Series Review: Dan Simmons' "Hyperion Cantos"

Author: Dan Simmons
Series title: Hyperion Cantos
Included novels (4):
Hyperion (1989)
Fall of Hyperion (1990)
Endymion (1997)
Rise of Endymion (1998)

Website / Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos

FLR Rating: ****1/2 (4.5 stars of 5)

Review:
Perhaps ebbing more toward Sci-Fi than fantasy, Simmons' four novels are fascinating page-turners. Hyperion won the Nebula and Locus awards, while the other three were finalists for those awards as well. Read them now.

The Basics:
Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion form a single long story; the two Endymion books complete the tale, but in a setting that is nearly 300 years later than the first. As time travel (or at least time manipulation) is a major theme across the stories, we do get several characters who appear in all four books.

The human race has extended across hundreds of worlds around the galaxy, and travels instantaneously from world to world via a device called a 'farcaster.' Set to enter this network is planet Hyperion, a mostly vacant, grassy world that is home to a collection of buildings known as the Time Tombs, where time functions abnormally. These tombs are the home of a steel-skinned, four-armed creature of death known as the Shrike. Our story focuses on seven pilgrims making the long walk to visit the Tombs; they wish to each ask the Shrike a question. One will have his wish granted, the other six will die.

As they travel, they share their backgrounds by telling their story, a la Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. (In particular, the stories of Father Paul Dure and of Sol Weintraub and his daughter Rachel are brilliantly written by Simmons.) Book two doesn't follow Chaucer's format, but it does complete the story, as federation CEO Meina Gladstone discovers the truth behind the farcasters, the spaceborn humans known as the Ousters, and the AI known as The Core. Simmons gets a little wordy sometimes when discussing how the AI entities exist, and his creation of a cyborg with the personality of the poet John Keats seems a little pretentious (wouldn't you bring back the persona of someone USEFUL... Einstein, Hawking, Alexander the Great, maybe even Shakespeare?)

The two Endymion novels take place much later than the Hyperion stories. The Catholic Church, nearly a forgotten entity during Father Dure's time, is now the single most powerful force in the known galaxy (the Pax)... and they are in utter terror over a young girl, Aenea, and intend to find and kill her. Raul Endymion is conscripted to find her first and convey her to safety. Like Huckleberry Finn, they end up riding on a raft, cruising down a river connecting world to world by the now-broken farcaster portals. Pursued by the Pax, the Shrike and the Core-spawned cyborg Rhadamanth Nemes, the two travel from world to world as Aenea's power grows and rebellion against the Pax (now hopelessly in bed with The Core) increases.

Series Review: CJ Cherryh's "The Faded Sun"

Author: Carolyn Janice Cherry(pen name: CJ Cherryh)
Series title: Faded Sun (aka Alliance-Union Series)
Included novels (3):
Kesrith (1978)
Shon'Jir (1978)
Kutath (1979)
also available in a combined paperback (2000)

Website / Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faded_Sun_Trilogy

FLR Rating: **** (4 stars of 5)

Review:
A brilliant story despite having a tiny cast of characters for much of the trilogy, Cherryh invents fascinating characters, intergalactic politics, and a detailed, three-caste alien society in the Mri (which is echoed years later on Babylon 5 in the Minbari) that is in the twilight of its existence, but doesn't know it.

The Basics:
Humanity has expanded across the galaxy and encountered an alien race called the Regul, intergalactic businessmen with perfect memories and, therefore, an inability to lie. A forty-year territory war breaks out between the two; the Regul, not themselves a fighting species, contract the Mri to act as their mercenaries. Humanity slowly wins world after world, and the Regul sue for peace; they suddenly decide that the Mri are no longer useful to keep around, and betray them. Whittled to nothing and hated by all, their only hope to avoid extermination is one human who befriends one mri on a cold, harsh, Mars-like world--and joins them as they flee through space back to their original homeworld, impossibly far away.

The Characters:
After a chance encounter, Governor Stavros, a human placed in charge of Kesrith--the world given to the Mri by the Regul, but now ceded in the peace treaty--sends his one trusted underling, Sten Duncan, to meet the remaining Mri on-world. Sharing only a respectful distrust for each other, he befriends Niun, an adeptly trained warrior never allowed into battle. Niun's sister is the heir apparent to the leadership role of the tribe.

The Author:
CJ Cherryh consistently writes stories that generate real empathy for 'the outsider'. Like Tristen in the Fortress series, Sten Duncan in Faded Sun is the lone human who cares at all about the alien, enemy Mri; Niun, the one Mri warrior never allowed into battle is equally an outsider among his own people. if she has a fault, it's for a Tolkeinesque love of inventing words that can hardly be pronounced in order to make a place or culture appear different; one can get by this issue, though, without too much trouble, because we care so much about what happens next to her characters. This also enables her to alternate between works of Fantasy and works of Science Fiction.

Cherryh can really, really write.

I'd love to hear your comments!

Fantasy Series Reviews

As somebody who reads an awful lot of speculative fiction-- sci fi, fantasy, and a little horror-- it occurred to me that most book reviews deal with solitary books rather than entire series. This doesn't make any sense, though, because unless a book is terrible, most folks read all the novels in a given series.

It's my intention to provide my personal opinion on a wide variety of spec fic series, providing the entire bibliography, an overview of the series, and a rating from zero to ten.

Some of the series I intend to review:

Robert Jordan, "Wheel of Time"
George R.R. Martin, "A Song of Ice and Fire"
CJ Cherryh, "Fortress", "Morgaine Cycle", "Faded Sun"
Tad Williams, "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" and "Otherland"
Orson Scott Card, "Ender"
Dan Simmons, "Hyperion" and "Ilium"
Neil Gaiman, "American Gods"

To post a review of Tolkein might be considered something between blasphemy and idiocy, since LoTR is considered almost sacred, but I may take on that challenge anyway.

Thanks for reading.

-Mark