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benjch 's review for:

Hyperion by Dan Simmons
4.0

Absolutely wild concept of a book. This is actually 5 books of completely different genres wrapped in a sci-fi trench coat.

Even better, it's five very good books wrapped in a trench coat. I found a lot of the generic sci-fi-ness of the wrapping paper kind of bland (
SpoilerThe whole farcaster/spinship/torchship thing felt extremely hokey
), but the stuff inside was legitimately compelling.

This book is fundamentally very good exposition for what I assume is an even crazier rest of the series, so if you're looking for resolution, you'll be sadly disappointed. There was, however, enough intrigue and mystery to keep me engaged throughout, so I'm not actually complaining.

One of my bigger complaints here is just that Simmons really wants you to understand that this is a long ways in the future, but still likes making references to 20th century stuff, so he'll list things like "The prose reminded me of Shakespeare, or Keats, or insert 5 nonsense names that sound vaguely futuristic". Somehow, despite the fact that
Spoilerold earth is dead, and most of our history has been forgotten
, people keep making vague references to the 20th century that just feel kind of out of place.

Overall, really fun, with some caveats.