Recent Reads

Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
I have to admit, up front, that I did not read these books with the same level of attention that I usually try to employ. I found myself skimming chapters before I was halfway through. I think this is because I just did not find the central premise of the story -- the "time tombs" and the Shrike and the time-reversal effect associated with them -- to be plausible.

I will note that there are some very intriguing bits of world-building here. The "cruciform" lifeform is a particularly twisted take on biochemical immortality, and Simmons shows how widespread systems of teleportation technology can be both an economic and esthetic asset and a potential military liability. (One of the characters has a house in which every room is, literally, on a different planet, thanks to teleportation devices mounted in each doorframe. But what happens if a hostile force manages to capture a world that is tied into such a network?) The deserted city of Sad King Billy, presided over by a looming, unfinished bust of its onetime poet-ruler, is convincingly melancholy. Simmons' portrayal of a growing schism between humans and artificial intelligences is also convincing. And, to his credit, he does eventually tie most of the threads of his sprawling epic together. I just didn't find the payoff to be plausible enough to justify the 900+ pages that it took to get there.