Endymion

A worthy follow up to the first two books. I enjoyed the setup for a new story in this great, fleshed out universe.

Way more easy to read than the previous two and more cinematographic. It would be great as a movie. Not something exceptional though the last pages were something sublime. Definitely makes me want to read the last one.

Incredibly disappointing compared to the last two. I doubt I'll read past this.

From John Wick to the Terminator, this story is full of adventure and mystery while building on the original pilgrims stories from 270 years in the past.

Really enjoyed this book and am excited to dive into the final Hyperion chapter.

There is absolutely nothing lacking in this book. The world-building is at once unmatchably epic and so easily believable. The characters are complex and fascinating. The language is simply poetic. I found the plot even better than what the first two books offered! Enjoyable, exciting, and satisfying, Simmons immensely surpassed my expectations.

Another great book in the series. Very differently told than the previous two though. This one is more like classic adventure stories told from various points of view. To be honest i preferred the previous ones, but on the other hand i really appreciate author's bravery to experiment with style. The story is mostly an introduction to some grand finale (well, i know there are 4 books in total...) and introduces us to main characters and the state of the world. I am also still amazed by the plethora of cultural and historical analogies to be found here. And im sure i missed a lot of them as well! Now looking forward to how everything will conclude!

Endymion by Dan simmons. I just finished this one today and gave this one 3/5 stars

Some aspects of it I didn't like or the book failed to really explain in a way that makes any sense

Like why do the farcaster portals only activate for Aenea when the network was, at least in theory, destroyed.

If the AI techno core is connected to her and activating it for her, and have this ability why have they left the farcasters dormant for nearly 300 yrs

A planet with a frozen atmosphere, and on the top of said atmosphere its a near vacumme which my impressiom was like the moon, which has a near true vacume (as even space is not a perfect vacumme and has some particles of matter and the solar wind) has a wind one can feel blowing

The constant death and ressurrection cycles becomes redundant etc... but at the same time raised the stakes for Aenea, Endymion and Android bettik as they are mortal and not “of the cross” while their enemy can just keep being ressurrected

Its not all bad. The catholic church taking over the galaxy with the cruciform parasite was a interesting development that I enjoyed.

Hyperion y la caida de Hyperion son libros magnificos.
Hyperion nos cuenta un universo nuevo y grandioso desde multiples angulos.
La caida, lo extiende, le da profundidad y foco.

Endymion, en cambio recicla lo anterior, añade, siendo generoso, un concepto y se contenta con explicar lo maravillosa que va a ser la aventura, pero sin que esa maravilla ocurra.

Se me hace dificil pensar que es el mismo autor de los libros anteriores. O quiza no queria realmente escribir esto y lo hizo por presiones comerciales.

I never read the second two books of the Hyperion Cantos because I read some reviews how horrible they are.

Those reviews lied.

This book was amazing from the first page to the last one. It felt a bit like reading the first book of the Hyperion Canots, perhaps not 100% on the same level, that is unreachable, but very close. I fully enjoyed it.

So if you read the first two books, I recommend that you read this one too.

Some hero you are
you're supposed to protect her
not make her save you.

Do you get giddy when reading loving descriptions of Renaissance Italian art and about Vatican imbroglios in the morally bankrupt Borgia style, coupled with hand wavey space opera stuff and gestures to FREAKY ALIENS? Are your two favorite character archetypes the rakish rogue type a la Han Solo and the fussy, tortured monk warrior type a la Obi Wan Kenobi? Do you think the creepy hive mind-educated little kid queen from Dune is one of the best parts of Dune? Do you like pulpy fun stuff? My friend, do I have the book for you.

In its best moments, it achieves Miyazaki or Moebius moments of weird, imaginative space opera. In its worst, it's crack trash that is hard to put down (well, except for some of the middle chapters that feel repetitive). Dan Simmons clearly had fun writing this. I had fun reading it. Much fun was had by all.

De plot
I wasn't sure how Simmons could continue after Fall of Hyperion, which basically ended with the Hyperion civilization, as we knew it, ending in one cataclysmic tornado of AI godheads, freaky aliens, and hallucinatory waterfalls into space. Several characters went to very mysterious ends, and I was sure that unveiling their destinies would convert all those bangs to whimpers. So Simmons doesn't. Instead, we stay in the newly-changed human universe, fast-forward 270 years to a galaxy now dominated by a Roman Catholic/Papal Dark Ages empire where people wear the creepy “cruciform” parasites, thus allowing (almost) everyone constant resurrection, and pray to various Catholic saints about never ever resurrecting AIs. We meet a backwater rogue, Raul Endymion (a young Harrison Ford?), in a bar fight (well, sorta). He's recruited by an old sage to protect a magical little girl, Aenea, who will be coming out of the Time Tombs' magical time portal in 48 hours and promises to be the usual sci-fi Chosen One/Messiah/One Who Teaches/blaahhhhh blah.

