Endymion

Book 3 of the Hyperion Cantos was not as bad as we initially expected. After the somewhat disappointing and torturous read of The Fall of Hyperion, we expected something in a similar vein with endless and unnecessary dialogue and excessive chapters. Sure, some of those problems remain. But Simmons uses a simpler narrative structure here, switching back and forth between fewer characters while focusing on the pursuit of Aenea by forces of the Pax, a revived Catholic Church which has accepted the cruciform and replaced the Hegemony as the dominant force of the old Web worlds. While the two later additions in the series are probably unnecessary reads, it is interesting to see how Simmons envisioned a post-Hegemony future of humanity centuries after the Fall, precipitated by Meina Gladstone when she destroyed the farcasters. 

Sort of like popular representations of post-Roman western Europe, the Church emerges as the dominant institution, but only possible in this setting through a Faustian deal utilizing enhanced cruciforms for a form of near-immortality. Instead of the older cruciforms that produced unintelligent and sexless Bikura on Hyperion, the Church has promoted a modified cruciform with none of those defects. Unsurprisingly, with its nearly immortal mechanism of the resurrection through cruciforms and combination of military power, it has replaced the Hegemony on several planets while waging war with the Ousters. For those of us readers who were expecting to see more of the unbelievable Ousters and their adaptations to live in deep space, perhaps we need to wait for the final book in the series to see if there will ever be a symbiosis of Ouster lifestyles and old Hegemony humanity.

But we digress. Endymion is basically a chase story that sees Aenea (the one who teaches), the daughter of the Keats cybrid persona and Brawne, use the old farcasters in the company of an android, A. Bettik, and Raul Endymion, a descendant of indigenie Hyperion stock. First escaping on the Consul's centuries-old ship, they use a raft to sail along the Tethys river, which once connected several Web worlds via the farcaster technology, while Federico de Soya of the Vatican/Pax military pursues them. Vatican politics and conspiracies, plus hints to the survival of the Technocore and the enigmatic genocide of Jewish and Muslim worlds add elements of suspense to the narrative. We thoroughly enjoyed it, although the ending of course is incomplete, requiring us to continue with the final novel to actually understand what it is Aenea, Raul, and A. Bettik encounter at their final destination. 

While less creative than Hyperion and not quite so literary in its pretensions and allusions as the first two books in the series, this is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the universe of Hyperion. Of course, it continues the religious themes and symbolism of the previous novels, with a more overt focus on Roman Catholicism, but also attempts to grapple with the same themes of Teilhard, AI evolution into god-like beings, and the nature of God in a world so distorted by advanced technology from the future. Naturally, we are dying to know what is motivating the Shrike to protect Aenea in this novel, which will presumably be revealed in Book 4.