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wyntrchylde 's review for:
The Rise of Endymion
by Dan Simmons
The Rise of Endymion
By Dan Simmons
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published In: New York City, NY, USA
Date: 1997
Pgs: 579
Summary:
The time has come for Aenea and her flock to return to Pax Space. Destiny calls. They must discover the Meaning. They must bring it to the people. And again, the spiked monster, the Shrike, dogs their steps. As do, the Pax who see her as a threat to the power of their church and theocracy, and their unholy alliance with the very machines that were ready to destroy Mankind in The Fall of Hyperion. The Meaning of the Universe. The Secrets of Existence. The Fate of the Universe. ...while the TechnoCore’s supra-bioorganic killing machines dressed in the garb of the Church stalk them through space.
Genre:
science fiction, space opera, militaria, destiny of man
Why this book:
Because this is the last official book in the canon of The Hyperion Cantos. And, because, I loved the other three. I have misgivings about this one with the themes expressed.
This Story is About:
Railing against faith being forced upon you or your being coerced into its trappings whether you believe or not. Wandering the wonders of Simmons imagined megaverse through the partially defunct farcaster portals...this isn’t what the story is supposed to be about, but it cinches the middle portion of the book together. I get that it is supposed to show us how far and wide the beings who wish to know of and about Aenea are, but it comes across odd to me.
The story is about predestination more than faith or destiny. The tragedy that all stories become when you think about the what happens next and next and next. Life ends. People die. The end comes. Fight the good fight.
Favorite Character:
Aenea is a Jesus figure in the story. She is a favorite as is Raul. A. Bettik doesn’t get enough screen time. He is probably my favorite favorite in the book. And though I had misgivings about him, Father DeSoya grows back into the character that I loved from the previous book.
Least Favorite Character:
The clones of the Noble Guard. They’re cardboard boogeymen.
Cardinal Lourdusammy. He’s the fat cleric, the Richlieu, the villain whose motives you can’t be sure of...until you get to the resurrection scene with Dure. After that point, you start watching him more closely.
Character I Most Identified With:
Raul Endymion. That might be a function of this novel being almost entirely from his perspective, even when he is omniscient narrating events that took place outside of his sight.
The Feel:
Gloom at impending destiny or doom through the early part of the book when Raul is separated from Aenea and A. Bettik. There is a definitive difference in the feel of this books versus the other books of the Hyperion Cantos. There is a feel like there is too much story and not enough pages as I read toward the end of the book.
Favorite Scene:
The scene where Raul comes through the farcaster into the Jovian world. Especially when added to my thoughts on how he left that world, he didn’t arrive at the next world in quite the way I would have envisioned. I had visions of his being spit through another farcaster by one of the giant floating squid creatures...or worse coming out the other end of one.
The scene where Raul is thinking about the first intimate night he shared with Aenea and his exposition concerning love which is too awesome not to quote.
“It is a problem to tell of such things. To share the most private and sacred of moments. It feels like a violation to put such things into words. And a lie not to.
To see and feel one’s beloved naked for the first time is one of life’s pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.
I had never made love to the right person before. I knew that even as Aenea and I first kissed and lay against each other, even before we began moving slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. I realized that I had never really made love to anyone before that. The young-soldier-on-leave sex with friendly women or the bargeman and bargewoman we-have-the-opportunity-so-why-not? sex that I thought had explored and discovered everything to do with the subject was not even the beginning.”
The hang glider flight off the mountaintops of Tien Shan.
The battle at the Temple Hanging in Air. I find myself much more emotionally involved in this than I thought. I was on Simmons for the way the book was written. But this scene is a great capstone. It makes the previous 400 pages worthwhile. I’m very pleased with this scene. And the battle’s aftermath in the Ouster system, that’s what big science fiction is.
My heart aches at the scene near the end in Castel Sant’Angelo on Pacem. Very well written.
Settings:
Old Earth, space, Pacem, the defunct but still functional worlds linked by farcaster, Jovian high atmosphere. The book does play a bit too much of travelogue when it begins detailing Tien Shan, which sounds like an awesome place, but did we really need to interrupt the story to exposit all the known habitats of Tien Shan along with where the people living there were from: nationally, culturally, racially. Tree rings around distant stars.
Pacing:
This is one of those books where you blink or you yawn and realize that you have read a hundred pages. The book seems to stop for a breather when Raul reaches Tien Shan. Stuff still happens, i.e. the rope slide between the kilometers apart mountain ledges and the race down the treacherous ice shelf. It breaks the books up a bit for me. In a series where the evil has been man/alien/cyber made, this interrupter where we get the conflicts with nature feels sort of like being drawn offsides. There’s too much story left to tell and too many pieces still on the chessboard for this interregnum.
