Bog je rodjen, zove se Anea i voli da psuje.
E to je svet u kome bi ja voleo da zivim :)
Saga o Hiperionu (Hiperion, Pad Hiperiona, Endimion i Uspon Endimiona) mozda su i najbolji serijal naucne fantastike na koji sam naisao!

I really enjoyed this book. Some people told me that book 3 wasn't the match of books one and two, but I really quite enjoyed it. I'm struggling to put my finger on it, but I think the dynamic of Raul, Aenea, and A Bettik was a strong one - they clearly cared for each other, and you could see that they would even love each other in the future.

It had all the elements of a great epic: strong heroes on a mission that is important to humanity, an evil empire trying to stop them, and a mysterious force in the universe trying to help them. The world is almost 300 years after the fall of the farcasters, and is described in such a way as to almost be nostalgic. The hawking mat, all the characters and elements of Cantos, the consul's ship, etc.

One of the major themes of the book seems to be how the universe can be incredibly harsh. This quote captures it nicely:

"The universe is indifferent to our fates. This was the crushing burden that the character took with him as he struggled through the surf toward survival or extinction. The universe just does not give a shit."

And I just loved this one:

"I remembered Grandam telling me about an early Old Earth scientist, one Charles Darwin, who had come up with one of the early theories of evolution or gravitation or somesuch, and how—although raised a devout Christian even before the reward of the cruciform—he had become an atheist while studying a terrestrial wasp that paralyzed some large species of spider, planted its embryo, and let the spider recover and go about its business until it was time for the hatched wasp larvae to burrow its way out of the living spider’s abdomen.”

In harsh times, people often turn towards religion. Fascinating to see that after the Fall, after all the chaos and war and death that ensued, it was the Catholic church that rose to power, and goes onto to rule the universe. People are comforted by its ability to make the universe safe for them with the power of the cruciform.

One of the themes of the book is definitely fear. Fear of death in particular. De Soya fears each death he has, Raul came close to death on Mare Infinitus with the sharks. The Chitchatuk were interesting here - having to live a particularly fearful life, dependent on the thing that eats them for food (artic wraiths).

But love is the counter to the theme of fear. We keep getting hints that Aenea is the missionary from the human god and will show us all a better path through love. Raul follows her because he believes in her - and it's clearly foreshadowed they will love each other.

Although it takes place centuries after The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion seems to pick up right after the end of the last book. This is the third book in Dan Simmons's "Hyperion Cantos." Since it's the first book of a second duology, you could start reading with this book, since the entire universe is pretty much introduced anew, but there are so many references to events that took place in the first two books, now history in this one, that you will probably feel like you're missing a lot.

At the end of The Fall of Hyperion, the Hegemony of Man was falling, due to the attack of the Ousters who weren't really Ousters but constructs of the TechnoCore. As Endymion begins, the Hegemony is history, and now human space is ruled by the Pax; a resurgent Holy Roman Catholic Church empowered by the cruciform parasites we encountered in Hyperion, which allow anyone to recover from any injury and be resurrected from nearly any fatality. The Pax has figured out how to control them so that people who receive the cruciform are not turned into mindless idiots, which means that the Church now literally offers eternal life.

The child of Brawne Lamia and the cybrid Johnny Keats emerges from the Time Tombs, and the Pax views her as a threat to all of mankind, for reasons that are not clear until the end. So they send starship captain Father-Captain de Soya to "fetch" her. Meanwhile, that irascible dirty old man Martin Silenus is still kicking around, and he recruits Raul Endymion, a native of the planet Hyperion who fell into a little trouble with the Pax, to go save her. As he tells Raul, he doesn't just want Raul to save his god-daughter from the Pax. He also wants Raul to destroy the Pax, find out what the superhuman artificial intelligences known as the TechnoCore have been up to these past few centuries, oh, and take down that enigmatic, unstoppable alien killing machine known as the Shrike. No problem.

Endymion alternates between the POV of Raul Endymion and Father-Captain de Soya, adversaries but both of them ultimately good guys if not always serving good ends. There's plenty of interplanetary space opera drama and action, but for me it didn't really get good until the final few chapters when conspiracies begin to be unveiled, and of course, we finally got the kick-ass battle with the Shrike we've been waiting for.

Like Hyperion, Endymion ends very much on a "To be continued" note. Either of the two duologies can be read independently, but definitely read the first book of each first (and if you like it you will certainly have to read the second).

