The Rise of Endymion

Finished reading the forth book in the series of Hyperion 5 stars, The Fall of Hyperion 5 stars, and Endymion 5 stars and The Rise of Endymion 4 1/2 stars....see my reviews. The book is a little long at 579 pages. 99% of the book was great with lots of battle action, fighting monstrous AI creatures,torture, escape from the far future Catholic church gone bad and the evolution of the human race into possible different species on many worlds and even the vacuum of space. Dan Simmons has a fantastic imagination! His characters are well developed and the reader develops deep empathy with them in their daily lives, and their struggle to survive in some of the brutal environments and escaping from enemies. We see a thousand year old poet, a blue android who turns out to be an advanced observer, our hero Raul Endymion and his love Aenea, and many other space characters and priests. We see the battle of the Core AI to enslave the development of man by giving him "immortality" by virus body take over resurrection. We see the corrupt Catholic church in league with the core AI to become the supreme power on hundreds of worlds. Lots of space battles, escapes from the evil PAX and the AI core's monstrous Nemes creature who kills many using "fast time" and her killing body, and the 3 meter tall, 4 armed killing monster Shrike. The AI core is not interested in the church, just itself and stopping mankind from evolving into many advanced species and controlling mankind through parasitic feeding off their neurons when humans use their FTL forecaster openings and spaceships with FTL Hawkings drive. We see people who have "communion" with Aenea's blood eventually learning to be able to freecast to distant worlds by thought alone through "The Void that binds" and breaking free of the "immortality"/resurrection virus supplied by the AI core.. There is a great tear jerking ending I wont ruin for you.The Rise of Endymion sums up the previous books with a great ending. The 1% that slows down the reader was the poetry. Not bad poetry but was not necessary. This book 4 1/2 stars. Make sure you read Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, and Endymion first. An excellent 5 star epic 4 book series. (I've read hundreds of Sci fi books by many great authors).... INMO in the top 40 Sci fi of all time!

Some other reviewers have said that you'll either love or hate this book. I find it hard to disagree. There's a pretty healthy dose of religion and philosophy here and I know that doesn't jive with some. There's also the commonly (over)used trope of time travel which is a bit too deus ex machina for others. Simmons is also not very economical with this narrative (some back-of-the-envelope math shows this book to be about 25% longer than Endymion and even longer than either Hyperion book) and some sections of the book, particularly the characters' time on T'ien Shan, will be more of a chore to get through. Still others will not like Simmons' depictions of the inner workings of the Core, the Void Which Binds, and the universe itself, preferring those things to remain shrouded in mystery as they were left in the Hyperion books. I can appreciate all these criticisms but I do not share them. For me, sci-fi is perhaps the only genre where I can still suspend disbelief, so I didn't have much trouble getting past these things. If you can do it as well, you will find a pretty enthralling and, at times, moving tale. Simmons, once again, did a fine job of creating characters in which you become emotionally invested. Some questions are still left unanswered but it is a fitting end to the story, and it has the distinction of being only the second book to put a gigantic lump in my throat (the other being Hyperion, with the story of Sol and Rachel Weintraub).

Raul's journey with Aenea, alas, comes to an end...well, temporal mechanics can confound mortality, at least for a while. Even though Dan Simmons has amply demonstrated his ability to write deep meaning and emotion into his characters, the love between Raul and Aenea never resonated as strongly with me as the devotion Saul Weintraub held for his daughter Rachel in "Hyperion". Perhaps this is because Aenea just seemed too enigmatic, too much of a meld between Joshua and Joan of Arc, with tragedy waiting behind a beatific smile while Raul's blind devotion seemed to rob him of his own choices and free will. Raul had free will, of course, but to exercise it he would have had to take Aenea up by her delicate porcelain neck and wring the truth out of her with an adamant, "Stop with these coy allusions and tragically prophetic pronouncements and give it to me straight so that I can make my own decisions!" That he never did this took away some of the authenticity of his character. Raul's love is sincere, but his actions are always manipulated to bring about a foregone conclusion, such that Simmons can only maintain the concept of free will if his central characters refuse to question or challenge. This is the main difference between the characterizations in "The Rise of Endymion" and those in "Hyperion", and why this book simply does not reach the same amplitude of effect as that first novel. "The Rise of Endymion" should also be read with "Endymion" as one novel. There is no reason for the pretense of two separate stories here; there is no interlude between the two. And then, waves of story from "Hyperion" crash against the shore of "The Rise of Endymion", with long passages dedicated to the explanation of events in the earlier novels, as if Simmons had received an abundance of mail from readers who could simply not piece it all together. One could almost recommend jumping straight from "Hyperion"--the beginning of the journey--to "The Rise of Endymion"--the end of the journey--for answers to those nagging questions and some salve for the emotional highs and lows of those earlier characters. Almost... Despite these criticisms (and a Christ-figure count as numerous as the body counts from 1990s action movies), "The Rise of Endymion" is still vibrantly and brilliantly written, with scenes that rise from the text to become real. The endless journeys, from point to point through the quantum foam, are finally revealed to have had a singular purpose to the plot, and were not just exercises in colorful prose. There is a conclusion, finally (kind of), that satisfies and completes the arc of story. "The Rise of Endymion" was well worth reading, and essential for a full appreciation of the earlier novels.

Thanks a lot, M. Simmons / M. Silenus for the great an inspiring Cantos. I find it an unforgettable read.

Fantástico desenlace para una de las mejores tetralogías de la ciencia ficción. No defrauda, altamente recomendable. Cuatro palabras mas aquí.

Try it for yourself..

ＳＦ史に残る傑作Hyperionシリーズの最終作にあたります。 魅力的なキャラクター、バラエティ溢れる世界設定、スピーディーなストーリー 展開と前４作と変わらない高いレベルの作品となっています。 ただ、今作はシリーズ最終作ということなので、読者が期待しているのはどのよう な結末を迎えるかということ。 個人的に結末自体はそれほど不満はないのですが、最後まで語られること無く 謎のままで終わってしまった事柄が多いのはやはり気になります。 そういう点から見ると１点減点は止むを得ないかなという感はあります。 とはいえ良作ですので、前３作を読んだ方はぜひ最後まで読み通してください。

è l'ultimo episodio della saga, ha pienamente soddisfatto le mie aspettative. l'unico neo è che l'edizione e ipereconomica e con caratteri piccolissimi.