Rating: 
Summary: Empty and useless...
Review: Ok, Dan Simmons is a good writer. Ok, he's got good ideas. But while reading this book, I couldn't help thinking that he's been stretching the strory he started in his first 2 excellent books far too much. The flow and pace are still mastered by Simmons, but this time there is no scenario whatsoever supporting his writing skills. We're driven from action scene to action scene in a boring stream of kitsch exotic postcards and boring dialogs. Even the Dreadful Inquisitors sound stupid and fake in Simmons's hand. Not to mention the shallowness of his main caracters... Even Rambo has more layers to his personality than poor Raul Endymion!A big deception is garanteed for those who loved Hyperion. So don't forget to put this volume in your "Index of Prohibited Books"!
Rating: 
Summary: I would have given it five stars but...
Review: I would have given it five stars but I cannot when I think back on the near perfection of the Hyperion duology. Endymion is a good book, very very good in fact, but when compared to the first two...well it just lacks. Even if your efforts are first rate, sometimes it's best to quit while you're ahead.
Rating: 
Summary: Please respond to my question!!!
Review: Not as good as Fall, but good just the same. I like A. Bettik and the whole Pax thing is kinda cool. The first two were more thought provoking, especially the reference to Cantebury Tales in Hyperion. De Soya is cool, too, so is Nemes. HERE IS MY QUESTION: What happens to Leigh Hunt, from the second book??? He is in Rome after Keats' death, and some people start to appear, but this is NEVER RESOLVED!! I've read all four books, and we never find out what was happening and who the people were. DID I MISS SOMETHING??
Rating:
Summary: Ack!
Review: Simmons really dropped the ball on this one, and its follow up as well. Do yourself a huge favor and consider this series to be 2 books long and forget about Endymion and Rise of Endymion. More apt titles would have been The Dying Earth, parts 3 and 4...ha!
Rating: 
Summary: More Keatsiana in a Planetary Romance
Review: I was somewhat disappointed -- this third work in the series lacks the breathtaking scope and grandeur of the first two. It is primarily a fairly routine planetary romance, although Dan Simmons does break through periodically with a headlong, can't-put-it-down quality of narrative. The homage to Keats continues, with reluctant hero Raul "Endymion" escorting the future messiah Aenea (the daughter of [Fanny] "Brawne" "Lamia") through a well-realized sequence of post-holocaust worlds. The final chapter ends with two excerpts from the poet, first the famous opening lines of Keats' Endymion (the end loops back to the beginning -- get it?), and the second from the first stanza of his Ode on a Grecian Urn (for reasons which are unclear). And Aenea's promise of a sequel: "...and so, Raul Endymion, until we meet again on your pages, in wild ecstasy, I bid you adieu." That last is a good thing, since when I was about 80% through the book, I began to wonder how fast he would have to wrap up the extensive QUEST outlined in the opening pages, and hoped it wouldn't be a hurried synopsis like the wrapup to Vance's Lyonesse trilogy... Never fear, on this site you will find the Rise of Endymion (not a Keats title -- I would have suggested perhaps La Belle Dame Sans Merci). I'll get the next...hoping it offers greater scope for Simmons' genius. Endymion's plot does have a number of nice twists -- but it owes too much to another "literary" classic of our time. I won't say what, but at the triumphant climax do resist the temptation to raise your fist and cry out "Hasta la vista, Baby!" It wouldn't be dignified. --Eric Halsey
Rating:
Summary: Traveling the worlds of the Hegemony
Review: After being overwhelmed and moved by the Hyperion Cantos, I had been looking for other books that match Simmons' strength. I didn't find any, until I found Endymion. Simmons goes full throttle in this book, starting it very dramaticly. After Raul Endymion gets his mission from Martin Silenus, the sarcastic poet from the Hyperion Cantos, he meets Aenea...and the Shrike. They are soon haunted by the Pax and they flee from one world to the other. It's an amazing, yet again overwhelming journey through many worlds, described so vividly, in a way only Simmons can. I recommend this book, and the whole series, to any sci-fi reader, because it takes you so far from reality today, or does it? The story's broad spectrum and incredible depth is something like I've never seen or read before.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to Simmons's standard
Review: Dan Simmons set a high standard with Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. In fact I would argue that Hyperion is maybe the best hard SF novel of all time, and Fall is pretty close - certainly the best sequel. I was ecstatic when Endymion appeared. I had read all of Simmons's intervening works (Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort, Children of the Night, etc), most of which I loved - but they weren't SF! So I figured, finally, he has returned to his roots (as I saw it anyway) and the saga continues. Wrong! It's not really a continuation of the earlier saga, and the whole work is not nearly as rich, deeply textured, startling, or in general WONDERFUL as the earlier books. Too bad. In a way I'm curious what made Simmons do this. He's clearly better than this book lets on. Publisher pressure (as one reviewer hypothesizes)? Whatever, this book isn't at all a disaster, it's just not Simmons's best - which we all have come to relish, and expect.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting from the very first page
Review: This book gripped me from the very first page, and it's no disappointment right up to the end. Plenty of action. It's not as bizarre as the earlier Hyperion books, but is more of an adventure/chase story.
Rating:
Summary: Dan Simmons is great, but Endymion is just adequate
Review: Hyperion and fall Of Hyperion are SF classics. When you raise the stakes that high it's hard to come back strong. I read through this novel hoping I'd get magic in the sequel, but I haven't gotten halfway through that book after a year. Need a good read? Check out the Engines of God by Jack McDevitt.
Rating:
Summary: Decent enough story, all things considered
Review: While reading "Endymion," I wondered which came first: this tale about two morphing, android-like beings, one set to kill the young messiah before she grows up to fulfill her destiny, the other set to protect her; or the film "Terminator 2," which boasts a startlingly similar plot? Oh, it's a decent enough story, but I couldn't get past what, to me, were two major flaws for such an ambitious work: Mr. Simmons seems to have an ax to grind with the Catholic Church; in making the Church the root of all evil, he ends up enlisting sympathy for it, rather than the loathing and revulsion he clearly intended to inspire. But the second flaw was a far more serious one to flow from the pen of an award-winning writer: Mr. Simmons is apparently unaware that the words "which" and "that" are NOT interchangeable. I confess that the only reason I even bothered to finish the series was to see whether he had learned this basic rule of English grammar. Sadly, as of the publication of "Endymion" he had not. If you're really looking for a science fiction epic, I recommend re-reading the Foundation novels or the Dune novels. Great stories, and careful use of grammar. What more could a science-fiction loving editor ask?
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