Rise of Endymion

Rating:
Summary: Conclusion to science fiction's finest series
Review: Returning to epic tales, the concluding chapters of the story begun in Endymion reaches its final climax here in The Rise of Endymion. The Dan Simmons masterpiece ends with a powerful and even touching narrative that finally (?) concludes the events begun in Hyperion.

The basic structure is similar to Endymion, with Raul and Aenea on the run from the Pax. But here we get to step back more often and see the giant picture unfold. The forces of evil are staggering in their power and drive to destroy our heroes. Nemes is back (I doubt any reader really thought she died back in Endymion), along with her siblings, and even the shrike is behaving even more strangely than usual. On the subject of Nemes, I have to say that if a movie is ever made of the Endymion books, Kristanna Loken would be perfect for this role, since she's already played it once before.

If the rise of the epic structure is pleasant, and the personal connection to the characters grows stronger, both for the better, there is one drawback. I mentioned in my Endymion review that Aenea was too much of a ghost in the machine. Well, the ghost has graduated to godhood, and the machine is planet sized. At worst, Raul becomes mildly annoyed that she never gives a straight answer, and no one else seems to notice. Yes, it keeps the reader guessing, but it comes across as bad writing. There, I've had my say. To be fair, we do actually learn specific and concrete reasons for some of her reticence.

I wonder if more books are forthcoming from this series. I, for one, would love to read more, but it's getting difficult to see how more could arise. Aside from a few pages of loopy philosophy towards the end, similar to that at the end of Fall of Hyperion, these are among the best fictional worlds I've ever read. Let us hope that the master storyteller can repeat the magic again.

Rating:
Summary: typing through tears
Review: I've just put down Rise of Endymion after reading it for the second time in about 5 years. The humanity of this series and especially this final book is unparalleled in my experience of science fiction (or indeed any fiction). Simmons's world is wonderfully fleshed out, but the massive scale of that universe contrasts brilliantly with the love-centered philosophy and very real characters that form the core of the narrative.

In Rise of Endymion Raul and Aenea are people involved in an almost mythical undertaking to save and elevate humanity. And yet the reader experiences these characters as vital and fallible human beings and their love is a palpable prescence throughout the book.

The last chapter is so full of startling hope in the face of tragic loss that I am still wiping the tears from my eyes.

Rating:
Summary: The BEST
Review: The best Sci-Fi ever, the whole series (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion). The characters, the plot and the intensity make it a must read not just for Sci-Fi buffs but for any Fiction reader. Dan Simmons has as big of a surprise in the end as did Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. This series touches on all aspects of humanity in seven characters lifetimes through a plethora of worlds.

Rating:
Summary: Entirely Satisfying and Emotionally Moving
Review: Unlike some, I loved the first three books of the Hyperion Cantos almost equally, feeling that each one contributed an important part to the overall saga. As such, it is no surprise that I thoroughly loved Rise of Endymion, the conclusion of the tetralogy.

There is no doubt that the Cantos as a whole are not easily understood as bits and pieces of a very large and very complicated story have been given to the reader over a period of 2200 some odd pages, but I urge anyone who decides to read these books to be prepared to think about the plot and make a context for it before condemning it. Some parts elude me still, but overall, these books fit together very well.

But no book is without flaw. I'll be the first to admit that there are parts in the book that drag, but not for lack of plot. Rather, excessive description plagues some earlier parts of the book where endless climbing and traversing of the planet of T'ien Shan seems to dominate about 80% of the text.

Regardless, I am one of those who felt a sort of attachment to the characters, chiefly A. Bettik, Raul, Aenea and Gregorius. I did not find the love story corny or hokey in any sense like I do virtually every cinematic love story. I've heard that the love Raul and Aenea share is borderline pedophilia. I had similar thoughts, but Aenea's nature is not that of a normal person of her age. Besides, Raul's infatuation with Aenea in a romantic sense really doesn't come about until she is a fully grown woman of 21.

