Home : Who's Who : Information : Entertainment : Publications : Fitness : Directory : Multimedia : MMA : Forums : Links

 

CompleteMartialArts.com - Rise of Endymion


List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $7.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Spectra
Average Customer Rating: Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5

Buy it now at Amazon.com!

Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553572988
ISBN: 0553572989
Label: Spectra
Manufacturer: Spectra
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 720
Publication Date: 1998-07-01
Publisher: Spectra
Studio: Spectra

Related Items

Editorial Reviews:

This conclusion of the Hyperion saga (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, and Endymion) finds Raul Endymion, Aenea, and M. Bettik still on the run from agents of both the Pax and the TechnoCore. But Aenea is reaching maturity, clearly growing into the messiah who will one day bring down the church and stop "the resurrection." One answer lies in Aenea's blood, which she shares with her followers through a ritual of communion; the blood allows anyone to travel through the Void Which Binds, but it cannot coexist with the cruciform that brings immortality. And although Aenea's gift makes her both a power and a danger, she is also a young woman, vulnerable to the forces allied against her.


Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Speechless
Comment: To me the mark of a good author is their ability to create people who you can relate to. Dan Simmons is a master at this. The characters of Raul, Aenea, etc... are etched into my memory. The writing may have been wordy at times, but the tale was told.

Half way through the book, I had a bad foreboding feeling about what was coming. I have not been touched by a book as much as I have been touched by this one. If you are like me where you get attached to characters, this book can rip your heart out. It did mine.



Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Triumphant conclusion to an amazing series
Comment: Note that I did not say *perfect* conclusion--there were several elements that did not work well for me. Let me get those out of the way first:

- I agree with the complaints that Aenea's "teaching phase" on T'ien Shan is unnecessarily drawn out and a bit hokey: I had unpleasant flashbacks to Card's post-"Enders Game" trilogy, which I felt weakened precipitously as the series went on. Ever since "the Force", SF writers seem compelled to invent pseudo-religions that are vaguely Buddhist/Daoist in theme. What made it especially unnecessary in this case was the fact that it took away from the focus on love as a (the?) powerful force in the universe, and Aenea's subtly profound challenge: CHOOSE AGAIN. We live lives that are driven so much by inertia, path dependence, social mores, individual desires ... to stop and just choose again requires an amazing amount of introspection, persistence, and courage if followed completely. Some might argue that Simmons needed to have Aenea progress through all the pseudo-religion to get to that point ... but I'm not sure it was all necessary. But again, the end result was worth it.
- Just on a personal level, while the ability to look in on others' lives is described in fairly utopian terms, I found the idea rather frightening in an Orwellian kind of way. I have no problem with the idea of a more strongly collective Humanity, but the trade-off with individual freedoms and privacies needs to be weighed carefully.
- For me at least, the "secret" of Aenea's missing time was painfully obvious. This entire series has been about the fluidity of time and the juxtaposition of future, past, and present ... so it wasn't much of a surprise to see how the "missing time" was spent. But you know what--it didn't make it any less poignant, especially given the sacrifice that has been made in one character's past, the other character's future.

And in the end, that was what mattered--at the end of the series, I was left with a smile on my face because the positives of this book and the entire Cantos more than made up for its flaws. This series' warts made it seem all the more perfect for its imperfections.

I have seen the repeated criticism that the Shrike becomes a deus ex machina, but I see it more of "yang" to the Core/Nemes' "yin". Note that at The Moment this series builds to--the time when a "deus ex machina" would be most greatly needed if ever there was one--Aenea is completely alone in her suffering. Her sacrifice is beautiful because it is completely avoidable, and yet completely inevitable. Simmons' re-telling of the crucifixion is intelligent, brutal, poignant, and extremely effective. I disagree with the claims that this portion of the book devolves into "magic" as the scientific workings of Aenea's Communion and Crucifixion are laid out well in advance, and Sol's philosophical musings in the Hyperion books set up the logic for the Endymion books' evolution of mankind toward a more "godlike" state.

