"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever"

Non ricordavo quello splendore interno alla scrittura di Simmons.
Non ricordavo quell’emozione luminosa, infusa di poesia, intelligenza, empatia che ti afferra dal bordo di una frase.
Non ricordavo i colori dei mondi della rete, una celebrazione galattica dell’Holi festival, la mole regale delle sequoie templari o la grazia degli sciami Ouster.
Ricordavo il respiro epico, l’armonia legante, l’equilibrio dei piani narrativi.
Solo l’emozione si era dispersa nel tempo.
Tornare, e ritrovare ogni cosa intatta, è stato bellissimo.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

da Endymion - John Keats

I've really enjoyed this novel. I have no reservations in awarding it five stars. I can't find anything to criticise about the book. It's really well written, has excellent characters, has an excellent plot which is intricate and has exciting twists and turns. The Hyperion Cantos universe created by Dan Simmons is a place I never want to leave when I'm there. Reading these wonderful amazing books make me feel like I'm actually there which only the best fiction can do. For me, these books are absolutely unforgettable, the scope and imagination is staggering. The characters are three dimensional, they live and breathe within the novel.
I'll end by saying this, WOW!

4.75 ⭐️

I loved, loved, loved Hyperion. It topped my top ten list the year I read it. I was just blown away by absolutely every part of it. Then I read the second book, and it was much less audacious , but still just so damned good that I was entirely enthralled, and occasionally, creeped out. Now I finally make my slow way to the third book, and now I'm not quite as enthusiastic. It's still good, but it's not as good. It's not the writing or the characters that's the problem, it's the plot.

Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

There are quite a lot of reviews of "Endymion", that tend to emphasize that this book "is very different". With all due respect, I have to disagree. As usual, I want to keep my review spoiler-free and that means I have to be very vague about the reasons why I disagree. So be it.

Yes, of course there are different characters, the timeline of Endymion is some 250-300 years after "The Fall of Hyperion", so it shouldn't be a big surprise. What is a big surprise, is that a few of characters from, lets call it a first duology, make a comeback. Some have a more prominent role, others are just mentioned, but the fact remains - it's not a total shake-up.

Hyperion is familiar and exists. Other planets are familiar and exist. The enemies are familiar and exist. Damn, even The Shrike is familiar and exists. The style, the pacing, the different points of view - they all are familiar and exist. So yeah, I really can't say that the book is very different.

As always, the better the book is, the less I have to say about it. And this book is very, very good. It kept me glued to it. I even read it while my beloved Juventus played a match and that is a strong statement, given I just don't miss Juve's matches without some very serious reasons. Ok, ok, I DID watch the first half and the match was effectively over after it already, but still.

5* without any doubt and I just can't wait to know how it all ends.

I'm sorry, resto de mis libros pendientes, pero necesito saber cómo termina todo.

If I hadn't already read (and been blown away by) the first two books in this series earlier this year, I would have been very impressed with this book. But as it is, even though it is very good and exciting and has great characters and poignant themes and hints at even more to come, it pales when compared to the complexity and madcap storytelling of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. Those two books were chock full of stories and characters and layers of meaning, and there were about five to six plots going on at once that all tied together into one big plot, and the whole thing comes together in this beautiful symphony of words. Here, there are two main story threads, and they go together like a normal book, and there is only one plot, which is still pretty great and complex and makes you think, but still . . . in comparison. It's just . . . not what I've been trained to expect from Simmons.

Also, you can't read this book without reading its sequel. You just can't. The story is not done when this book is done, even though it has an ending. But it's ending is just an ending to what was going on in this book, and not the end of the overarching story of this duology, and of the four books as a whole.

Endymion actually picks up 300 years after The Fall of Hyperion, so I guess technically you don't have to read the first two books in the series* if you're curious, but I really wouldn't recommend it. Due to time travel fuckery, the twelve year old daughter of Brawne Lamia (a pilgrim from the first two books) has arrived in the present day, and a galactic conflict has broken out over her presence. Due to mysterious REASONS, she is important. As in, the fate of the galaxy rests on her shoulders. This is why two men follow her fate.

The first is Raul Endymion, who gets a first person POV in his sections. Raul is contracted to protect Aenea (as she calls herself) and help her to achieve her goals. They are accompanied by A. Bettik, a 600 year old android, and occasionally, the terrifying Shrike, who has left the planet Hyperion for the first time in living memory. The second man is Father Captain Federico de Soya. He is a priest for the Catholic church, which is now a galaxy wide empire. The church gained its power back in the 300 years since the first two books, largely due to the cruciform parasite which provides literal eternal life to its bearers. Father de Soya has been charged with tracking down Aenea at any cost and turning her over to the church.

