⇒ [PDF] The Rise of Endymion Hyperion Dan Simmons 9780553572988 Books

The Rise of Endymion Hyperion Dan Simmons 9780553572988 Books

Download As PDF : The Rise of Endymion Hyperion Dan Simmons 9780553572988 Books

The Rise of Endymion Hyperion Dan Simmons 9780553572988 Books

I just finished reading the Rise of Endymion. It is quite easy to cast stones and expect more from authors but seems a bit too facile so I generally avoid writing negative comments. In this case Simmons has clearly put a lot of effort to write something well and I disagree with some of the one-star reviews that felt that Aenea's character was unlikable or her relationship with Raul contrived. Aenea in my opinion exhibited a well-balanced and interesting character. One can disagree with the semi-nihilistic philospophy she espoused and the ease of ascribing "love" as the primal force of the universe associated with mechanistic laws (and I share these criticisms) but they do not consist for me a deal-breaker.

I could also live with the long, and sometimes inaccurate descriptions of flying machines, mountaineering, and garments and landscapes. What really made me want to note my dissatisfaction with the book and perhaps initiate a discussion if others see differently are some glaring in-your-face plot holes and my apparent inability to reconcile the Endymion version (books 3-4) and Hyperion version of the universe especially with regards to the role and provenance of the Shrike. As such this review is mostly directed to readers of the book that may wonder about the same issues but it also may help potential readers to just stick with the beginning of the series.

If you do not wish to read the spoilers, my conclusion is that Simmons seems to have run out of steam in trying to sustain such a complex Universe structure that he had to rely in emotional manipulation, Deus Ex Machina tricks and multiple silent "revisions" and in some cases total neglect of previous issues. As such the book is unsatisfying in tying together everything in a coherent manner.

SPOILERS AHEAD

In Hyperion 2, we have the Shrike managing the tree of pain actively as a lure and trap for the expected Messiah. This we have primary information on as Silenus was on that tree for sometime until freed and it cannot be explained away as inaccurate narration. So this tree simply disappears in Endymion Rising. It seems to have never happened and is never mentioned. Instead the tree of pain is now a treeship moving around to drop people off to act as transponders for Aenea's torturous redemption.

The Shrike himself (we now become privy to gender) becomes just a cute little helper of Aenea appearing everywhere convenienlyt to save the day. Never threatening her or anyone non-Pax or core. This occurs with no apparent explanation of why this change happened and how it could be reconciled with the future battle that we are told kills the Shrike.

Why? No explanation whatsoever. Btw, why do you even need that ship if Aenea can farcast everywhere she wanted already by "locking-on" the people of the place.

Going back to the whole reason of traveling with the tree ship to seed people "infected" by Aenea to the different worlds becomes a bit unnecessary if Aenea has the potential to farcast at will. A parenthesis here for a couple of minor holes - towards the end it appears to Raul as if the whole Farcasting through the portals was just a ruse and Aenea was putting them through the casters of Tethys by herself. Yet, Nemes was able to drill into them and find whether they were activated so clearly inconsistent with the latest explanation "reveal". Which also leaves a question of the whole attack on the Farcasters of Hyperion 2 by Gladstone - if the machinery is impossible to destroy as presented later and fully controlled by the Void that Binds entities, then why was it even necessary to wait for Gladstone to disable them?

Finally, the whole time travel aspect just brings a slew of problems which have never been handled well to my knowledge (in SciFi generally not in this book). Either there is continuity in which case there is full predestination and if someone indeed comes back from the future knows what will happen with perfect clarity or not, in which case the whole of time/history can change as a landscape can when a determined bulldozer operates on it. In the version of the tetralogy we somehow get the first but the second is always feared but never happens.

For example, why was De Soya "chosen" by the Church/Core to lead the hunt of Aenea in the first place. They thought he was instrumental in capturing her but he was instrumental in saving her?

Below are some additional questions: how was the Core "hiding" in the cruciform? How was it communicating without using the Void that Binds which is controlled by the other entities.
What difference do the voices of the Dead make if they are just recordings of their lives?
What tears were created in the Void by the use of fatlline or the Gideon drive or farcasting when its ability to store information and personality fronts is apparently infinite? How could the Core manipulate this storing when it did not have that access?

And a final note, Christianity is presented as essentially meaningless and while the history of catholicism is presented in some detail there is no reference to Patristic views and the whole other side of it that is the Orthodox church (which never appears while we have almost any other religion doing an appearance).


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The Rise of Endymion Hyperion Dan Simmons 9780553572988 Books Reviews

Just to clarify where I am coming from, let me start by saying that I read and enjoyed the first two Hyperion books (or the actual Hyperion books, if you prefer) a great deal. I certainly think that Dan Simmons started out with some interesting ideas, but by the time the Cantos gets to Rise of Endymion the well seems to have run completely dry. While this is not entirely uncommon in sci-fi/fantasy series that drag on for too long, I honestly feel that Rise of Endymion is perhaps the worst example I have encountered so far. There is very little plot development over the course of the book and even less character development, despite the pretense that the central theme of the book is the emotional and intellectual development of humanity toward (quasi-)transcendence. I frequently found myself longing for the sections written from the perspectives of relatively minor characters, simply because the protagonist (Raul Endymion) is one of the most remarkably dull, dimwitted and uninteresting characters I have ever encountered in literature. Most chapters written from Raul's perspective are given over to endless descriptions of topography, random people and other irrelevant details, long journeys with no real significance to the plot, shallow explanations of Raul's emotional state at the time, retrospective commentary (since these sections, within the framework of the book, are written by Raul long after the events described) and generally uninspired dribble with no apparent purpose other than to add more pages to the book. In short, very little actually happens except when the book switches to relatively minor characters who, ironically, seem far more complex and dynamic exactly because the reader is not forced to spend ages listening to them drone on about utterly irrelevant and uninteresting details about their lives. The sad fact is that I, more than once, skipped or skimmed over several pages of the book (which I cannot remember ever doing before) and never felt that I missed anything important.

