Nick Barlow reviewed The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons (Hyperion)
The future of humanity is at stake? Yes, but have you considered my manpain?
2 stars
I enjoyed the first part of this, when things that had been set up in the previous books were finally paying off and there was a sense of things coming to a crisis point out of anyone's control. Then the plot skipped forwards a few years and we had to focus on Raul's whining for far too long. The main revelations all come about through someone infodumping them because we can't reveal them through plot when all that space is being taken up by Raul having a crisis because while he's having wonderful, amazing, sex with the girl he's known since she was 11 (and yes, ewww to that whole thing) she might have had a relationship with someone else, and we can't have her having her own agency. Then we might have to treat her as a character, not a plot function, and that won't do. Add in a …
I enjoyed the first part of this, when things that had been set up in the previous books were finally paying off and there was a sense of things coming to a crisis point out of anyone's control. Then the plot skipped forwards a few years and we had to focus on Raul's whining for far too long. The main revelations all come about through someone infodumping them because we can't reveal them through plot when all that space is being taken up by Raul having a crisis because while he's having wonderful, amazing, sex with the girl he's known since she was 11 (and yes, ewww to that whole thing) she might have had a relationship with someone else, and we can't have her having her own agency. Then we might have to treat her as a character, not a plot function, and that won't do. Add in a few descriptions that come close to "she breasted boobily into the room" and it's yet another SF "classic" that shows just how little the male domination of the field was questioned.
