I’m a visual person. With me, things have to be neat, aesthetically pleasing, and in some sort of discernible order (even if that order is nothing but visually appealing chaos), otherwise I get cranky. I like charts and graphics and brightly colored pictures. This probably has something to do with the fact that I have synesthesia, specifically grapheme → color synesthesia. For me, everything has a color, and in turn, colors provoke emotions. My brain also automatically attempts to visualize intangible ideas and concepts and place them in locations in space. If I can’t visualize them, it’s very frustrating (the best example of this would be the way I visualize the year as months in a rotating oval). This is also why I have trouble with complicated math. Like many people with synesthesia, I didn’t realize this wasn’t something everybody’s brains did until I was around 25, because most people don’t just go around saying, hey don’t you just love the number 5 because it’s so red?? Or, hey, don’t Tuesdays just suck, they’re so barfy yellow. I can only imagine the incomprehending stares I would have gotten.
The point of this seemingly pointless anecdote of mine is that for about half of this book, I felt completely lost and up in the air because I couldn’t find a way to visualize the structure of the story, which made it hard to derive any satisfaction from it, since my brain was so preoccupied with trying to figure this intangible thing into something more concrete, and it just wasn’t happening. But then at about the 60% mark, something just sort of clicked, and my brain goes, it’s a spiral! And the arms are swirling down to the ground and converging as they go, and at the bottom is the denouement, the end of the story. The arms of the spiral, of course, are the pilgrims and their stories, with the addition of a new POV in the cybrid (a cloned human with the consciousness of an A.I., who also simultaneously exists in the physical world and the datasphere), and the stories of the Ousters and the AI’s, which we touched on in the first book in various pilgrims’ stories. They start out separate, and the swirl of the story pulls them together little by little. It looks confusing as it’s happening, but it all works out in the end.
I’m telling you this because I think the book might be just as disorienting for you as it was for me–though probably not in quite the same way–and I want to reassure you that everything’s going to be okay. I promise that it all makes sense, and all the various threads that don’t seem to have any connection to one another at all–the constant literary allusions, the various characters, the musings on artificial intelligences and religion, the Shrike and its Tree of Pain, the time travel, Colonel Kassad’s half-real sex goddess Moneta, and most of all, Keats and Hyperion, in all their forms–come together in the end. It gave me that feeling that all book addicts are always chasing, that elusive elation that comes only once every hundred books or so (if we’re lucky), where it seems like the universe has converged on us just to give us this wonderful story.
The Fall of Hyperion picks up directly where Hyperion left off, with our pilgrims finally approaching the Time Tombs and ready for an imminent meeting with the Shrike. Only, it doesn’t quite pick up there, because we’re all of a sudden seeing the pilgrims through the eyes of another character, who is having dreams (and waking dreams) concerning everything that is happening to the pilgrims, who are light years away from him. Why he would be having these dreams would be a spoiler, but his identity isn’t. SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN”T READ HYPERION: The other characters know him as Joseph Severn, but he’s really another genetic double of John Keats, a resurrected artificially intelligent poet/human. He’s a sort of brother cybrid to Johnny, the cybrid of Keats we met in the last book, who is now hitching a ride in Lamia’s skull back on Hyperion. And since John Keat’s famous unfinished poem “Hyperion” is the namesake of this series, you bet it’s important. The narrative shuffles back and forth from Keat’s waking life to his dreams of the pilgrims, and little by little we get all the pieces to the puzzle END SPOILERS. The result, at least for me, was satisfying on a narrative level, but also on that extra level that really gives you the reader-buzz, the level your subconscious lives on, that just keeps giving the longer you think about it.
I’m really, really glad I read this series, and I’m super excited to read the second duology that with this one makes up the Hyperion Cantos later this year.
I know you have synesthesia, because you’ve mentioned it before, but then I forget, and something like this reminds me all over again. I find the whole concept of synesthesia SO fascinating, although I imagine that it may not be as exciting and exotic to you as it is to me (and probably a lot of others).
Your reviews of these books are so good, but I’m also pretty sure that they are very not for me – far too much of the sort of sci-fi that just bores me.