Meanwhile, the Vatican recruits the compassionate, disciplined torchship (?) priest-captain, Father Captain Federico de Soya (Luigi lo Cascio? Nino Manfredi? Silvio Orlando? Roberto Benigni? OK, well, maybe not Benigni...) to go hunt Aenea as well. There are many inventive scenes of action and gore (including marvelous appearances by everyone's favorite monsters made out of spikes - The Shrike! - and a Terminator-style commando (ahem) “hell-woman”), much fetishization of Catholic aesthetics and cyberpunk aesthetics, and a super obviously Americo-centric POV of the far future (year 3000+).

It is all very fun. And this is all recycled sci-fi stuff: the space Dark Ages with the (Catholic) Church as humanity's protector of data and information, encircled by jerkface ghosts in the machine, plus Han Solo, Dune, and ‘murca.

Dispassionate critical response
And now, allow me a loving paean to Father Captain Federico de Soya. They introduce de Soya as a compassionate, tormented warrior-priest with a heart of gold and IRON CLAD DISCIPLINE over his adorable crises of faith (since he's in the villain role, being the pursuer). I loved this guy so much I, first, became exasperated every time I had to switch back to the (much less interesting) Raul-Aenea-android storyline and, second, immediately searched my Kindle version of Rise of Endymion to make sure he appears in that too (no spoilers). Oh, de Soya! You so great. If you notice any de Soya fanfic appearing on the Internet in the near future... yeah, that'll be me. Sigh, de Soya! If you made a smoothie of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Man of La Mancha, that one movie with Nino Manfredi, all my personal love of Rome, Renaissance stuff, Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition, medieval stuff, and everything else I love about 15th-16th century shit, you would have de Soya. And I mean a literal smoothie of grist and gore, as that's how he spends half the book, thanks to the (incidentally hilarious) technology of super fast velocities coupled with hand wavey magical space resurrection voodoo. Did I mention I love this book?

Informed sci-fi fan/writerly response
What is it about the genre that provokes authors to write endless, interminable series where book 1 is an eye-popping masterpiece, and books 2 through infinity are of exponentially decreasing quality, rapidly approaching zero? Gateway, Ender's Game, Dune - they're all wonderful, and they all have like a billion shitty sequels. So I approach always with a long pointy stick. Hyperion was super inventive and great, super not embarrassing to recommend to non-sci-fi friends. Fall of Hyperion was approached with trepidation... and was OK! Still reasonable! Endymion (or, Hyperion 3: More Hyperion) was approached with even more trepidation... and I was shocked! It's still OK! Maybe even a bit better! Very different from Hyperion though. Warning.

Anyway, yeah. A big guilty pleasure. Enjoy!

Le troisième opus d'une oeuvre magnifique, la saga Hyperion / Endymion. Un très grand souvenir.

Expanding on the Hyperion universe while introducing new realistic and thoughtful characters.

Expanding on the Hyperion universe while introducing new realistic and thoughtful characters.

2nd read of this after deciding the read all the Hyperion novels again. Don't think it's as good as I thought it was first time around, it's really slow at the beginning and doesn't pick up pace until 200 pages in and picks up again at the last 200 pages. Onto the next one. but not just yet.

Need to find some time to get my thoughts in order and do this review. For now, just go and read it if you've started the series.

I am really becoming a Dan Simmons fan, I think. I like every book in this series better than the last one. True, he can be a bit wordy, and I still don't understand who sent the Shrike or why a Shrike, but there's still one more book in the series and the Shrike is such a badass deux ex machina that I don't care. I was also happy to see Martin again. I know Martin isn't the most popular character, but I love the cranky old poet.

This book seems to be focusing on Brawne Lamia's story's theme of “what is life?” and Hoyt/Dure's theme of “what is faith?” I'm really intrigued by Simmons' ponderings on both those questions and will definitely read the next book. Need a break first, though. One can only handle so many lapis skies at a time.

Assolutamente non all'altezza dei primi due IMMENSI libri. Comunque la saga continua e pur non mantenendo i livelli precedenti rimane dell'ottima fantascienza e, al solito, Simmons sa stupire come pochi.