The great tragedy of this book, however, is that it destroys the fascinating mystery that was Hyperion by explaining and, IMHO, trivializing it. Simmons' "philosophical project" seems to be to deconstruct and discard all human religion and replace it with a warm, fuzzy blanket of emotionalism and empathy (described as an actual, physical reality in the book) that wraps itself around and penetrates all of the physical universe. Now, feel free to call me a cynical bastard at this point, but to me this seems like little more than a cheap way of avoiding having to engage in actual philosophical thought while still pretending that you have written a "deep" and intellectually stimulating book. The scattered, intentionally esoteric, references to Zen Buddhism only strengthen the impression that this is a case of an author using philosophy as a poorly thought-out plot device rather than a true philosopher creating a work of fiction.

This may all sound rather harsh, but if it does, it is because I felt cheated by this book. One of the things that made the original Hyperion books great was the sense of mystery, the feeling that you were not seeing the whole picture, not grasping the full implications of what was going on. By revealing the whole picture to be far less fascinating than Hyperion suggested and insisting on giving simple (or even simplistic) explanations to all the questions previously left unanswered, Simmons not only adds an unnecessary book to the Cantos, but undermines his previous works. As such, I would recommend that those fortunate souls who have so far only read the two original books simply leave it at that and forget there was ever such a thing as Endymion.
I just finished reading the Rise of Endymion. It is quite easy to cast stones and expect more from authors but seems a bit too facile so I generally avoid writing negative comments. In this case Simmons has clearly put a lot of effort to write something well and I disagree with some of the one-star reviews that felt that Aenea's character was unlikable or her relationship with Raul contrived. Aenea in my opinion exhibited a well-balanced and interesting character. One can disagree with the semi-nihilistic philospophy she espoused and the ease of ascribing "love" as the primal force of the universe associated with mechanistic laws (and I share these criticisms) but they do not consist for me a deal-breaker.

I could also live with the long, and sometimes inaccurate descriptions of flying machines, mountaineering, and garments and landscapes. What really made me want to note my dissatisfaction with the book and perhaps initiate a discussion if others see differently are some glaring in-your-face plot holes and my apparent inability to reconcile the Endymion version (books 3-4) and Hyperion version of the universe especially with regards to the role and provenance of the Shrike. As such this review is mostly directed to readers of the book that may wonder about the same issues but it also may help potential readers to just stick with the beginning of the series.

If you do not wish to read the spoilers, my conclusion is that Simmons seems to have run out of steam in trying to sustain such a complex Universe structure that he had to rely in emotional manipulation, Deus Ex Machina tricks and multiple silent "revisions" and in some cases total neglect of previous issues. As such the book is unsatisfying in tying together everything in a coherent manner.

SPOILERS AHEAD

In Hyperion 2, we have the Shrike managing the tree of pain actively as a lure and trap for the expected Messiah. This we have primary information on as Silenus was on that tree for sometime until freed and it cannot be explained away as inaccurate narration. So this tree simply disappears in Endymion Rising. It seems to have never happened and is never mentioned. Instead the tree of pain is now a treeship moving around to drop people off to act as transponders for Aenea's torturous redemption.

The Shrike himself (we now become privy to gender) becomes just a cute little helper of Aenea appearing everywhere convenienlyt to save the day. Never threatening her or anyone non-Pax or core. This occurs with no apparent explanation of why this change happened and how it could be reconciled with the future battle that we are told kills the Shrike.

Why? No explanation whatsoever. Btw, why do you even need that ship if Aenea can farcast everywhere she wanted already by "locking-on" the people of the place.

Going back to the whole reason of traveling with the tree ship to seed people "infected" by Aenea to the different worlds becomes a bit unnecessary if Aenea has the potential to farcast at will. A parenthesis here for a couple of minor holes - towards the end it appears to Raul as if the whole Farcasting through the portals was just a ruse and Aenea was putting them through the casters of Tethys by herself. Yet, Nemes was able to drill into them and find whether they were activated so clearly inconsistent with the latest explanation "reveal". Which also leaves a question of the whole attack on the Farcasters of Hyperion 2 by Gladstone - if the machinery is impossible to destroy as presented later and fully controlled by the Void that Binds entities, then why was it even necessary to wait for Gladstone to disable them?

Finally, the whole time travel aspect just brings a slew of problems which have never been handled well to my knowledge (in SciFi generally not in this book). Either there is continuity in which case there is full predestination and if someone indeed comes back from the future knows what will happen with perfect clarity or not, in which case the whole of time/history can change as a landscape can when a determined bulldozer operates on it. In the version of the tetralogy we somehow get the first but the second is always feared but never happens.

For example, why was De Soya "chosen" by the Church/Core to lead the hunt of Aenea in the first place. They thought he was instrumental in capturing her but he was instrumental in saving her?

Below are some additional questions how was the Core "hiding" in the cruciform? How was it communicating without using the Void that Binds which is controlled by the other entities.
What difference do the voices of the Dead make if they are just recordings of their lives?
What tears were created in the Void by the use of fatlline or the Gideon drive or farcasting when its ability to store information and personality fronts is apparently infinite? How could the Core manipulate this storing when it did not have that access?

And a final note, Christianity is presented as essentially meaningless and while the history of catholicism is presented in some detail there is no reference to Patristic views and the whole other side of it that is the Orthodox church (which never appears while we have almost any other religion doing an appearance).