My matching paperbacks for the final three volumes of the Hyperion Cantos arrived a couple of days before the offical release and are looking splendid on my “Space Fiction Hall of Fame” shelf.
Before passing on the previous ill-matched set I decided to re-read “The Fall” and crease the spine of that one instead.
This book is another triumph of imagination and plotting. Instead of the first book’s fairly simple frame narrative of the pilgrims’ journey and each telling their tales in flashback, “The Fall” is a much more complex book. As well as the ongoing adventures of the pilgrims we follow a host of other characters, primarily revolving around Meina Gladstone, Hegemony CEO and Joseph Severn, a cybrid restored personality of John Keats.
The story has a lot of moving parts, both in terms of location (genuinely galaxy spanning) and timing (there’s an intricate chain of events across multiple time lines). Dan Simmons’ skill is revealed by the way all this complexity unfolds so well, with not a wasted page. There is a lot of wonder and spectacle and a (necessarily quite long) conclusion where all the characters are (more or less) neatly wrapped up, yet enough remains unresolved for a further two books of equal size!
I’m going to leave the Endymion to one side for now as the stories are fairly fresh in my mind from an audiobook session during lockdown, but don’t think that I wasn’t tempted to pick them up and lose myself in the far future again!