Reviews
Holy shit. This book kept me guessing the whole time. So many holy shit moments that I can’t even count, super unpredictable and super satisfying. Loved it
We stan Meina Gladstone.
Not a sequel: the third act of the first book. A strange mix of very clever and kind of ridiculous. The camp Gothic tone intensifies, piling mystery on the mystical, but eventually resolves in an unexpectedly rosy and metaphysical cadence. But you have to get through 450 pages of sand, impalings, twists, people writing poetry furiously as a walking knife guts them, etc. I'm not sure if it was worth it, but it certainly was Grand. Ridiculous and Clarke-magic-based sci-fi like Dune, grim and spiked like Blindsight (though turned completely upside down at the end: Watts is a deadly serious treatment of epiphenomenalism and illusionism; Simmons' universe is extremely idealist/dualist), maybe the most extreme I've seen outside of medieval Christians or the hippies.) Questions which get answered, usually 500 pages in: * Why is the Shrike such an inefficient avenger? * Why is John Keats being foregrounded 900 years later as a paragon of humanity? By robots? * Why are deep ecologists so keen on space? * What's so bad about the Hegemony? * Why is there literally no detail about the Ousters? * Why does Severn keep napping a dozen times a day? (Maybe it's the TB.) * Why make a copy of Earth? Why preserve it empty? (view spoiler)[A reconstructed cyborg Keats is the embodiment of the Human Spirit, able to affect the world (and the plot) as a ghost. (hide spoiler)] Its appetite for mysticism is surprising. The only super-AI shown in any real detail speaks in koans, and is not especially impressive. (view spoiler)[The people who triumph in the end are odd: it's the deep ecologists and kibbutzim and Catholics - the ancient, normalised death cults - who thrive when modernity is withdrawn. The Ousters (and Simmons) equivocate between the Core plotting to murder everyone alive and the Core making everyone too comfortable to innovate and explore space. Which are not really morally equivalent when you think about it. This is especially odd since the rest of the ending extols our creativity and scepticism and courage, i.e. the Enlightenment. (hide spoiler)] The ending is both too neat - all the loose ends tied up, several revivals, the baddies gone without a fight, the missing element in the Grand Unified Theory is the Human Spirit - and surprisingly harsh (view spoiler)[all the millions dead, and the saviour who rightly killed them torn apart by the mob (hide spoiler)]. Too long and slow to recommend to everyone, but rich and novel for people who can get past that. --- How does it do as Serious science fiction? Social development: Some, this time. The Ousters are eventually shown as rad anarchists with wings and stuff. Software development: No. Actual Science: Not really.
Loved the parts inside the TechnoCore, where the AI "Ummon" spoke in verse and Zen koans. This book was also well written and revealed the greater story behind the events in Hyperion. The characters are well sketched out and there are thought provoking passages in the book, dealing with consciousness and religion. Reading this was a thrilling ride. I might just have caught the sci-fi bug.
A melange of classic "space science-fiction" full of space battles, galactic politics on epic scales spanning space and time and various other sci-fi themes like horror, mystery that will make your hairs stand on end, mind bending concepts that make you wonder and ponder like instantaneous intersolar and time travel, cyberpunk themes like AI the matrix/internet/datumplane and semi-artificial humans inhabited by AI minds.
Just embracing the full scope of science-fiction of the last couple of decades in on series. This is the Hyperion series by Simmons. And all aspects of it are brilliantly executed. The writing is stellar. The people inhabiting this universe are super realistic, down to small gestures, which I could imaging real people doing in the circumstances they were described to be in. The motivations of all actors (excluding those who stil remain a bit shrouded in mystery) are very clear, very understandablei and relatable. It's just excellent and responsible handiwork by Simmons, taking his audience seriously.
A great follow-up to Hyperion, opening up the universe, answering a lot of burning questions I had. Makes me eager to start Endymion.
An excellent conclusion to the story started in book 1--more character driven, with a lot less time spent on world-building after all the heavy lifting done in the first book. Some of the finest high-concept sci-fi around.
This doesn't stand on its own — it's really part 2 of one long book. It's good, but unfortunately it falls victim to a couple of different "sequel effects." It seemed hastily put together, both mechanically (lots of repeated adjectives and anecdotes, and even some typos) and plot-wise. I raced through it, eager to uncover answers as the stakes kept getting higher. But ultimately it just didn't come close to paying off all the big, creative mysteries set up by the prior book. Half of them were ignored, and half were handled through deus ex machina cop-outs (self consciously it would seem, based on all of the literal discussions of gods-in-machines.) Still worth reading, though, for the fascinating and convincing world these characters live in 800 years in the future, and the gripping alternation between human-scale concerns and galaxy-scale cataclysms.
I don't write reviews...but this one sure hurtled toward the end. Lots of wonderful moments.
A little meandering compared to the first book, but still fascinating. Looking forward to dipping into Endymion.
This was a slow but good read. Though it continues from the first book, it's a different read. This is cohesive in a very different way due to how the story is told. There are a few places where understanding what's going on is hard, but this does not take away much from the book as a whole.
Not a sequel, but the second half of the first book. More conventional storytelling than Hyperion, but in the same tone.
