Endymion by Dan Simmons (3.5 stars)

Book three in the Hyperion Cantos, set 274 years after The Fall. Fans of Simmons waited 7 years from the publication of Fall of Hyperion before starting on this one. I waited 5 minutes, which made me hate the nauseating recaps at the start of the novel.

In the 274 years you missed, the Pax (the catholic church, with the offer of immortality in the form of the cruciform) has expanded its power. But really the most important thing is that Aenea is about to step out of the time tombs. Some people seemed to be disappointed that the novels weren't continuous in time, but to me this seemed the perfectly logical progression within the time concepts of the novel.

Silenius is his usual self and kicks off the quest for Raul:

...A youth, by heavenly power loved and led,
Shall stand before him, whom he shall direct
How to consummate all. The youth elect
Must do the thing, or both will be destroyed."
"What?" I said. "I don't ..."
"Fuck it," rasped the poet. "Just get Aenea, take her to the Ousters, and get her back alive. It's not too complicated. Even a shepherd should be able to do it."

Unfortunately Raul sucks. He just never gains any depth. He charges around with little to no clue, never questioning Aenea, never questioning why he's risking his own life, and is generally just an empty bodyguard character. He also makes a foreshadowed and super-creepy father-figure-to-lover transition with Aenea.

Aenea herself never steps out of the shadows, she's completely mysterious, never gives a straight answer, and is putting out sentences like this at age 12:

Did you know, Raul, that Pan was the allegorical precursor to Christ?

I guess she is the messiah...but in any case she just seemed like a really important object to be carried around. Simmons might as well have made her a cup or a sword to be delivered to a place at the right time to fulfill a prophesy.

So with characters like these we basically end up with a thinking man's action novel. The plot is a cross between Sliders and Terminator 2. The Core's comically powerful soldiers pursue Aenea through a series of portals to different worlds where they are confronted with various difficult scenarios: trapped in ice caves, whole worlds that look as if they have been completely deserted just hours before, etc. Whenever the Core (Nemes and friends) catches up, the Shrike, deus ex machina extraordinaire, is there to save the day. Raul even acknowledges this at one stage:

"Well," I said, "It provided a pretty convenient deus ex machina for us on Hyperion, so I just thought that if it could ..."

Having said that, Sliders and T2 are awesome, I enjoyed the ride :)

I'll leave you with a quirk and a criticism. As soon as I read the following passage, I knew Simmons was describing Falling Water:

The most noticeable features of the house were the thin roofs and rectangular terraces that seemed to hang out over the stream and waterfall as if defying gravity.

I guess Simmons is a massive FLW fan, but unlike the Keats references which seem pervasive and integral to the novel, this reference seems like a shout-out dumped in as an afterthought. We'll see how it plays out in the next book I guess.

One last thing Mr. Simmons, just because you do the research doesn't mean you need to put it in the novel. The descriptions of the art and rooms of the Vatican were deadly boring:

Room V explores the lives of the saints through fresco and statuary, yet has a stylized, inhuman feel to it, which de Soya associates with old pictures he has seen of Old Earth Egyptian art. Room VI, the Pope's dining room...

3.5 stars

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons (3.5 stars)

Stupendous beginning. Time for the tough second album. I'm not going to be careful about spoilers so you might want to bail out now.

The plot arc is great, fantastic ideas brought to a stunning finish. The idea of the Core leeching brain power from humanity to create a giant biological supercomputer during farcaster transport is inspired. Gladstone's play against the Core and destruction of the farcaster network was thrilling. Simmons describes the implications of unplugging such a connected society in fascinating detail: imagine families torn apart and people dying because Dad happened to be in the toilet on Mare Infinitus when the network was torn down. Entire city-worlds collapsing because there's no locally produced food. People trapped in penthouse apartments in skyscrapers with no way to get out apart from a now-dead farcaster.

But if you had asked me what I thought during the first half of the novel I would have said GET ON WITH IT ALREADY. I was sick of the pilgrims stumbling around the Time Tombs, sick of hearing about Joseph Severn who I cared nothing about, and sick of the dream-style narration that was cut off whenever anything interesting was about to happen so Severn could go sit in a meeting with Gladstone or hang out at a party.  And you know what would be great?  If the Consul could go on a boring quest to retrieve the ship over exactly the same territory we covered in the first book.

There are some poignant moments, quite a few actually.  Like this one, where Dure describes the effect on his faith of years of continuous death and resurrection while nailed to a Tesla tree:

"And that made you lose your faith?"
Dure looked at Sol. "On the contrary, it made me feel that faith is all the more essential. Pain and darkness have been our lot since the Fall of Man. But there must be some hope that we can rise to a higher level...that consciousness can evolve to a plane more benevolent than its counterpoint of a universe hardwired to indifference.

In fact, Dure's experience of a future where the Labyrinthine worlds have been crammed with all of humanity is one of the most chilling passages I've ever read. In this future, humans were convinced to shelter in the Labyrinths while the doomsday deathwand device created by the Core was detonated, ostensibly to defeat the Ousters. Dure sees the reality of this Core plot that would kill humans en masse, with the Shrike tending to a graveyard of billions lit with the eerie glow of millions of cruciforms.

Hair remained as tendrils of dusty tar, stiff as varnished fiberplastic. Blackness stared out from under opened eyelids, between teeth...If there were tens of thousands of corpses in this small stretch of tunnel, Hyperion's labyrinth must contain billions. More. The nine labyrinthine worlds together must be a crypt for trillions.

There's some cuteness that comes from being able to write the future. Apparently Japan is the first to Mars and claims it:

...unchanged from the time the first human set foot on that world, proclaimed it for a nation called Japan, and snapped a photograph.

I also thought the AI Ummon was really well conceived. Contemptuous of Severn, speaking in koans, super-annoying to read, but brilliant. It just went on a tad too long.

- Why Ummon? Why did you Stables wish to preserve Old Earth?
[Sansho once said
If someone comes
I go out to meet him
but not for his sake
Koke said
If someone comes
I don't go out
If I do go out
I go out for his sake]

Great ideas, with some aggressive editing I would have given it almost 5 stars.

3.5 stars.