JDG said: > At any rate "Fall of Hyperion" just seemed like a muddled mess to > me - difficult to follow, and as Rich noted, a very unclean > ending.
I must admit that I like the non-Pilgrims part of the ending, just not the resolution of their thread. I remember reading an interview with Simmons (in Interzone?) in which he said that while he was writing _The Fall of Hyperion_ his editor kept saying how great it was but how it was going to be hard to wrap it up. Simmons always replied that he knew exactly how it was all going to fit together and then went away and panicked because he really had no idea. The other interesting thing is that the Hyperion Cantos were the climax of a future history invented in great detail by Simmons and the high school English class he taught. It's a pity that nobody other than those kids will ever get to know the whole story. > I haven't read _Endymion_ if only because the preview blurb in the > back of _Fall of Hyperion_ seems to indicate that _Endymion_ will > center around the most-annoying character of all time - Silenus and > will feature the Catholic Church as the Evil Empire as a major plot > theme. I can't say that either of those teasers has me running to > the book store to read the next book. ;-) If that's what's stopping you, then you have the wrong impression. Silenus is a very minor character who appears, so far as I recall, for about twenty pages at the beginning of _Endymion_. The central characters in the two Endymion books are completely new. As for the Catholic Church being an Evil Empire, that's somewhat more true but also a little misleading. One of the core characters, Father-Captain Federico de Soya is an extremely well drawn character and certainly not "Evil". And the whole plot is a detailed examination of what it might be like to know a Messiah, which I think you might find interesting. More valid reasons for not reading it include it being somewhat inconsistent with the earlier books, the annoying structure of _Endymion_ (which is one long chase scene that could, in principle, be extended interminably), and the fact that _The Rise of Endymion_ never really comes properly to life. The ending, however, is much, much better than the ending of _The Fall of Hyperion_. Rich VFP Shrike
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