Overall, Rise of Endymion is a fitting end to a brilliant saga, wrapping up roughly every relevant plot thread while still leaving a bit of mystery and possibility for the future of mankind. His vision is optimistic but his ending is bittersweet.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning, but uneven conclusion to an awesome series.
Review: The Rise of Endymion concludes the four book saga begun in Hyperion. In reality though there are two two book sets. The first two and the last two. While they are linked by a common history they are very different stories.

This final book answers most of the questions that one might have regarding the Core and the Shrike, although it still leaves things open for an exploration of the future war between the human and core Ultimate Intelligence factions alluded to throughout the series.

The growth of Aenea and Raul's relationship with each other and Aenea's importance to the galaxy at large are at the heart of the plot. There isn't much that can be said in that regard without spoiling parts of the book for people. Suffice it to say that it is utterly compelling.

While I enjoyed this book and it's conclusion immensely I did find that parts of the book bogged down, particularly in the endless character and scenic descriptions on certain worlds which take up too much time and get little use after their initial presentation. Setting the stage is one thing, but some of it seemed overdone in its detail.

That said, I can't recommend this book highly enough for those that have read the first three books. Those books are required reading to fully understand what happens in this one.

Here is hoping that Dan Simmons will do more with the Hyperion universe in another set of books perhaps continuing further into the future.

Rating:
Summary: Coming from the un-educated mind
Review: well all I can say about the last book of 4 is that I have never finnished a book with such satifaction. The conclusion to the story left me day-dreaming for days. Now, I not educated in the manner of theology, or even poetry for that matter, but I have a wild imagination and a sharp mind, . Dan simmons epic journey from Hyperion to the rise of endymion was so full of depth and creativity that I could care less about his references to the 20th century, the story itself made the book impossible for me to put down and left me with a life-long desire to read the stories many times over.

Rating:
Summary: Pales by comparison with the prequels
Review: Well I had high hopes for The Rise of Endymion. I loved Hyperion and enjoyed its sequels The Fall of Hyperion and Endymion. Endymion began a fresh new storyline set a couple hundred years after the events in Fall. The child Aenea emerged from one of the Time Tombs with prophetic knowledge of future events and a tentative understanding of the Void Which Binds and the true nature of the Technocore. Simmons did a nice job characterizing Aenea: still immature but much more than meets the eye. The contrast between her personality and that of the skilled adult protector Raul Endymion helped make the novel a fun read. The novel ended with Raul and Aenea eventually escaping from the Pax and Core. Rise continues and concludes the story begun in Endymion.

I dove into Rise with the expectation of a climactic resolution of the struggle between humanity and the Technocore. It started off well. The first half of the novel alternates between the viewpoints of Raul Endymion and the bad guys. The "chase" that developed the tension in Endymion continues here and gets quite exciting as Core entities eventually catch up to Raul and Aenea. We visit several unusual and interesting worlds. I was thrilled when the Consul's ship appeared unexpectedly at a dramatic point in the story. I rate this part of the novel a solid four stars.

But the second half, ugh. This is Aenea's knowledge disemmination phase, where she gets on her soapbox and speaks in completely unnecessary riddles that she promises to explain later. She doesn't keep all her promises and the explanations she does give are largely unsatisfying and some of them contradict what we learned in the first two books. For example, the Technocore is revealed to be entirely different from how Ummon described it in Fall. Even worse, we are only exposed to the evil factions in the Core and never meet the good ones. Wait until you learn where the physical location of the Technocore is. What a letdown! Also, we never meet the mysterious powerful alien beings labeled as "lions, tigers, and bears". We only get to learn who one of their agents is, and that doesn't help much because he doesn't reveal *anything* about his species and its powerful allies.

A couple more negatives: The ending is poor, unimaginative, and unsurprising. The many love scenes are corny and were obviously filler material to add an element of sex to the novel, because they don't fit in well with the plot at all. Characterization of Raul and Aenea was nice in Endymion but took a nosedive in Rise. In fact, I often found myself wanting to skip the adventures of Raul and Aenea so I could go back to reading about the evil characters! This time around Raul barely seems to have a mind of his own; he just goes around and reacts to events the best he can, completely unlike in the prequel where he took charge most of the time. Aenea is now a boring teacher spouting nonsense about Love being the source of virtually limitless energy in the Void Which Binds and other esoteric drivel. Both main characters were extremely shallow in this novel. The only interesting ones are Father de Soya, some of the evil guys like Lourdusamy, and a couple others. Albedo of the Core was interesting until his final scene where he became the stereotypical supremely evil being screaming in rage at defeat.

