The Rise of Endymion

Bah, okay, no, that was just SOOOOO long and so ridiculous. It won't make sense if you haven't read the previous three Hyperion books, and it's only because of all the hand wavey space magical CLIFFHANGER MYSTERIES of the previous books that I even read this to the end. To the last, bitter, endlessly delayed end. Good Lord. My advice: just read books 1-3. Skip 4. Who cares!

Umm. How to describe the plot? It's basically Dan Simmons' fanfic about the Hyperion universe, starring Raul Endymion as the Marty Stu authorial stand-in, and Aenea as a pretty ridiculous messiah figure slash sexy 20somethin. I mean. I read the previous three books. I know Dan Simmons loves his Catholicism. LOAFFFS IT. Loves the power and the glory of the Church; the good stuff (as represented in Aenea's messiah stuff or Father-Captain de Soya's (he's back! hooray!) humility or that Charlton Heston (Paul Dure?) priest man's “sad eyes” or whatever) and the bad stuff (the evil Pax Empire/corrupt Vatican). Okay, fine. But the problem with presenting a messiah character is that, unless that messiah says stuff that is convincingly profound, it just feels ohhhhh man eye-rolly. Eye-gauging! Just bad. And I was not convinced. We're TOLD - repeatedly, one bajillion times - that Aenea is so wonderfully charismatic and messiah-y and so DEEP AND SO PROFOUND, but, honestly, girl just quotes poetry a lot and says empathy is important. Yeah, derp.

It was so apparent that Aenea was just Simmons's dream babe - and, hey, ain't no shame in that, I write a lot o' dream dudes in space myself - that it was, for a person NOT interested in the way the sunlight plays on her hair (goddamn, if I hear about her hair color ONE. MORE. TIME.), it's just boring. BORINNGGGG.

So this was kinda like the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. And I say this as someone who quite liked that episode! And bought into its space mysticism! I did not buy into this space mysticism. This felt like bad romance in space.

Meanwhile, in other news, on my super favveee character (my dream dude!), the tortured Pax military priest-spaceship captain, Father-Captain Federico de Soya, well... I rate this book a 2/5 de Soyas on the de Soya scale. It's like, fine, whatever. He gets up to some hijinx. He's not in the book as much as my OWN dream-dude fanfic would have (still to come, I'm workin on it).

The first half of the book is a bit better. The second half is a SLOG. I skim-read. A LOT. There's an extended, EXTENDED sequence on a Tibet-in-space planet with a clearly obviously this-Dalai Lama as a young man and total complete transplant of pre-1953 Tibet amidst some Bespin-style cloud planet. Pretty cool. I mean, I like Tibetan history and culture. And I, too, have put it in space from time to time. And, yes, I did admire Dan Simmons's deep DEEP dive into Tibetan monasteries and history and so forth. I guess he took a trip to Lhasa? Or Leh? Or Dharamsala? I dunno. BUT! I was still like, “ugh, this feels Orientalist and why do all sci-fi writers use Buddhism as a boring stand-in for enlightened space religion?” Again, I say this as someone who does it herself. Even Kim Stanley Robinson does it (and THAT man is a genius). Maybe Buddhism will make it to space. I dunno. But it still felt, ugh, kinda dull.

Also - the descriptions - oof - too long. WAAAAY too long. Did he have no editor?

So yeah. Kinda a boring conclusion. Raul Endymion, I do not care how much you love Aenea. Dan Simmons, I do not care about the goddamn color of Aenea's goddamn hair. Federico de Soya, you're fine, you just keep doing you.