Reviews
I was tempted to take one star off, because of Raul's dragged out narrative, which made no sense to me (the dragging out) given his current predicament. Also the "Lolita-esque" relationship, which intellectually I understand given Aenea's existence, but still felt very icky at the beginning. In the end, it was a very satisfying ending to an epic narrative, so five stars it is.
Necesito procesarlo.
This book was one heck of a slog. I adored Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, but found the Endymion books a challenge to get through. Dan Simmons clearly loves the universe so much that he wanted to pack in as many details as possible, but the book is worse for that. It reminded me of the bloated prose in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but if Tolkien was even more sentimental about the characters.
This was a better read than Endymion. It had a few good moments, but overall not a memorable read. You won't miss anything by skipping the last two books in this series.
Wow! What a great ending to a truly magnificent series. First of all, if you're into immersive worlds this series is for you. The setting of this story is not only internally consistent, vast and imaginative, but it's just plain beautiful. Dan Simmons really lets his creativity show in this aspect of the story, and he truly turned world building into an art form. Then there are the characters, which are probably the most unique thing in this overall story, since we get to know so many of them so intimately. Characters in the story are very rich, all of them are flawed in some way or another, some of them are conflicted and most of them are passionate. It's actually hard to pick a favorite one. And of course there's the story itself, which is so well crafted and so hard to describe, probably because it contains so many different things. There's war, poetry, faith, action, adventures, romance and a lot of references to literature, history and religion. This story has very big ideas, and tells the tale of overall human civilization on an epic scale, but it does that through very personal stories of individuals. And this story is made in such a way in which all the different lines come together at the end and resolve things that come all the way from the first book in the series, and this in a completely coherent way, it didn't feel forced at all, which makes me think that Dan Simmons plotted the whole overall story of the whole series before starting to write the first book. The writing style of this book is definitely a nod to its poetic inspirations. John Keats is of course an important part of this book and his poems "Hyperion" and "Endymion" is where the titles were taken from, but there's also another poet character in this story, and the way Dan Simmons writes, even in describing mundane things, uses many poetic resources and really shows what a great writer he is. Overall I loved this series, and I loved this ending. I totally recommend it. Also, you don't have to read the whole series, the first two books are a complete story, and I read those a few years ago, and didn't feel the need to continue right away.
As last books in a series go, this was the most rewarding ending I've ever read. Topics introduced at the beginning of book 4 are handled. Topics that other authors might spend entire chapters on are only touched on briefly, and left for the reader to expand on.