Nearing the end of the books, I want it to last. I want it to be longer. This has been an incredible series and I don’t want to read the last page of the last full novel in the series.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Father Captain DeSoya is a horrible character burning the defenseless. After his appearance in the previous book, Endymion, this is horridly out-of-character even when factored against his busting down in rank and removal from the Fleet. The lessons he learned and internalized while chasing Aenea in the previous book have been lost or forgotten. The character is doing the same things that gave him such nightmares in the previous book. Meh. Though after his being busted down and removed from rank and the fleet, perhaps that caused him to see the good that the Church was doing as opposed to the actions that his conscience was giving him problems with. He does make a move in this book. but he disappears from the stage for a great hunk of the book.
Aenea and Raul walking up and sticking their heads in the Pax’s trap on T’ien Shan is stupid. And I’ve come to expect these two characters to not be stupid. Way, way O-O-C.
Last Page Sound:
I wish it wasn’t over.
Author Assessment:
I love Dan Simmons work, by and large. The Rise of Endymion may be the weakest of the Hyperion Cantos books. I wonder if there was too much time between the writing of Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. I take it back. The story may drag at some places, but it makes up for it. And yes, it is a tragedy, but it’s a triumph as well. Very well done.
Editorial Assessment:
Wonder if this book represented one of those points where editors didn’t feel like they could or should challenge the author and therefore let him have his head. Not saying that’s why this book is different in feel than the other three, but there is definitely a difference.
Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library via the InterLibrary Loan program and the Dallas Public Library
Why isn’t there a screenplay?
The Hyperion Cantos should be a movie, though I do fear that it wouldn’t live up to the awesomeness of the whole.
Casting call:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt could absolutely fill the role of Raul Endymion.
Aenea would be one of those roles where you would need 3 actresses to fill the role properly. Not sure who would play the youngest Aenea, but I could see Chloe Moretz as the late teenage/early adult Aenea. Maybe Reese Witherspoon as the adult-adult Aenea.
Would recommend to:
Genre fans, space opera fans, sci fi fans, philosophers interested in a free will versus predestination debate.
By Dan Simmons
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published In: New York City, NY, USA
Date: 1997
Pgs: 579
Summary:
The time has come for Aenea and her flock to return to Pax Space. Destiny calls. They must discover the Meaning. They must bring it to the people. And again, the spiked monster, the Shrike, dogs their steps. As do, the Pax who see her as a threat to the power of their church and theocracy, and their unholy alliance with the very machines that were ready to destroy Mankind in The Fall of Hyperion. The Meaning of the Universe. The Secrets of Existence. The Fate of the Universe. ...while the TechnoCore’s supra-bioorganic killing machines dressed in the garb of the Church stalk them through space.
Genre:
science fiction, space opera, militaria, destiny of man
Why this book:
Because this is the last official book in the canon of The Hyperion Cantos. And, because, I loved the other three. I have misgivings about this one with the themes expressed.
This Story is About:
Railing against faith being forced upon you or your being coerced into its trappings whether you believe or not. Wandering the wonders of Simmons imagined megaverse through the partially defunct farcaster portals...this isn’t what the story is supposed to be about, but it cinches the middle portion of the book together. I get that it is supposed to show us how far and wide the beings who wish to know of and about Aenea are, but it comes across odd to me.
The story is about predestination more than faith or destiny. The tragedy that all stories become when you think about the what happens next and next and next. Life ends. People die. The end comes. Fight the good fight.
Favorite Character:
Aenea is a Jesus figure in the story. She is a favorite as is Raul. A. Bettik doesn’t get enough screen time. He is probably my favorite favorite in the book. And though I had misgivings about him, Father DeSoya grows back into the character that I loved from the previous book.
Least Favorite Character:
The clones of the Noble Guard. They’re cardboard boogeymen.
Cardinal Lourdusammy. He’s the fat cleric, the Richlieu, the villain whose motives you can’t be sure of...until you get to the resurrection scene with Dure. After that point, you start watching him more closely.
Character I Most Identified With:
Raul Endymion. That might be a function of this novel being almost entirely from his perspective, even when he is omniscient narrating events that took place outside of his sight.
