Hyperion je jedno z najzaujímavejších sci-fi, aké som kedy čítala, Pád Hyperionu je celkom obstojný cyberpunk, Endymion som dočítala len z úcty k autorovi. Úmorná space opera, prepchatá rozvláčnymi opismi. Od polovice som preskakovala odseky, ku koncu celé pasáže. Nebyť posledných sto strán, kde sa ako-tak niečo dialo, dám len jednu hviezdičku.

A ešte jedna vec: Jednotka nie je prvočíslo!

How do I know what I think until I see what I say? wrote some pre-Hegira writer. Precisely. I must see these things in order to know what to think of them.

Endymion begins with its POV character Raul Endymion, stuck in a prison that is to be where he dies, writing the events on this book in order to understand. His writings follow his rescue of the child Aenea, hunted by the church and accompanying her on a quest along with the android A. Bettik that has the trio following the river Tethys through farcaster portals and strange new worlds as they try to reach their destination.

I feel like this book had less action than the others focusing on the new worlds that the characters find themselves in, which was fine with me. There is such diversity in the worlds that Dan Simmons imagines and combined with his beautiful prose, it creates multiple stunning worlds I can visualize.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases, it will never
Pass into nothingness

Endymion had two POV characters, Raul and de Soya, the man the church has sent to capture the child. I found myself liking both characters, even though de Soya is considered "the bad guy". While he made some morally questionable decisions, Simmons has created such an extensive background for his characters that you can see why they act the way they do.

However I think the best part is that as the book progresses, de Soya begins to change as a result of his new experiences. Simmons did a great job creating a believable character, and de Soya quickly become a favorite.

There are a number of ethical gray areas tackled in this book, but it is done in a way that isn't off putting. It forces you to think, rather than forcing you what to think.

Looking forward to the last book in this series.

Cross posted at Kaora's Corner.

Cóż, dla mnie zdecydowanie słabsze niż obie książki Hyperiona. Za to dalej rozbudowanie świata jest ciekawe.

A tedious read with flat characters - one of them is this boring pedophile that yada yada through his narrative trying to convince us that he's not one all the while giving readers his observation of twelve years old bare flat chest and stuff-, uninteresting logistic listing and their cat and mouse space chase. Some sort of ace card pull by the end of the story that was supposed to knock one out but honestly just makes no sense. No tension, no mystery, nothing, basically a filler. Saving grace is the gorgeous architecture of River Tethys and the lavish worlds connected by it.

As I’ve written in my reviews of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons is trying to melt my brain.

After weeks of medical treatment and therapy I’ve recovered enough to be rolled out to a sunny spot in my wheel chair with a nurse to wipe the drool from my chin. Despite the doctors’ warnings about continued exposure to Hyperion, I’ve gone ahead and read the third book in the series, Endymion. While there are still monumentally big sci-fi ideas in this story, I think that my earlier encounters have allowed me to build up some resistance to Simmons. I got through this one and only went blind in my right eye and lost all sense of smell, but no coma this time.

It’s hard to summarize this without giving up too much away. It’s about 250 years after the events of the last book, and we’re introduced to Raul Endymion, a young man with a checkered job history who is saved from death by a familiar character. Raul is asked by this person to find and protect a young girl, Aenea, from the forces of the Catholic Church who want to capture her. Aenea had been sent forward in time via one of the Time Tombs on Hyperion and the Church wants her captured immediately for unknown reasons.

The Church seized political and military power by using the parasitic cruciforms (handily shaped like crosses) that can resurrect a person from death to offer everlasting life to those who toe the Church’s line. Raul had refused to bow to Church authority and accept the cruciform so he’s an outcast and seems like a good candidate to keep the mysterious Aenea out of their hands. However, the Church has sent the devout Father Captain Fredrico de Soya to capture the girl. With the help of the android A. Bettik and the intervention from the deadly entity known as the Shrike, Raul and Aenea escape and begin a journey between worlds that is supposed to enable her to fulfill the destiny the Church is terrified of.

