Book #4 - Endymion

When I read Hyperion I thought there were only two books. However a friend let me know there was a third and fourth, so I grabbed them. Endymion was very entertaining, and not at all what I thought. It starts out back on Hyperion, with Raul Endymion, a local guide and hunter, leading a group on a duck hunting trip. He ends up fighting with one of the men, who kills his dog, and ends up killing the man. He’s sentenced to death, with the resurrected hunter a witness against him, and is ready to die.

He wakes up, in the old university city of Endymion, in the company of Martin Silenus, the poet from the Hyperion series. Also, it’s nearly 3 centuries since the Fall of Hyperion book ended.

The book mostly follows Raul as he tries to rescue a young girl, a prophesized messiah, and keep her safe as they travel from world to world via the old farcasters that seem to work only for the young girl. We have the Consul’s ship, and Lenar Hoyt from the first books, the latter being the pope of a the new Catholic Church, where billions around the universe wear the symbiotic crosses that can resurrect them. The church has a way to prevent the issues from the first Hyperion book from happening and the Catholics rule the universe because of this.

It’s an interesting book, going back and forth from the church, the moral issues with the crosses, and the struggles that Raul has in coping with a young messiah who knows things, but doesn’t know everything. It’s a wild ride, and one that ends in a climactic encounter with the Shrike, and apparently, a Shrink 2.0 creature.

Read the first two books, but then read this one. It’s great.