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A review by solflo
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
girl what happened. what a slog. i had to force myself to read the second half in a single sitting just to get it over with. i did remove my four wisdom teeth at once.
see, the story of the two books is a huge machine with a myriad of tiny moving parts. in hyperion we focus on a handful of these cogs, and get glimpses of the machine, but nothing really concrete, just an idea of its shape. the fall of hyperion wants to show us more cogs and also the entire machine. at once, in detail. first of all it's terribly boring. second it manages to destroy all sense of mystery and make everything so painfully mundane it made me furious. the damn cruciforms are explained. every single horror-esque element in the first book, which i loved so much, is just gone. the one unanswered question is the most irrelevant of all: the consul's name is never stated.
keeping with the analogy, the first book hints at a grandiose piece of art. the second reveals a mickey mouse watch.
martin silenus is even more insufferable in this book. he doesn't even have much screentime but every time he showed up i felt like an irate chimp. the book tries to make it seem he's important — all the pilgrims were hand picked for a greater purpose — but he could literally not be there and both books would be better for it. i feel he's some sort of self-insert, maybe. i'd say kill your darlings but how the hell can he be anyone's darling. hell character.
also not to be constantly possessed by ernest hemingway but the book is, in fact, too long. the story is too chopped up for me to think of singular parts to excise (besides martin silenus. and the shrike fist fights.) — and that's another criticism too. hyperion had a great structure going on, it felt like 7 novellas interconnected but independent. the fall keeps bouncing between POVs and grinding the pace into a crawl. i'd say there's probably at least a hundred pages you could lose between those bounces but i don't think there's salvaging this one without a complete rewrite tbh. i could forgive the evil AI, "humanity is a cancer" and bizarre christianism if this was a better book that fulfilled the promise of anti-colonialist and anti-capitalism critique hinted at in the first book (with the consul's story particularly), and that sharpened its focus into this theme. the leader of the hegemony of man is called the CEO for god's sake.
oh yeah. the bizarre christianism. it's not full on cs lewis or the amber spyglass (god how i hated that book) but it's there and it's weird.
TL;DR: it's bad :/
see, the story of the two books is a huge machine with a myriad of tiny moving parts. in hyperion we focus on a handful of these cogs, and get glimpses of the machine, but nothing really concrete, just an idea of its shape. the fall of hyperion wants to show us more cogs and also the entire machine. at once, in detail. first of all it's terribly boring. second it manages to destroy all sense of mystery and make everything so painfully mundane it made me furious. the damn cruciforms are explained. every single horror-esque element in the first book, which i loved so much, is just gone. the one unanswered question is the most irrelevant of all: the consul's name is never stated.
keeping with the analogy, the first book hints at a grandiose piece of art. the second reveals a mickey mouse watch.
martin silenus is even more insufferable in this book. he doesn't even have much screentime but every time he showed up i felt like an irate chimp. the book tries to make it seem he's important — all the pilgrims were hand picked for a greater purpose — but he could literally not be there and both books would be better for it. i feel he's some sort of self-insert, maybe. i'd say kill your darlings but how the hell can he be anyone's darling. hell character.
also not to be constantly possessed by ernest hemingway but the book is, in fact, too long. the story is too chopped up for me to think of singular parts to excise (besides martin silenus. and the shrike fist fights.) — and that's another criticism too. hyperion had a great structure going on, it felt like 7 novellas interconnected but independent. the fall keeps bouncing between POVs and grinding the pace into a crawl. i'd say there's probably at least a hundred pages you could lose between those bounces but i don't think there's salvaging this one without a complete rewrite tbh. i could forgive the evil AI, "humanity is a cancer" and bizarre christianism if this was a better book that fulfilled the promise of anti-colonialist and anti-capitalism critique hinted at in the first book (with the consul's story particularly), and that sharpened its focus into this theme. the leader of the hegemony of man is called the CEO for god's sake.
oh yeah. the bizarre christianism. it's not full on cs lewis or the amber spyglass (god how i hated that book) but it's there and it's weird.
TL;DR: it's bad :/