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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Emotionally draining,
By
This review is from: The Rise of Endymion (A Bantam Spectre book) (Hardcover)
I came to this book via the Hyperion series, good books in their own right, all deserving five stars. But nothing prepared me for this. First and foremost this is a love story and if you relate to the characters you've had it - you are in for a rollercoaster ride (if not - are you alive?). Yes, the ending is signposted in outline from a long way out, but it still does not prepare you when you get there. Since finishing the book, I re-read the final chapters several times and it haunted me for several days afterward. At best bittersweet, at worst horrific. I can't imagine another book in the series or setting - it could only be monochrome in comparison to this. The book does suffer from the criticisms mentioned by other reviewers - overly long in places, overturning previous 'facts' as lies. It does not detract from the overall impact. The last time a book caught me like this was reading Raymond Feist/Janny Wurts' Servant of the Empire nearly 15 years ago. I'll warn you in advance, its not as good as this. I pity the author of the next book I read, the bar has been set impossibly high.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book in the SF series ever!,
This review is from: Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos) (Mass Market Paperback)
SF series are, if well written, often tense, fast-moving, page-turners with action on an epic scale. What they are rarely is emotional and touching, leaving the reader moved by the dignity, suffering and, ultimately, tragedy (in its classic sense of inevitability) of the characters.The Rise Of Endymion is both of these but it is the emotional grip it takes on you that is most unusual. At one point the impact of one of the revelations on me was so strong that I felt as if I had been slapped, and had to put the book down for a while to recover. The final 'twist' is signposted so much that I guessed it about 300 pages in advance but the cleverness of the writing is such that this in no way diminshes the power the text has over you. Like the previous reviewer my first inclination on finishing it is to go back to the beginning of the Hyperion Cantos and read it all over again, but more slowly. This is the best series I have ever read, far better than Dune, Foundation or any of the usual suspects always trotted out as comparisons when a book like this is published. Read it and enjoy - but don't think that you can remain unaffected by it!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Needed a lot more blue pencil,
By DB "davidbirkett" (Co. Kildare, Ireland (but born & raised Liverpool, UK)) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Rise of Endymion (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
I doubt if anyone who has read all four of the Hyperion/Endymion books would disagree that the collection, viewed as a whole, is a science fiction masterpiece. Unfortunately this last volume suffers from a malaise that is infecting much of the genre (and Fantasy as well): literary elephantiasis. Simply put, it would have been a much better book if about a third of it had been binned, particularly large chunks of the "Tibetan" stuff and many of the descriptive passages. I found myself speed-reading dozens of pages until I spotted signs that the story was starting again or that Simmons was expounding a bit more of his philosophy.
Nevertheless, if you have finished the first three volumes you would be mad not to read this one as well, and to be fair, the "good" two thirds are as good as anything in the series. Nearly all the story lines are brought to satisfactory conclusions, but there are several appetising morsels scattered around the closing pages that suggest that Simmons would like to revisit his universe. I hope he does.
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