I recommend reading the first two books first because frankly, they are better. Endymion isn't bad, but it's a solid 3.5 stars - great epic space opera if you like epic space operas, but whereas Simmons dropped a whole lot of finely-crafted worldbuilding with star-spanning conspiracies and multiple existential alien threats in Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, in this third book, there's not so much new as building on what he introduced before. If you are a dedicated consumer of space opera, this is above average for the genre, but falls short of greatness, and really I think the series could have ended with Fall of Hyperion. But I will go on to read the fourth and final volume.

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

At the beginning, the author warns you that you're reading this book for the wrong reasons. He's right. If you're reading this because you liked Hyperion, then you're reading it for the wrong reason.

Endymion is like Hyperion like Pluto is like Jupiter.

I had read many accounts as to how inferior the last two books are but I never imagined the situation to be this bad. Endymion isn't a book. It's a dragged out prologue to Rise of Endymion. That is all.

Set some two fifty years after the Fall, the Vatican, through the power offered by resurrection, has taken over the old Hegemony space. For nostalgia's sake the story starts at Hyperion and we follow Raul Endymion in his journey (He calls it adventure, I call it the most boring thing one could read) Thrown in are the Shrike, time tombs, a mysterious (not in the slightest) prophet and a poor schmuck called De Soya and we have Endymion. There is no sum of it's parts. It's just parts. So don't worry too much about it.

Raul the shepherd (He's more a sheep than a shepherd, the way he's lead about) A twelve year old know it all who everyone obeys for no real reason and a completely irrelevant android are the central characters of this tragedy. Honestly De Soya's story line is far better than whatever these people are upto.

The entire book is filled with irrelevant and nonsensical discussions. I miss the days when each sentence had meaning and profound impact on the reader. The narration is also for the most part in first person, which would mean, the most passive character gets to tell us what other passive characters are doing or not doing or whatever it is that's happening or not happening.

Endymion is an uninspiring, uninteresting and unworthy sequel to one of the greatest books I've read!

Buddy read with Athena, Desinka, Gavin & Kaora

3.5 stars

“You want to be a hero,” he repeated. “You want to be one of those rare human beings who make history, rather than merely watch it flow around them like water around a rock.”

More than two centuries have passed since the pilgrimage to the Valley of the Time Tombs, and the Hegemony of Man, the beating heart of humanity, has been completely destroyed. The Worldweb is gone, along with the farcaster network and everything that made the universe what it once was. Rising from the ashes is the Pax, an all-encompassing totalitarian regime founded by the remainder of the Catholic Church; ruling with the help of the strongest armada in existence and the power to provide its faithful followers with eternal life…

This third book in the Hyperion Cantos saga takes place centuries after the other two, and it opens up with a ton of questions. How did the Pax come to rule everything? Where have the other old powers, the Ousters and the TechnoCore, gone? And what does the Church actually want? Watching Dan Simmons try to answer all these questions while making a captivating story out of it all is a delightful experience. He does it, as always, rather skilfully.

The main character of Endymion is Aenea, the daughter of Brawne Lamia and the cybrid known as John Keats. In another time she stepped through the portals in the Valley of the Time Tombs on Hyperion itself, and arrived in this distant future. Now the Church sees her as a threat that must be dealt with by any means possible, and while she journeys across the universe to find out what she is actually supposed to do, the agents of the Pax are hunting her.

While Aenea is the main character of the book, she is actually not a POV character. Of those there are two: Raul Endymion, the man who accompanies and protects Aenea, and Father Captain Federico de Soya, the man who has been given the task of hunting her down. All three characters are interesting in their way, and Simmons keeps much of their personalities and motivations hidden throughout most of the book. And the narration, switching back and forth between the hunter and the hunted, is particularly interesting.

Like the other books in the series, this one also throws in a new and fabulous concept that I've never seen anything even remotely similar to before. Namely the River Tethys (wonderfully portrayed further below), the river on which Aenea and Raul embark upon their journey. Perhaps a mere river does not seem so remarkably interesting, but then again there are few rivers stretching from world to world across the entire universe. The River Tethys takes our protagonists to jungle worlds and ocean worlds, to abandoned population centres and lost planets. And that is precisely what makes both the river and the journey on it so amazing.

