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sdwoodchuck 's review for:
The Rise of Endymion
by Dan Simmons
After a Time Skip during which Aenea is trained as an architect just so that she can have a crafting profession that parallels Jesus' carpentry, the adventure continues. Nemes, who was defeated in the previous installment, is dragged out to be the threat again. Father Captain de Soya, who turned to Aenea's aid at the end of the last installment is called back into action so that he can turn to her aid again. The Shrike, whose only real function was fighting against the evil robots gets brought back to fight against those same evil robots again. There's some more farcasting to new locales, and Dan Simmons delivers on the promised boning, now that Aenea is officially old enough, before a high speed parade of familiar characters and exposition closes out the series.
Can you tell I'm real fuckin' thrilled about this one? God, what a slog. It repeats the beats of the previous installment, it peppers in some really tired philosophy that puts a vaguely technological spin on New Agey weirdness, it spends paragraphs describing various knots and climbing gear, and then it wraps up with a stretch that's just "and that's how all this actually shakes out," providing answers to mysteries, when the questions were so much more interesting. At one point, Raul exclaims "We seem to have the entire cast of the Hyperion fucking Cantos showing up!", echoing my thoughts precisely.
I feel like I'd have enjoyed these two books much more if they were focused on de Soya's conflict between his faith and his personal ethics, rather than moody, whiny, petulant Raul and his fetish for climbing gear.
Overall Grade: D-. There's still some cool ideas dealing with the Catholic church, but they don't buoy it up out of the muck, let alone justify this novel's ponderous pace over this length.