This book is an interstellar chase story with the dedicated de Soya hot on the heels of the fugitives as they run from planet to planet. De Soya was one of my favorite parts of this book. He’s dedicated and loyal to the Church, but he’s also very decent man. He’s so committed to the hunt that he makes Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive look like a crybaby quitter. De Soya has an incredibly fast pursuit ship but every jaunt between worlds kills him and turns his body to jelly leaving his cruciform to resurrect him. It’s an incredibly dangerous and horrible experience, but de Soya doesn’t blink as he repeatedly turns himself into paste to get closer to Aenea.

There’s enough gooey sci-fi goodness like space travel, time travel, alien monsters, and cyborg killers to keep the most demanding geek fan boy happy. And all of this moves the overarching story of Hyperion towards it’s ultimate conclusion. I just hope I can live through the next book.

Rating: 8/10


Endymion is nothing at all like I expected the follow-up novel to be. It’s a very different story with focus on an entirely new cast of characters, but some old characters make a return and it feels very connected to the Hyperion books as it makes tons of references to previous characters and events, sheds new revelations about past details of lore, and re-visits several worlds which were mentioned in those original novels as well. It’s not the story I was expecting, and I was a little disappointed in not getting a direct sequel to the previous novels, but Endymion works great as its own epic Sci-Fi adventure novel and I enjoyed it.



Image: God's Grove (A planet within the WorldWeb)


[Pros]:

-I enjoyed the adventure aspect of exploring former Web-worlds and learning about those planets’ history, ecology, and geology

-The world-building is epic and the lore of this universe is expanded on much more

-Great new cast of characters which felt completely relatable, and I felt connected to them all

-Good pacing overall


[Cons]:

-There are some retcons that I didn’t like and I think weakens the previous books in the series

-Too many misdirects/fake-out deaths to the point where it becomes predictable and lessens the tension of the scene/chapter

-The ending was another cliffhanger, similar to Hyperion


*My Rating System*

5 Stars (9-10): Amazing
4 Stars (7-9): Really Good to Great
3 Stars (5-7): Average to Good
2 Stars (3-5): Bad to Mediocre
1 Star (1-3): Terrible

Notes:

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 vs listening.

- Great concepts, use of time travel, precognition affect/effect, twisty plot, etc.
- Enjoyed the contrasts of being on a planet/station/spaceship.
- Younger character made it possible to add a youthful wonder to various events.
- Loved the exploration aspect of learning a new environment (like being in zero-g in space or spatially controlled environment that could make a glob of water to swim in)
- Tampons were mentioned and I was thrown out of the story. LoL - What exactly would be the "normal" for females & menstrual cycles in the future?
- I find the religious/enemy aspect to be less obtuse than some of the things that are considered normal within the world. Like resurrections. Relatively easy idea to understand and how it's used but I wanted more about the effects of being resurrected. Good snippets about it are woven into the story but not in depth.
- I love the layers that are packed into the story. It's done in a manner where you get the pieces in isolated phases. Like the author dropped a few key words and give you story time to absorb before adding more to the web.
- Current fav out of the first three books in the series.

3 Stars

Unfortunately not as good as Hyperion. This was still entertaining but somehow I didn't really care for the characters, they felt flat and uninteressting. Also some parts were just boring (and I mean really boring). I just missed the endless tension and mysteries I was used to in this series.

You ever get those novels that just fucking provide endless consternation and cognitive dissonance when you're trying to slot them into one of the somewhat restrictive Goodreads rankings? Endymion is the biggest bastard of all of these kinds of books I occasionally experience. I honestly think that two-to-four rankings are the least fun to give out because when you're actually considering the book in the process of reading it and writing it up you have to work with it cerebrally and not on a visceral level. It's hard to be reasonable and measured while simultaneously looking at a work at length and not just saying shit like "it had good parts...but it also had bad parts" over and over again. Whereas with the one and five star books you can just go in with emotional guns fucking blazing and just be easily inspired to new levels of moon-eyed adulation or derisive, incendiary rhetoric and all that good stuff that we humans love.