The Hyperion Cantos appealed to the head and to the heart, and each book added much to the tale. Having completed the series, I look forward to going back at some point in the future and re-reading the stories with the insight gained from seeing how all the details and characters ended up fitting together. It is clear that different people have different opinions on the series: some believe it was all downhill after "Hyperion", others (like me) think this was one of the best SF series ever written. I invite newcomers to the series to find out for themselves which camp they fall into--I think it is an experience that will not be regretted!

Customer Rating: Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5
Summary: mixed feelings
Comment: I'm torn about this book. There were so many things that frustrated and annoyed me ,so I'll start there:
- The Shrike is now Spider-Man. He shows up again and again simply to save our heroine from one certain-death scenario after another. It gets old fast, not to mention completely incongruous with the first two novels and never really explained.
- Aenea leaks information (that she's had since birth) at a trickle, dodging questions with annoying phrases like "I'll tell you when it's time to know," or even the very lazy "We'll talk about it later." There's never any reason given for this behavior, it seems to be just so the author can tell th story at a leisurely pace.
- The technocore, which has the ability to get information by wire-through-the-eyesocket from a dead person earler, resorts to medevil torture when it comes to Aenea. This spontaneous downgrade in technology also coincidentally plays right into Aenea's hands.
- Characters from the original Hyperion keep cropping up in the final act, with little or no rhyme or reason. It gets laughable after awhile. It was too much of a stretch to have Silenus live for 1000 years in the first place. By the time they get to Kassad, I just rolled my eyes.

The list goes on. Plot full of holes and inconsistencies.

However, Simmons sold me so completely on the characters, I couldn't put the thing down. Hes got a lot of interesting ideas, scientific and philisophical, the action scenes are tense and exciting... there is a lot here that I look for in a sci fi novel. When it was over, I found myself wishing for yet another sequel.

So I found it gripping yest frustrating, but ultimately satisfying.

Customer Rating: Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5
Summary: A bit boring
Comment: I will try to be laconic, a quality the author apparently lacks. Overall I like the story and the characters, however the story at times gets a little boring. There are pastoral descriptions that run over several pages that I had to skip, otherwise I would have fallen asleep. The science part is rather enjoyable and innovative, the part about the genetic algorithms and their hyper-parasitic nature is rather clever without getting into too many computer science details as to the nature of the algorithm, my only comment at this point is the author's obsession with lengthy forays into minutia of events which ultimately have no relevance to the plot.

Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Wonderful Conclusion
Comment: The Rise of Endymion is a wonderful and fitting conclusion to one of the most interesting, broad ranging series in Science Fiction...or just fiction, for that matter...since Asimov's Foundation series. It's inevitable that Simmons won't satisfy everyone; with so many currents running through the previous books many readers are bound to find something to quibble about, whether it's a perceived anti-Christian/Catholic storyline, or the 'quantum love' idea, or planets that routinely have only one ecosystem, or perhaps a feeling that the Shrike wasn't explained well enough given his importance, or any of a number of issues; and they might well be right--but all that would pale into insignificance when regarding the scope of Simmons' accomplishment. What a series this was, with ideas flying fast and furious; and to me, The Rise of Endymion was a most satisfying conclusion. Other reviewers have written about 'tying up loose ends', but that trivial phrase does no justice to the mastery of Simmons' plotting. Yes, what is revealed here conflicts with what we were told in previous books; that the source of the earlier 'information' provided disinformation should come as no shock. Indeed, for me the revelations in this book were almost entirely uniformly satisfying, especially the reason that so much of previous books were spent traipsing around the galaxy in what seemed to me at the time a really unnecessary and awkward plot device designed primarily to show off Simmons' talents at world-building. I was ahead of Simmons on a few crucial plot points, wondering why a particular character couldn't figure out a particular series of events, and I suspect that most thoughtful readers will be, also; but I was behind him on many more and those revelations were so well done that I was in awe of how Simmons so clearly laid the trail as far back as the first book. These were not storylines Simmons hadn't had the time or interest to clear up that "loose ends' implies; they were carefully laid traps, red herrings, tangled stories twisted between present, past, and future for our entertainment. I'd love to see Simmons' notes for the series, those would make fascinating viewing.


Buy it now at Amazon.com!





Top 50 Martial Arts Topsites List

Copyright � 1999-2008 CompleteMartialArts.com. All rights reserved.
powered by My Amazon Store Manager v 2.0, © Stringer Software Solutions