Too big to fail?

Hyperion tells the tales of a set of pilgrims traveling to and across an alien planet  (Hyperion) in order to meet the Shrike, a mysterious metal being that does nothing but inflict pain, and which exists within the Time Tombs that seem to be traveling backwards in time. Each pilgrim's story is engaging and interesting and world-building, and you're so curious to figure out how it all fits together.

The sequel, Fall of Hyperion, attempts to fit these pieces together and explain why the Shrike impails people for eternity on his tree of thorns, how the turmoil within the AI core is related, what the Ousters (a group of humans not in the Hegemony, the universe-spanning government) plan to do if they win the war, etc... just too many things to wrap nicely it seemed. Simmons also chooses a weird narrative structure, from the point of view of a cybrid persona of John Keats, the 18th century poet, who becomes kind of the main character despite being mostly boring. I think also the storytelling aspect of the first book fits Simmons' writing strenghts, whereas in this book his lack of abilitiy to write good dialogoue really came through.

(2026/07/23)