But it does stop the story dead in its tracks. The nerd in me, who likes learning about the ideas, just drinks it up, of course. The narrative in this one is quite clunky, with endless pages of exposition that Simmons barely deigns to dress up as dialogue-and sometimes he doesn’t even do that. I, myself, have rather mixed feelings now that I’m done. Even if you don’t like the series, it is hard to dispute the scope and style of it. The result can only be described, for better or for worse, as epic. Simmons blends elements of posthumanism, transhumanism, and time travel. I’m reminded of Pandora’s Star, which has a similar space operatic setting including AIs and wormhole travel. I don’t think anyone who makes it into book four is going to be surprised by the seemingly-boundlessness of Simmons’ imagination. The Pax and its unholy alliance with the TechnoCore gets fleshed out (pun intended) in more depth here. I spent large parts of the story trying to ignore how obtuse Raul is and how boring it makes things.įortunately, I had other plots to keep me occupied. Reunited with Aenea just in time for the Pax to catch up to them, Raul’s role in the story is split between confused narrator and occasional action hero. Aenea sends Raul on a quest to retrieve the Consul’s ship, although it is also kind of a spiritual journey that separates him from her long enough (thanks to relativity time shenanigans) for her to get closer to him in age, so the sexual relationship stuff isn’t so squicky, and for some other shenanigans that I won’t spoil. The Rise of Endymion gets something right from the start: the cover depicts the Shrike with four arms!Īnyway, it picks up pretty much where Endymion leaves off, give or take a little bit of time passing. Nevertheless, I decided last week that enough was enough. But Dan Simmons’ science fiction is just so damn dense I knew it was going to take days to get through it, and I was not looking forward to making that commitment. I kept putting off reading The Rise of Endymion it has been sitting in my to-read pile since I bought the last three books from the used book store.

I’d be lying if I said I remembered much about the first three books at this point (that’s why I write reviews).

Over seven years and four books later, I have finished the Hyperion Cantos.

The rise of endymion