Book Review: Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Hyperion by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the four centuries since Old Earth was destroyed the Hegemony of Man has grown, but there is a planet in the outback beyond the Hegemony’s borders that confounds those who learn about it. Hyperion is the first book of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos and features seven pilgrims on a journey to the Time Tombs to meet the legendary and deadly Shrike.

The planet Hyperion is about to be the scene of the beginning of an interstellar war between the Hegemony of Man and the Ousters, those humans who live outside the Hegemony after migrating away from Old Earth, but the Hegemony along with the Church of the Shrike organizes one last pilgrimage of seven to visit the Shrike. The seven selected pilgrims tell their stories to one another so they can pick up clues on how to survive their encounter with the Shrike who is said to kill six pilgrims while granting the wish of the lone survivor. The pilgrim’s stories are Simmons’ framing device for giving background information to his universe while also propelling the narrative towards a climax that makes the reader want to know what happens next as they haven’t met the Shrike. The story-within-a-story a la The Canterbury Tales and allusions to English poet John Keats within the science fiction aspect of the book were interesting choices by Simmons as connecting devices throughout the book and fun to find. The overall writing and story are pretty good, and one can see why this is a highly regarded book in its genre.

Hyperion is considered one of the best science fiction novels of the 1990s and after reading the first book of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos, I can see why that is so and I’m intrigued about how he follows up in the immediate sequel.

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Book Review: The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume II: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-61 by Allan Nevins

The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-61 by Allan Nevins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While 1859 seemed to be an uneasy year, there was hope that the moderates and conservatives in both North and the South had marginalized the radicals in both sections then one man’s fanaticism started the chain reaction in the South which changed the nation’s course. The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume II: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-61 is the fourth book of Allan Nevin’s Ordeal of the Union series as John Brown’s raid exasperates tensions as advocates for a Southern Confederacy whip up their faux-nationalism while Republicans aimed to nominate a moderate to ensure their victory in 1860 with no on realizing for once the South would actually walk the talk they’ve been saying for over a decade.

Through 489 pages of text and four appendices, Nevins covers the final dramatic movements as the national fabric was torn in two from John Brown’s raid, the breaking up of the Democratic Party in Charleston and Baltimore, the election of Lincoln followed by Buchanan’s month-long dithering before committing to the Union even as secessionists created a Confederacy. Nevins’ research and writing continue to be top notch, but the best part of the book was Nevin’s analysis of what led to the Civil War from page 462 to 471. Nevin’s conclusion on page 468 was simple, “The main root of the conflict (and there were minor roots) was the problem of slavery with its complementary problem of race-adjustment [emphasis Nevins],” the latter part of that quote is something that Nevins had been developing and in concluding this volume set the stage both for the upcoming war that he was to chronicle as well as the reconstruction of the nation that he planned to cover but never did. Being the final volume of Nevins’ chronicle of the lead-up to the American Civil War, the blow-by-blow account of how a nation victorious in a war that increased its size by a third staggered towards breaking apart while showing how various regions of that country changed economically and in viewing itself within the nation.

The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume II: Prologue to Civil War, 1859-61 culminates Allan Nevins’ excellent relating of the decade plus of American history from the end of the Mexican War to the verge of the Civil War.

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Book Review: Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson

Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The future of the Cosmere is filled with travel between worlds in both the Physical and Cognitive Realms in spaceships with two major powers developing a cold war and creating proxy empires with less worlds. Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson returns to First from the Sun—aka Drominad—to find former trader Dusk looking for meaning in his life and finding it in trying to save his people from being oppressed by visitors from the stars and then meets a dragon that is trying to do right by her ship’s crew.

Instead of forcing readers to find the novella Sixth of the Dusk to learn of Dusk’s story before this book, Sanderson wove the novella into the first part of the book as flashbacks to Dusk’s present. As someone that had read the novella I wasn’t necessarily upset by this decision by Sanderson as it allowed him to avoid an info dump for non-novella readers that needed to be caught up. Set in the future of the Cosmere, Sanderson shows off how the various magical systems on various worlds have been engineered towards technology and the creation of ships for both space travel and traveling in the Cognitive Realm. To that end, Sanderson introduces Starling, a dragon trapped in her human form, leading a crew of misfits of an debt-ridden cargo ship in search of a extremely thin chance of hope to get a break by attempting to find a potentially unknown Perpendicularity only to find the soldiers of Malwish Empire, of Scadrial, having potentially found it first though as soon as Starling and her crew arrive so does Dusk, who navigated the Cognitive Realm in a little boat after finding a new way of navigating in the Cognitive Realm. And this is only the first half of the book, how the three interact with one another and attempt to figure out the importance of a small island guarded by a huge 100-foot anti-Investiture snakelike monster. Overall, Sanderson creates a fascinating future look at the Cosmere with several callbacks to other books and series while also making a long-time reader want to see how things developed from where certain worlds left off when last I read them.

Isles of the Emberdark is the fifth Secret Project book by Brandon Sanderson that returns to the tale of Dusk on First of the Sun while introducing the dragon Starling whose own journey is just beginning within the Cosmere.

Book Review: The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin

The Americans, Vol. 1: The Colonial Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From the individual founding of each colony and their unique cultures to the developments the spanned up and down the continent, this is how America started. The Americans: The Colonial Experience is the first volume of Daniel J. Boorstin’s trilogy which features the American experience from the various English arrivals on the Eastern Seaboard to the verge of Revolution.

Over the course of 372 pages, Boorstin covers the colonial period of the “American experience” beginning by covering the founding and political development of four of the 13 colonies then ending with how the colonies viewed war especially in comparison with the British view of war. The chapters focused on the Quaker governance of Pennsylvania and the saga of Georgia’s early history were very enlightening. Another fascinating aspect that Boorstin brought out was how Puritanism, Quakerism, and Anglicanism (Episcopalism) developed differently in American and Britain with how those differences effected the course of American history in both political and cultural terms. The decentralization of British America with 13 colonial capitals and not one central cultural location diversified education, those in profession occupations needing to be jacks-of-all-trades, and the profusion of various centers of printing were also touched upon not only in shaping the beginnings of America but in how in contrast they were to Britain. Finally, Boorstin’s four chapters on the colonial view of war and how the localization of soldiery made them unprofessional and disunited—much to British annoyance during the Seven Years War—that would continue into the modern day thus preventing the creation of a military caste. Overall, this is a quality written history of the colonial period that seems both “conservative” and “revisionist” at the same time when comparing it to the mythologized and popular version general readers might think of when opening this book.

The Americans: The Colonial Experience is Daniel J. Boorstin’s well-researched and well-written volume on how America was shaped by the same things as Britain during the colonial period but turned out completely different.

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