Honestly, I always forget I have it, too. It’s just normal to me.
Oh, Malin. I feel like you think you don’t like sci-fi, but it’s such a diverse genre! Didn’t you just read a sci-fi trilogy and enjoy it??? What sci-fi have you read that has you convinced you don’t like it? I need examples.
Well, most people seem very enthusiastic about both Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and I had to force myself to finish both books. I found Dune (I may be one of the few people to prefer the David Lynch film) was ok, but mostly meh, and artsy stuff like Never Let Me Go just hopelessly dull. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, which I read on a dare from Jen K, was beautifully written, but one of the most unpleasant reading experiences I’ve ever had. I feel like what little sci-fi I’ve read and actually enjoyed, I enjoy DESPITE the sci-fi setting, not because of it.
I like the J.D. Robb books, because they are like watching a procedural, and the sci-fi elements are just incedental to the plot (and frequently rather ridiculous). I didn’t like the space aspect of the Paradox series, mainly the action adventure stuff, which could have worked just as well if it was a paranormal fantasy or similar. The main thing I really like about the Marissa Meyer books, which also fall under the sci-fi heading is the clever twist on the fairy tales – again the sci-fi elements don’t feel essential to the plot, it just reads as fantasy with a bit more technology thrown in.
It’s no wonder I’m terrified of reading The Martian. Absolutely everyone, even my extremely sci-fi hating friend Erica loved it. I feel like I’m doomed to be the first person I know in real life or online who won’t absolutely adore it. I keep thinking I should read it, and then change my mind, because I’m so worried I’ll be underwhelmed by it.
I remember once typing a fairly long comment with at least 3 sci-fi recs to you, with very *logical* reasons as to why you would *LOVE!* them, and then suddenly toward the end realizing you actually probably wouldn’t, and it’s okay if you don’t like my toys, and deleting the comment.
w/r/t the Martian, I’d say it reads differently than the sci-fi you’ve mentioned not liking. It’s not very high-concept and doesn’t involve a lot of world building to establish context. It’s a guy stranded on Mars, period. It’s mostly his diary entries, which are first-person stream of consciousness style, and then there are other third-person sections about the NASA/JPL team working with him. It’s pretty straightforward, contemporary writing. The sci-fi comes in through his VERY detailed technical descriptions of how he solves certain problems he encounters, and also how the NASA/JPL people on Earth are trying to rescue him and get him home. So overall, I would say it’s jargon-heavy, and very grounded in reality. A lot of sci-fi is speculative and largely allegorical, and The Martian has none of that.
None of that is a promise that it will work for you, but it is a markedly different kind of book from those you’ve mentioned not being your taste!
I am so touched that there seems to be a real effort to find me sci-fi that I like. I would like to be an equal opportunity reader, so to speak. I just find that with sci-fi, possibly especially the more “intellectual” kind, it just loses my interest. I don’t hate the genre, and I keep trying to make exceptions to see if I find something I like. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I very much appreciate the effort to make me try to like new and shiny toys as well as the ones I’m already comfortable with.
One of these days, I am going to try one of the Miles Vorkosigan books everyone is always nagging me to read, even though it appears to be about all sorts of thing that normally don’t work so well for me. If I like it – yay! If I don’t, well, then a LOT of people have been wrong to tell me I’d love them over the years.
I am also not a sci-fi reader, but do okay with some of it. I am attempting The Martian this summer because the idea (stranded person with little to no supplies and no hope of rescue) sounds interesting to me, not its setting (eh, Mars). But I could totally understand not wanting to pick it up to be the only one it doesn’t work for.
Oh! and I completely understand your reaction to The Sparrow. I read it based on previous experience with Mary Doria Russell and Jen K’s review. While I think Russell is a very gifted writer, that book has a VERY high emotional toll completely separate from its sci-fi ness.
I’ve heard of this series as a matter of course, but never prioritized it, for whatever reason. You have me re-thinking that! Jebus knows when I’ll get to it, but at least I feel actual desire to read it now.