Reviews

By far the book that took me the longest to finish this year, and it leaves me very conflicted about what to think of it.

The story sketches a world in which humanity has taken over planets all over the world, some reachable by teleportation (farcasting) and some only reachable with Hawking drive ships. These ships leave its passengers with time debt, meaning they arrive younger or older than their peers. The world is helped to be controlled by an AI counsel and is at war with humans who evolved in deep space, living between the planets, called Ousters.

On a planet called Hyperion is a monument, called the Time Tombs. These Time Tombs appear to move back in time, and a godlike retribution angel called the Shrike is said to come from the tombs and destroy all of civilization.

A group of 7 pelgrims are asked to go on a pilgrimage to the Shrike temple, as an offering of some sort. The book is then structured à la Canterbury Tales with each of the pilgrims telling their story. The stories relate to one another despite their different timelines.

And now my conflicted feelings toward the book: it is brilliant, but it also took me ages to read, not because it is difficult, but because it is incredibly slow paced, long and often boring. The story of one of the pelgrims, that of the priest, was incredible and will stay with me forever. The same goes for the soldier's tale. Both were great fusions between strange future science fiction and "normal" humanity.

I guess my only problem with the book was its pacing, despite the beautiful stories I never really cared about the overarching story until the last story was told. This resulted in me almost never picking up the book to read a few pages. And because the story ends on a huge cliffhanger, I have to read the next one. I am hoping to read more crazy storytelling, and wish a little faster pacing. For anyone thinking of reading the book: if you have even a shred of patience (that's more than I have) and if you can appreciate a beautiful story without a lot of tension, don't hesitate to read Hyperion. I for one won't soon forget it.