The Fall of Hyperion

It's hard to really live up to the first Hyperion book, because, in a way, Hyperion was a nearly flawless book. Hyperion was chock full of stuff for lit nerds and scifi nerds alike, while establishing a few great characters that you found yourself caring about after thinking how much you couldn't stand them early on. The Fall of Hyperion picks up where Hyperion left off, but ditches the Canterbury Tales formatting for a multi-narrative style that jumps between first person for “John Keats” and third for everyone else.

Each character has their redeeming qualities as well as their downfalls, which is what helps to make these books so great, but I know I can't be the only one who was a bit disappointed by the ending. Maybe I'm just a sadist, but the fact that Simmons chose to “save” most of these characters was disappointing. It felt like he wanted to just continue on their stories forever. A good portion of the end of the book felt like him warping everything to ensure that everyone would be as happy as they could be.

Simmons remains a great writer with an incredible sense of plotting and characterization, I just think that he got too attached.