The Stories of our Lives

I’m tempted to wait until I’ve read the second installment of Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion Cantos” (tetralogy) before I comment on Hyperion (book one). I suppose one could read only the first novel, but there is so much to be resolved still, that it feels like we’ve been brought along a trail right up to a precipice, and it would be a bummer to leave it at that. So the follow up books are on my wish list now; I hope they shed some light on the mysteries of the first installment.

But looking at Hyperion solely, I can say the structure was interesting: various stories (one per character), all widely different but also all linked up in the end, which lead up to the ending craftily. The humor threaded in the story was one of the things I enjoyed, as was the complexity of Simmons’ imagined future and the pace at which alien technologies and world details were revealed throughout. There’s a lot of foreign stuff to assimilate at first, but it all makes sense in the end, even for non-regulars of sci-fi such as I. In fact, it seemed to me that the novel is more a blend of sci-fi and fantasy than pure sci-fi – I’ll let genre readers agree or express horror on that one.

Yup, thanks for the recommendations on this one. It gets my vote.