Simmons, Dan
Book three, Endymion (the first of this pair), opens with a very odd scenario: the hero Raul Endymion is in a death chamber awaiting execution and is spending his time writing his memoirs as to how he ended up in that situation. Much of his story (covering books three & four), is written in first-person, though there are sections that are in omniscient where the reader gets a view of the entire political climate that surrounds this enormous problem of which Raul Endymion is center. If you've read book three and are wondering what to expect next, I will tell you that Martin Silenus gets his wishes ... well, most of them. Remember his instructions to Raul in book three? "Protect Aenea, find and bring back Old Earth, find out what the TechnoCore is up to and stop them, and topple the Pax theocracy." Now the Pax is no easy entity to topple. Though they support the belief that the TechnoCore was destroyed in the Fall of the Farcasters, secretly the Catholic Church has been in league with the Core in hiding.
The greatest secret (kept even from the Pope) is that the cruciform symbiotes that the Church sees as their Christ-given "Sacrament of Resurrection" is none other than "over five hundred meters of microfiber in cellular node extensions" throughout each body that the Core uses as parasites on human neural networks for their own gain! But to have a clearer understanding as to what the TechnoCore is up to, one must first understand The Void Which Binds. Author Simmons goes to great lengths to explain this to his readers because that which was referred to in the first two books as Plank Space, the "underlying and unifying structure of the universe", the energy system for farcasting and C-plus drive capabilities, the medium where the Core resides, the true reason why humans can be resurrected, ... this place that is not a place ... is the basis of the entire Hyperion Cantos, the violation of which is heroine Aenea's duty to bring to a hault. Aenea teaches cohabitation with the Void.
Yet the Pax mean to prevent this woman from, in her words: "Opening the portal to the Void Which Binds to the entire human race." Not only have the the Pax and the Core been chasing Aenea through the galaxy; caught in their own ethnocentric belief that only cruciformed humans have a right to life, the Church is on crusade to eradicate all who have allied with Aenea. Father Captain Federico de Soya is commissioned by the Pope to aid in the Ouster genocide, but de Soya and a few faithful men want to return the Church to what it once was--they are sick of the current aberration. So de Soya steals a Gideon-drive archangel warship and spends years "delaying" and "derailing" the crusade with continued harassing attacks on the Pax fleet.
Meanwhile, the young architect Aenea moves from planet to planet, spreading the word that people do have a choice for their future--they do not have to accept the Pax's cruciform and monoculture but can keep their own culture. Many worlds then rebel against the Pax, to the point where the church kidnaps seven billion non-conformists, freezes them, and hides them away from where the "Aenea virus cannot contaminate them." Actually, these poor frozen souls are still prey for the TechnoCore.
"The Days of Atonement are almost done." Remember from the first pair of books, when Templar Het Masteen disappeared, then reappeared--his TreeShip Yggdrasill flaming in the skies above Hyperion? He said, "I am the True chosen. I must guide the tree of Pain during the time of Atonement." Guess where/when he was? You've got it--with Aenea in book four, along with Colonel Fedmahn Kassad and a grown Rachel Weintraub. Oh, you'll get all the answers in this book!
The Rise of Endymion is not an easy read, even though it is propelled with enticing action: space battles, hand-to-hand conflict against time-shifting foes, tobogganing across an ice-field, traveling between mountain peaks by hanging only on a cable, paragliding in highly dangerous places--twice (the first of these experiences is incredibly unique)--free falling in a startree biosphere with only a skinsuit with wings, and bursting through the vacuum of space on a hawking mat ... not to mention several very beautiful and tender love scenes. The Rise of Endymion is a feast for those who love to debate the philosophy of culture. It is a smorgasbord of brilliant images and award-winning prose that one does not devour quickly but savors bite-by-delicious-bite. This book is so yummy, I just have to give two examples of Simmons' wonderful writing:
-1- "Nemes phase-shifted and began jogging down a tunnel now filled with thickened light. No matter how much of a head start Enymion and his allies had on her, she would catch them now. It would have pleased Nemes to slice the troublemaker's head off while she was still phase-shifted--the decapitation seeming supernatural to the real-time onlookers, performed by an invisible executioner--but she needed information from Raul Endymion. She did not need him conscious, however. The simplest plan would be to pluck him away from his Spectrum Helix friends, surrounding him with the same phase field that protected Nemes, drive a needle into his brain to immobilize him, return him to the dropship, stow him in the resurrection crèche there, and then go through the charade of thanking Colonel Vinara and Commander Solznykov for their help. They could 'interrogate' Raul Endymion once their ship had left orbit: Nemes would run microfibers into the man's brain, extracting RNA and memories at will. Endymion would never regain consciousness: when she and her siblings had learned what they needed from this memories, she would terminate him and dump the body into space. The goal was to find the child named Aenea."
-2- "The alien Akerataeli appeared to be missing until Aenea pointed to a place far out among the branches where the microgravity was even less, and there--between the gossamers and glowbirds--floated the platelet beings. Even the erg binders who were controlling the treeship's containment field were present by proxy in the form of three Mobius cubes with translator discs embedded in their black matrices."
My final assessment of The Rise of Endymion? Profound. It is truly one of the most profound stories I have ever read and I recommend it highly to anyone who enjoys expanding their consciousness.
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