nicanical
The Fall of Hyperion concludes the events of Hyperion with the Hegemony's response to the Ousters, and the outcome of the final Shrike pilgrimage. The story is experienced through CEO Meina Gladstone's confidant, Joseph Severn, whose origins are mysterious. Severn's curiously omniscient dreams replace Hyperion's frame structure, allowing Simmons to continue detailing far-flung parts of the universe simultaneously.
The attraction for many readers will be learning the fates of the pilgrims. Unfortunately, the pilgrims' chapters are frustratingly repetitive because confronting the Shrike follows one pattern: the Shrike isolates one pilgrim, while those remaining go and pound sand around the Time Tombs. This repetitiveness is aggravated by some backtracking over Hyperion's events—ostensibly a courtesy for readers who need it, but still repetitive.
Severn's narrative doesn't mitigate these issues. He lacks agency, and therefore any true story of his own. His uncanny timing and fantastic abilities are explained away by his origin, but not satisfyingly; they are thinly-veiled excuses for shifting Severn's location so that he can report on other characters.
Simmons could have replaced Severn with a third-person omniscient perspective and avoided the hand wringing about connecting dataspheres. But, then, Simmons would be missing justification for inflating the book with verses lifted from Keats.
And that's my big issue with this book—it feels gratuitously inflated, as if merely to meet a word count.
I still think Fall is a good read for the worldbuilding, well-paced story is good, and a neat twist.
The Fall of Hyperion concludes the events of Hyperion with the Hegemony's response to the Ousters, and the outcome of the final Shrike pilgrimage. The story is experienced through CEO Meina Gladstone's confidant, Joseph Severn, whose origins are mysterious. Severn's curiously omniscient dreams replace Hyperion's frame structure, allowing Simmons to continue detailing far-flung parts of the universe simultaneously.
The attraction for many readers will be learning the fates of the pilgrims. Unfortunately, the pilgrims' chapters are frustratingly repetitive because confronting the Shrike follows one pattern: the Shrike isolates one pilgrim, while those remaining go and pound sand around the Time Tombs. This repetitiveness is aggravated by some backtracking over Hyperion's events—ostensibly a courtesy for readers who need it, but still repetitive.
Severn's narrative doesn't mitigate these issues. He lacks agency, and therefore any true story of his own. His uncanny timing and fantastic abilities are explained away by his origin, but not satisfyingly; they are thinly-veiled excuses for shifting Severn's location so that he can report on other characters.
Simmons could have replaced Severn with a third-person omniscient perspective and avoided the hand wringing about connecting dataspheres. But, then, Simmons would be missing justification for inflating the book with verses lifted from Keats.
And that's my big issue with this book—it feels gratuitously inflated, as if merely to meet a word count.
I still think Fall is a good read for the worldbuilding, well-paced story is good, and a neat twist.