See what I mean? I barely addressed the fucking book in my first paragraph! I don't want to talk about it. It's hard to say this without sounding haughty or pretentious but the first two Hyperion novels kind of transcended the usual sci-fi work. Sure, they had laser guns and brain-melting time travel and all that shit, but they also boasted the author's ability to examine huge themes like the importance of literature and poetry and humanity's fate in the far future WHILE BEING COMPULSORILY 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 sounds like I'm slighting the book right off the bat and maybe I am a tiny bit, but it just didn't have quite the same feeling and atmosphere of constant, simultaneous wonder and terror that the last two invoked during my experiences with them. I think this is mostly due to the fact that the story is basically a really long, entertaining chase scene. I mean...this is still Dan Simmons writing these so I'll take a long space chase in the Hyperion universe over most other books out there.

Just setting up the world and characters of the book to someone who didn't read the first two novels would be spoiling a ton of shit for them, so I'll avoid them 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 goddamn blue android--not the most human character to relate to, but that might be my problem and not Simmons'. I can't refrain from mentioning 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 whatever. Raul was an interesting and convincing narrative voice and I was on his side but he was not the most vivid or well-developed character, which was weird as we were inside his fucking brain 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 mixed with a kind of prescience, power or knowledge you would never, ever give to a child. Basically I liked Aenea but had to hold her at emotional arm's length because she, y'know...is the messianic daughter of one of the chosen human pilgrims and a goddamn cybrid with cryptic ties to the TechnoCore and the Void Which Binds.

I'm done with my complaints now, I think. 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 built is still endlessly fascinating just 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 look at the Shrike as kind of on the side of the good guys as opposed to 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 examine that shit 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 dude died in like fucking 60 BC and the title still exists and holds religious power post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment, post-"God is dead", post-sex-abuse-scandal why wouldn't there be a fucking Space Pope?

Against most other books I've read, this is a masterpiece of fiction. Against the previous two novels in the series, this was a disappointment. I just can't be happy with any kind of letup on the throttle because I was perfectly happy where I was at with Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. I've tasted the glory of Simmons' best and I can't be fully satisfied with anything less at this point because I know it's fucking out there, man, I've been there and I've seen it with my own two eyes. Anyone who knows what an avid fanboy I've been of this guy's work in the past knows that giving this less than five stars was a triumph of fucking will and something equatable to realizing you love one of your children just a little bit less than the others.* I just have to stay objective so as not to anger the Gods of amateur literary criticism, for they are merciless and ever-watchful.

*Okay, that's obviously not true. But it was still painful.

3.5 Stars

This felt like Catch me If you can set in space.

There were some really exciting parts throughout. Especially the finale which was very gripping and had poignant writing to finish things out. Unfortunately Dan Simmons wasn't able to catch the proverbial lightning in a bottle that the original Hyperion book manages. There are definitely high points and looking back it was quite an adventure and I love our merry band. There were just way too many long stretches where I was bored mainly the hard sci-fi, and the Para-catholic ruling body.

I plan on finishing out the series I do care where our friends are headed next and hoping book 4 can carry some of the momentum.

Boring. Seriously, how can someone write such an incredible first book and then go so horribly wrong from there? The pace is slow and bogged down and there is a ridiculous amount of time spent talking about packing and unpacking and preparing to go on a mission and preparing a trap. I think this is Simmons painful way of attempting to build suspense. It doesn't work. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of these characters, there was virtually no development. Revelations ocurred haphazardly and with no sense of discovery, people would just suddenly start spouting information with explanation of how they came by it or why they hadn't revealed it early. He creates these incredible worlds and spends no time really exploring them, and they are boiled down to simplistic nothingness. I think I'm done with Hyperion.

However I want to emphasize that the first book is still an amazing read and COMPLETELY worth reading. On its own.

Stop! If you've read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, stop there. The series does not continue. Pretend like these two books (endymion and rise of endymion) do not exist. On the other hand, if you haven't read hyperion, go read it. It's great. Really good. One of my favorite books. Amazing. But endymion takes a huge step down. After Fall of Hyperion, you're probably hungry for more, but trust me, it just has to stay that way. Some of the mysteries just have to be left as mysteries. Endymion and Rise of Endymion are not worth it. (But Hyperion is awesome.)