It seems like Simmons is done with this series because he made such a valiant effort to resolve the many loose ends that the previous three books left. Truth be told, the book would likely have been better if Simmons had simply deleted most of Aenea's silly explanations and philosophy (recovering about 200 pages) and left us with the adequate framework we had from the previous three books. Also he should have brought the "good" Technocore factions and alien species into the plot. The end result would have been a book of about the same length but tremendously enriched and on par with the previous novels. I concur with several other disappointed reviewers that you should stop after reading Hyperion and Fall. The problem with reading the otherwise enjoyable Endymion is that you need to read Rise to finish the story. There are lots of positive comments about Rise on Amazon.com and I can agree with many of them, but the novel ultimately falls well below the standard set by the prequels! Overall three stars: well-written initially but too drawn out and capped off with a disappointing ending.

Rating:
Summary: Nay-sayers need to put down their roach
Review: Ok, there are some valid literary criticisms of this book, but nobody who's review I've read is qualified to make them. I'll address them one-by-one.
1. How many of you nay-sayers are smart enough to understand Teilhard de Chardin, much less disagree with his conclusions?
2. Predictability--Raul explains this in his description of Grandam's school of rhetoric. Everyone in the first century AD already knew the ending of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid (ok, the name identification with Troy's favorite son is Simmons throwing high-school dropouts a bone), and nobody seemed to mind.
3. The Shrike--I'll explain it once and once only: a creation of the TechnoCore's Reaper viruses, adamantly opposed to immortality, be it the vainglory of the poets in the first book, or the artificial cruciform. The Shrike doesn't change from villain to hero; rather we change our perception of death and rebirth.
4. Formulaisms--All great epics have them. If you can't deal with it, wait for the movie, but not the real one, the one they cut down for TBS and USA.

Of course it's long. Of course there are a lot of references to our time. (The Aeneid was a long tribute to Octavian Augustus Caesar). These books put the 20th century in perspective. Homer and Virgil used the Trojan War, Bocaccio used the Black Death, and Simmons uses the future. All authors use as a backdrop to their epics a characterization of what society at the time fears.

As I said in my review of the first book, this series will not be widely accessible until there is a commentary to go with it. You people who complain about arcane references remind me of sorority girls in college who didn't read their assignments because they were "boring." You want spoon-feeding? Stick with Crichton. This series separates the men from the boys as a class of educated readers.

Rating:
Summary: Ending on a high note?
Review: The conclusion of the Hyperion series is, to say the least, one which leaves you not knowing whether to be happy for the heros of the tale or sad. Perhaps this is the mark of a good story, perhaps the cards have been overplayed in terms of plot. Both views are possible.

The action-based narration of the previous story continues, but now we finally recieve a good dose of explanation for the many conspiricies and other oddities, like the Shrike, which have adorned the series from the start. Although 600 plus pages is not exactly rushing it in the end, certain liberties appear to have been taken with the story which lead to possible contradictions. This is probably the most damaging to the book, and what cost it one of the five stars I was prepared to give it initially. Also, a number of items that were made out to be vitally important to the story in the first two books appear to have mysteriously vanished. This took the other.

If you read and liked the series up until this point, I do reccomend finishing it. It will not be a wasted experience.

Rating:
Summary: The final book was worth the reading of all prevoiuos
Review: It was interesting to follow the story line of the last book. Despite many "predictions" made by characters in the previous stories this book is full of surprises. And I think this is most beautiful end of the saga I can imagine. This is a kind of book I will never try to read again to do not to spoil the emotional "aftertaste" experienced while reading it first time. But I will come back to it in my thoughts again and again.