Sadly there is almost always a downside. The problem with Endymion is that it falls into just the same trap as The Fall of Hyperion. One should think Simmons had learned from his mistakes in that one, but nope. Once again an interesting book with a really fascinating concept turns into a drearily boring tale in the mid-sections, only to improve immensely towards the end. Except for the fabulous first book in the series, I’m starting to think this a pattern for all the books, but then again it might also just be that both book two and three suffer from a lengthy case of second book syndrome.

That said, I don’t think Dan Simmons knows how to write a bad book either, and this was definitely both an enjoyable and a thought-provoking read. And it sets things up perfectly for the last book, from which I am now expecting quite a lot.

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

Fall from grace but still not a bad book

I loved, LOVED this books predecessors Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion. In fact you can just stop reading this review and go read those two books. They are some of the best books in sci fi. Unfortunately Endymion did not meet the same standards but overall it is not a bad book. It starts out really well, several hundred years later with a great cast and with lots of call back to the prior two books. For the first 20% I was all in. But what began as stagnant pacing devolved into a cat and mouse story that fell flat. There is so much dead air in the book of characters hanging out in a space ship or just chilling on a raft and talking. The McGuffin wasn't enough to keep me engaged. There was also just cringe stuff with a 12 year old girl that I really disliked. For example, why would the narrator explicitly describe the nude body of a minor and state that he is not attracted? GROSS.

I don't think I'll be reading the last book, I'll just read a plot summary and call it a day. My take away here is Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion are must read. Endymion you can take or leave it.

Here's my reviews for those two books:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Дан Симънс продължава да надгражда идеите си от Хиперион и да развива действието, започнало от там, около 3 столетия след едноименното поклонение и битката.
Показва ни Шрайка в различна светлина и разбулва истинското лице на злото. Църквата от своя страна влиза в съюз със злите сили, за да може да продължава да властва над човечеството. Добрала се е до кръстоидите и ги използва най- безцеремонно, сеейки смърт сред прокудените. Единственото същество, което може да разклати основите на Църквата е едно момиченце( Енея), което беше в утробата на детективката Брон от предходните 2 книги. При все че са минали близо 3 столетия, Енея е на 12 години, защото е прекарала цялото това време на сигурно място в Гробниците на времето и скоро ще излезе от тях. И тогава, ще се изправи срещу бича на псевдо-религията и кръстоидите. А Църквата ще я преследва яростно през цялото време. Момиченцето не е само в своята мисия. Над нея бди не кой да е, а Шрайка( в Ендимион започнах да харесвам този Шрайк

A solid three, if not 3.5 stars. The beginning of a new tale.

I suspected after starting this book three of the four book set, that this "series" by Dan Simmons is in fact, two, two book sets. That is, books one and two comprise the first of a series with excellent closure in book two, if you want to stop there. It helps to have read books one and two before reading three and four, but it is not necessary. All four books happen in the same universe/worlds, so one could call them a series. Books three and four are a separate tale. Not unlike historical fiction writer, Ken Follett, who can continue a series centuries after a first book.

Endymion takes our new characters down the lazy river. Have you ever been to a water park where all sorts of thrilling slides and things are for your amusement? There is always a lazy river, where you can bob your way around the park on a slow moving stream of water supported by an inflated tube or some such thing. Such it is for our characters running away from a threat, except as they raft the river, they are tossed into different worlds and different situations, always running. Running from what becomes the question.

Simmons once again explores religion as his side muse.

This beginning tale is a tad slow in the middle, but if you make it that far you'll be reading book four. Off to #4, n  n The Rise of Endymion go I.

First of all, I thought it was such a cool and almost unprecedented idea having the third book in this momentous series being so far ahead (270+ years) of the previous book, especially as it also allows as long a break as one wants parts two and three. So it's back to this utterly spellbinding reality where travel between worlds is enabled by the wondrous amalgamation of ancient alien portals and... waterways!

This book was never going to reach the heights of the previous two (because they were actually genius!) but alongside essentially a narrow almost linear drama between two opposing groups; what we do get is more of this lavishly and lovingly(?) created fictional far-future reality, more of it's ridiculously well conceived history, and ultimately more of the incomparable... what can be truly called, cosmos building from Simmons. I really like how he portrays how the core Earth religions have evolved in the far future. Want to find out how? Read the book :). If you loved Hyperion, truly loved it, you just can't miss out on reading the subsequent books; if you only liked Hyperion stick to the first two. Next... The Rise of Endymion :). A 9 out of 12, Four Star read.

2017 read

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!