in the genre, but when he says that the Pax is far more powerful than the Hegemony, I can't help but compare those few words with the scale and scope of the entity that had been sketched over two books, and shake my head. Another common sci-fi problem present here is the needless technicality of his metaphors; non-technical situations are described via science-heavy references that break the flow of prose.

The only reason to read Endymion would be to get to The Rise of Endymion; unfortunately this is like jumping into the frying pan in order to jump in the fire, as the final book is just as bad. Stop after the Fall of Hyperion and think of the Endymion books as juvenile non-canon fanfiction.