*Although, maybe it would work? This book is so much simpler than those it might hook your interest. The only problem is, you'd be totally spoiled for the first two books. Anyway, it's not ideal.

The dual POVs really worked here. Simmons juggled them nicely so as to maximize the tension in the story. I also thought he did a great job with de Soya, who could have been a disastrous villainous character. Instead, he's a complex but ultimately sympathetic guy who is simply caught up in events beyond his control. His story is also responsible for some bone-chilling body horror. What he sacrifices in the name of his belief is staggering. There were parts where I felt Simmons went on too much about certain events, lingered too long in POVs, and it felt like filler. As mentioned above, the previous books were so chock full of STUFF that filler wasn't necessary. Here, it felt like with only two POV characters to worry about, Simmons overcompensated.

Regardless, this is top notch science fiction, people. It just doesn't quite meet the standards set by its own predecessors. Can't wait to read the last book later this year. (I think I'm going to save it for Thanksgiving so I can have days of uninterrupted reading.)

4.0 Stars
I enjoyed this one so much more than I expected after my lukewarm feelings on thenfirst two novels. I need to reread and rereview this series. Stay tuned.

This book was a disappointment after Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. It started off okay, but then turned into a never-ending series of scenes where bad guys chase good guys from one planet to the next. Not much else ever happened. I felt like Dan Simmons just wanted to show off the different worlds that he created. There were none of the complications to the plot that I had seen in the Hyperion books. The prophecy aspect of the story also didn't work for me. Aenea knows of some things that will happen, is fuzzy on others, but then, inconveniently enough, doesn't know what will happen on the planet of God's Grove. The logic of her foreknowledge was inconsistent and annoyed me. The characters were okay, but I also thought it odd that the real antagonist didn't appear until very close to the end. I listened to this as an audiobook and I had an interruption in my listening due to device difficulties, but even trying to take that into account, this book really didn't work for me.

Oh, I like this series.

After having re-read the superlative original Hyperion Cantos recently, I was saddled with the thought that nothing afterward could possibly match the quality and lyricism or the sheer gorgeousness of story, worldbuilding, or character.

Alas, this still remains true after reading book three, taking place over 250 years after the events that irrevocably transformed the known universe at the end of Fall of Hyperion.

HOWEVER, this is not a lament for Endymion. Indeed, comparing it to just about any modern SF adventure, most will come up very short against the standards shown here. No, there is not a Canterbury Tales stylization. There is, however, a fabulous quest given to a new hero by the mentor Martin Selenus (the poet of old who wrote the original Cantos) that tasks Raul Endymion with nothing less than truly impossible tasks, such as helping a girl that is truly out of time, finding and returning the old destroyed Earth to its rightful place, and toppling the religious empire that has taken over the old hegemony with its promise of cruciform immortality.

Small tasks, those. And there's no reason to think he could ever accomplish one of them. The stakes are too high and the enemies amazingly implacable. Federico de Soya is one of the most amazing antagonists I've ever read, right up there with Captain Ahab, only that captain never had to undergo quite this much jellification.

Truly, no review can do this novel justice. It is an adventure, plain and simple, and is so rich with location, location, location, that it is a pure treat for the imagination. It revisits and deepens the events from the previous books, but more than builds upon them, too, painting pictures I will never unsee. Of course, the interesting chase through all the old worlds is done in very cool ways, both varied and clever, and I'll never forget how a twelve-year-old girl stands up to an entire fleet and outsmarts them not just one time, but several. The escapes are brilliant.


No, this book is not on the same ladder of brilliance as the two that came before it, but I'm proud to say that I LOVE it, anyway. It's a true work of the imagination and so exciting that I wish that I had a full SF tv-series with a huge special effects budget to do it justice.

Truly. It would be mind-blowingly awesome.

I'm in total awe of Dan Simmons. The First two Hyperion books are one of my favorite SF books ever and after FALL OF HYPERION I was a bit skeptical about ENDYMION. For starters it didn't have any of the original pilgrims making an appearance. though I felt there was a lot to be told about the pilgrims. little did I know that this book picks up right around the end of the story of the pilgrims and Eben though the pilgrims don't all appear, Martin Silenus has an awesome cameo. But Aenea, Raul Endymion and A. Bettik make one helluva trio. The Pas officials are cool enough adversary but what makes this book so awesome is the scope. Hyperion created all these wonderful worlds and didn't explore too much of them, well this book does just that. and if the worlds in Hyperion didn't blow your mind the worlds the beleaguered trio explores in this book will dam right render you catatonic.

this is a masterpiece. period.