Book Review: The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How does one follow up one of the best science fiction books which saw six pilgrims who are on their way to a location guarded by a giant killing machine? The Fall of Hyperion is the second book of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos as the remaining pilgrims to the Time Tombs arrive in the valley while an interstellar war breaks out as the Ousters attack Hyperion as a feint before a full-scale invasion of the Hegemony, or do they?

Simmons starts off essentially where he left off in the previous book, however the number of point-of-views increased from just the pilgrims to a whole host of characters. This change while expanding the story onto a galactic scale is a direct departure from its predecessor but given the expanded scope of the story that involves numerous places in the galaxy and “cyberspace” with the interactions of Ais it makes sense. This book brings together all the storylines from the previous book and ties to conclusions that were mostly satisfactory though there were some that felt a bit too contrived leading to a little disappointment in the quality of the Simmons writing for that. Though the ending of some of the storylines was a bit disappointing, the rest of Simmons’ writing was very good and engaging even when he brought poetry into the text. Overall, the book is fine follow-up and conclusion to everything introduced into Hyperion, but some things just didn’t hit the mark in concluding some storylines.

The Fall of Hyperion continues Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos series, though up to the overall quality of it’s predecessor it concludes things fine but I didn’t feel the need to continue with the rest of the series because I felt things came to an end.

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