The Feel:
Gloom at impending destiny or doom through the early part of the book when Raul is separated from Aenea and A. Bettik. There is a definitive difference in the feel of this books versus the other books of the Hyperion Cantos. There is a feel like there is too much story and not enough pages as I read toward the end of the book.
Favorite Scene:
The scene where Raul comes through the farcaster into the Jovian world. Especially when added to my thoughts on how he left that world, he didn’t arrive at the next world in quite the way I would have envisioned. I had visions of his being spit through another farcaster by one of the giant floating squid creatures...or worse coming out the other end of one.
The scene where Raul is thinking about the first intimate night he shared with Aenea and his exposition concerning love which is too awesome not to quote.
“It is a problem to tell of such things. To share the most private and sacred of moments. It feels like a violation to put such things into words. And a lie not to.
To see and feel one’s beloved naked for the first time is one of life’s pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.
I had never made love to the right person before. I knew that even as Aenea and I first kissed and lay against each other, even before we began moving slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. I realized that I had never really made love to anyone before that. The young-soldier-on-leave sex with friendly women or the bargeman and bargewoman we-have-the-opportunity-so-why-not? sex that I thought had explored and discovered everything to do with the subject was not even the beginning.”
The hang glider flight off the mountaintops of Tien Shan.
The battle at the Temple Hanging in Air. I find myself much more emotionally involved in this than I thought. I was on Simmons for the way the book was written. But this scene is a great capstone. It makes the previous 400 pages worthwhile. I’m very pleased with this scene. And the battle’s aftermath in the Ouster system, that’s what big science fiction is.
My heart aches at the scene near the end in Castel Sant’Angelo on Pacem. Very well written.
Settings:
Old Earth, space, Pacem, the defunct but still functional worlds linked by farcaster, Jovian high atmosphere. The book does play a bit too much of travelogue when it begins detailing Tien Shan, which sounds like an awesome place, but did we really need to interrupt the story to exposit all the known habitats of Tien Shan along with where the people living there were from: nationally, culturally, racially. Tree rings around distant stars.
Pacing:
This is one of those books where you blink or you yawn and realize that you have read a hundred pages. The book seems to stop for a breather when Raul reaches Tien Shan. Stuff still happens, i.e. the rope slide between the kilometers apart mountain ledges and the race down the treacherous ice shelf. It breaks the books up a bit for me. In a series where the evil has been man/alien/cyber made, this interrupter where we get the conflicts with nature feels sort of like being drawn offsides. There’s too much story left to tell and too many pieces still on the chessboard for this interregnum.
Nearing the end of the books, I want it to last. I want it to be longer. This has been an incredible series and I don’t want to read the last page of the last full novel in the series.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Father Captain DeSoya is a horrible character burning the defenseless. After his appearance in the previous book, Endymion, this is horridly out-of-character even when factored against his busting down in rank and removal from the Fleet. The lessons he learned and internalized while chasing Aenea in the previous book have been lost or forgotten. The character is doing the same things that gave him such nightmares in the previous book. Meh. Though after his being busted down and removed from rank and the fleet, perhaps that caused him to see the good that the Church was doing as opposed to the actions that his conscience was giving him problems with. He does make a move in this book. but he disappears from the stage for a great hunk of the book.
Aenea and Raul walking up and sticking their heads in the Pax’s trap on T’ien Shan is stupid. And I’ve come to expect these two characters to not be stupid. Way, way O-O-C.
Last Page Sound:
I wish it wasn’t over.
Author Assessment:
I love Dan Simmons work, by and large. The Rise of Endymion may be the weakest of the Hyperion Cantos books. I wonder if there was too much time between the writing of Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. I take it back. The story may drag at some places, but it makes up for it. And yes, it is a tragedy, but it’s a triumph as well. Very well done.
Editorial Assessment:
Wonder if this book represented one of those points where editors didn’t feel like they could or should challenge the author and therefore let him have his head. Not saying that’s why this book is different in feel than the other three, but there is definitely a difference.
Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library via the InterLibrary Loan program and the Dallas Public Library
Why isn’t there a screenplay?
The Hyperion Cantos should be a movie, though I do fear that it wouldn’t live up to the awesomeness of the whole.
Casting call:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt could absolutely fill the role of Raul Endymion.
Aenea would be one of those roles where you would need 3 actresses to fill the role properly. Not sure who would play the youngest Aenea, but I could see Chloe Moretz as the late teenage/early adult Aenea. Maybe Reese Witherspoon as the adult-adult Aenea.
Would recommend to:
Genre fans, space opera fans, sci fi fans, philosophers interested in a free will versus predestination debate.