Rating: 
Summary: Simmons shows he can do great adventure novel as well
Review: While I agree that Endymion and it's sequel are not as important an achievement as the Hyperion duo was, if one judges this book for what it is, an adventure novel, this is one of the best adventure novels ever written in the genre, and fits wonderfully into the Hyperion saga.
Rating:
Summary: biology and SF
Review: Cette oeuvre est excellente, je ne suis pas un critique littéraire je me contente donc de dire que j'ai adoré. J'aimerais toutefois poser une question : Dan Simmons a-t'il lu "Le Gene Egoïste" de Richard Dawkins ("The Selfish Gene" by R. Dawkins) pour élaborer sa théorie sur l'évolution des intelligences artificielles ?
Rating:
Summary: deserves more stars
Review: i was reading some of the reviews of hyperion and fall of hyperion and i noticed that many people thought that these last two books fell short of the standard set forth by the first two. i feel that this is not true, these two books are excellently written and i think they a great follow-up to the hyperion cantos. though they may not be written in the same style as the first two, they would fail if they were. i think many of the people who thought that these books were not as good as the first failed to realize that these books were conveying a different type of message than the first and i think that they were an excellent end to the series.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I am shocked that the reviews I have read of this book rate it inferior to the Hyperion novels. I LOVED this book. It is a thoroughly engrossing novel and I couldn't put it down. A masterpiece of science fiction ranking right up there with the first books in both the Dune and Foundation series.
Rating: 
Summary: Huge Disappointment
Review: Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion are both truly excellent books...indisputably classics of the genre. That being said, I cannot overstress my disappointment in the Endymion books. Simmons' weak, formulaic plotting and 2-dimensional characters showed me that he was just going through the motions on Endymion and Rise of Endymion. The tense, gothic quality which made the first 2 books so fresh and unique is completely absent. It is a mystery to me that the average review for this book is so high. There are some interesting concepts and Mr Simmons shows the occasional flash of his talent here and there, but I honestly wish I had stopped reading this series after the second book.
Rating: 
Summary: I enjoyed it as much as the others
Review: I have noticed that many readers were not happy with Endymion in their online reviews. Keep in mind the difficulty of extending a storyline throughout four volumes. I would say that the book isn't as well-crafted as the first two, but sequels seldom are. I am presently reading The Rise of Endymion, and so far it is good but rather dry in some parts. All in all, I reccomend this book to anyone who has read Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional meld of sci-fi and literary elements
Review: I'm somewhat surprised by some of the reviews for the Hyperion series, especially the latter two, Endymion and Rise of Endymion. I agree that Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion are the /slightly/ stronger of the four, but again they are the foundational works which support the rest of the series, which branches off into a more ornate, but steadfast, structure. Looking at the structure of the Hyperion saga as a whole, both as science fiction and as literary fiction, few stories come close to matching the width and depth of Simmon's conceptualization of the future.Sci-fi ornamentation aside, much of the saga's strength lies in it's most literary qualities. The plot is epic and the characters are depthful and realistic, but Simmons raises the bar a notch above the average space opera's best, weaving a rich tapestry of allusion and parallelism that would challenge literary fiction's finest offerings. Hyperion itself, as many have surmised, takes on the patterns of Canterbury Tales as its own, with its tales spanning the genres from mystery and suspense to classic military sf. This multi-genre approach is an unusual vehicle for introducing an entire science-fiction universe, and duly appreciated by those sick of tired and stilted exposition. The Fall of Hyperion rightly gathers source from Keats' unfinished epic and the greatest tragedies of our time. By the close of this installment, Simmons' Mythos of the Hegemony, the Shrike, and the Hyperion pilgrims stands on its own in the form of Martin Silenus' Cantos, an accomplishment that, some say, Simmons should have stopped at. Yet mysteries and holes have been purposefully left unanswered and unfilled. Good marketing, certainly, but one must appreciate the difficulty of keeping this sort of complexity tight and controlled. Endymion is the perfect example of this. Simmons balances the story's elements to near perfection by developing and adding onto the Hyperion Mythos while answering some mysteries and making others more mysterious. Plot-wise, Endymion's fast-paced chase is a timeless theme (all Scharzenegger jokes aside), and Simmons does not waste it by relying wholly on the cliches that have led highbrows to dismiss action-based stories as inferior. Rather, the chase becomes a framework for Simmons to explore the mysteries and difficulties of faith and reason that he first introduced in Hyperion with the priest's tale. The Rise of Endymion is an exceptional way to cap off this saga (and unsurprisingly, there is always room for a sequel). This final installment shares many thematic elements with Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (and who can't resist imagining Martin Silenus as a caustic Jubal Harshaw?) The questions of religion, faith, and messiah-hood are presented fairly and with an objectivity that is refreshing in an industry and a culture where it is popular to portray such topics with a negative, mocking slant. (Honestly, name an Arthur C. Clarke novel where faith and religion are /not/ quickly dismissed as irrelevant to an imagined future culture.) Stylistically, Simmons writes with detailed clarity and a dry sense of humor that underpins every book in this series. While the story may bog at times during the particular verbose descriptions of the latter stories, the pacing is never derailed. Necessarily with any work of fiction, there are miniscule lapses of continuity and logicality. (What /did/ happen to Leigh Hunt?) But I would argue that these nits are so glaring only because the whole of the series is so well-implemented. To remain quotable, the saga is a spectacular tour-de-force, breathtaking in scope with heart-touching characters. Please read these books.
Rating:
Summary: Endymion fails to satisfy the high expectations
Review: I was dissapointed by Endymion probably because of the high expectations set by the previous 2 books. Although compared with novels by other authors this is still a very good novel, I did not like the lack of imagination, simplicity of the plot and extreme resemblance of the story to well-known movies like "Terminator 2". There are also some weak points in the story such as it is not convincing what motivates Endymion to go into all this trouble and the insides of the Pax are too extensively described. There are no new worlds to be described and Aenea's personality reminds me more of a typical American teenager.
Rating:
Summary: Not the page-turner that the first two books were
Review: This book is very much like The Wizard of Oz (in fact, the characters refer to this a number of times). It is more of an adventure story than the page-turning thrillers that "Hyperion" and "Fall of Hyperion" were. It really wasn't until the last 100-150 pages that I felt compelled to stay up late to finish the book. Additionally, the plotting, imagination, ingenuity, characters, and cautionary themes of the first two books are sorely lacking. This is pretty much a straight-forward adventure story as we follow the pursued and pursuers from world to world in their quest to escape/capture. It is not until the final 100-150 pages that the real evil begins to appear, and that is when things really get interesting. Unlike his previous two books, Simmons fails to present us with this deeper mystery until the end..."Hyperion" and "Fall..." gave the reader much more mystery to work with from the beginning and gave us many more ideas to ponder than he does in this book. That being said, Simmons is an excellent author, and even though it was the weakest book in the series (though I haven't read "Rise of Endymion" yet), it is much better than most other sci-fi books out there. While not up to the standard he set in the first two books, "Endymion" has rich characters, is full of imaginative worlds, has a bit of a lighter tone, and kept me interested until the end.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not as good as prior two.
Review: This was a good book, but not nearly as entertaining as his prior two Hyperion adventures. It moves a little slow, but still worth reading.
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