A review by charelia
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Maybe the true eldritch horrors were the intelligences we made along the way. The Fall of Hyperion continues the story we left on a cliffhanger in Hyperion, but now under the chaos of all-out war on a galactic scale. Though we are not treated to the deeply personal pilgrims' tales that made the first book so unique and compelling, we get a much more space opera feel as we see the side of the Hegemony experienced by CEO Gladstone (does anybody else picture her as Mon Mothma?) in what she well knows may be its — and her — final days. All the while the pilgrims are wandering back and forth across the surface of Hyperion, making comparatively little progress yet their storyline is still deeply exciting and compelling. And all this takes place under the shadow of quite possibly the most literal interpretation of deus ex machina I've ever seen, with commentary on humanity's relationship with AI that was truly ahead of its time.
Humanity had become as blasé about sharing their lives with potential AI monitoring as pre-Civil War Old Earth USA-southern families had been about speaking in front of their human slaves . . . Having sex or a domestic quarrel with the house monitors on is like undressing in front of a dog or cat . . . it gives you pause the first time, and then you forget about it.

The only flaw in these interwoven stories is the pacing; a chapter often ends on a cliffhanger, but rather than switching to another thrilling plot thread to entertain the reader whilst keeping them in suspense as to the resolution of the cliffhanger, the book instead pivots to the plodding Keats PoV, and several times I found myself debating whether it was worth sitting through the next chapter just to get back to the exciting stuff. Nevertheless, this was a fantastic read, a worthy sequel to the masterpiece that was Hyperion, beautifully written and deeply philosophical.

With a sudden clarity which went beyond the immediacy of his pain or sorrow, Sol Weintraub suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so.
It was not obedience.
It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son.
Abraham was testing God.
By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right — in Abraham's eyes and the hearts of his offspring — to become the God of Abraham.

. . . The tree of thorns . . . [was] an instrument to broadcast suffering through the universe so the human God-part would be forced to respond, to show itself . . . but the obscene tree . . . was not the way to evoke the missing power.
Sol realized now that the machine god, whatever its form, was insightful enough to see that empathy was a response to others' pain, but the same UI was too stupid to realize that empathy — in both human terms and the terms of humankind's UI — was far more than that. Empathy and love were inseparable and inexplicable. The machine UI would never understand it — not even enough to use it as a lure for the part of the human UI who had tired of warfare in the distant future.
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