Take a photo of a barcode or cover
joshsharp 's review for:
The Rise of Endymion
by Dan Simmons
Pretty long, but a satisfying conclusion to the series overall. Very full of description, but I kind of like that. There were only a few times where I thought things could've been edited before going on so long.
My main gripe is the large amount of "retconning" that happens in the last quarter. The author clearly wants to address things that were first introduced during the first book, and make sure they are resolved. But he does so by pretending one thing in the first book doesn't really exist, and its name means this other thing; some things that happened to some characters didn't happen, or happened differently because time travel; and some things that were set up are still going to happen sometime beyond the end of the book, and clearly aren't important in the way they were presented in the first book. This is super frustrating! The only conclusion I can come to is that the author wanted to take the series in an entirely different direction after the first book, found himself stuck, and just tried to wave away all the bits at odds with his new story. The thing is, I wouldn't have minded if he'd just ignored the inconsistencies instead of fixing them so badly. It's much more obvious this way.
Having said that, overall it's a fun, even exciting read and follows the last two books well. The very end is a bit obvious but the romance plot kind of sucked me in, so I forgive it. Good job.
My main gripe is the large amount of "retconning" that happens in the last quarter. The author clearly wants to address things that were first introduced during the first book, and make sure they are resolved. But he does so by pretending one thing in the first book doesn't really exist, and its name means this other thing; some things that happened to some characters didn't happen, or happened differently because time travel; and some things that were set up are still going to happen sometime beyond the end of the book, and clearly aren't important in the way they were presented in the first book. This is super frustrating! The only conclusion I can come to is that the author wanted to take the series in an entirely different direction after the first book, found himself stuck, and just tried to wave away all the bits at odds with his new story. The thing is, I wouldn't have minded if he'd just ignored the inconsistencies instead of fixing them so badly. It's much more obvious this way.
Having said that, overall it's a fun, even exciting read and follows the last two books well. The very end is a bit obvious but the romance plot kind of sucked me in, so I forgive it. Good job.