Dan SImmon's Hyperion

[jack]

This is another book that I found myself and then found lots of other people talking about.

The Shrike is a humanoid killing machine released from anti-entropic tombs on a new colony world, worshipped as a mechanism of retribution by the church of the shrike. Now war is coming, the Shrike is loose, Hyperion is being evacuated, the last pilgrimage is made of seven non-worshippers who slowly tell each other their reasons for coming.

It's gripping. Each story is moving in its own way, and adds to the knowledge of that universe, until you have some idea what the hell is going on. I was probably most fascinated by the first, establishing *some* weird relationship between christianity and the shrike.

Unfortunately, each raises lots of questions (eg. what the hell *is* the link with christianity, if any?), and probably by design they're not much discussed and mostly aren't solved. Sometimes I want to ban books that stop halfway. I must read the sequel at least, though I have a feeling that the questions are so good any answers provided or not won't really help.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Have you read Ilium/Olympos?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

No, I've read nothing else by him.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I can recommend them. Although they're perhaps less stylisticaly interesting than Hyperion, they're a good example of the excellent space opera that's been turning up in the last few years.