Customer Reviews

Hyperion(CD)Lib(Unabr.)

5 star:		(266)
4 star:		(59)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This has got to be one of the best science fiction series I've ever read. The scope of this book and the sequels is amazing, it really keeps you glued to the page. Action packed, great character development, cool technical and scientific concepts, its all there. And many interesting thoughts about the role of religion etc, so it really makes you think. I really didn't want it to end, it was so enjoyable. Probably best to buy all of the books at once, as you will not to stop after reading the first one

Thanks again for the great price and service, guys. Everything was on time and in perfect order. Everything was first class! Love that series by Herbert. Now, it's complete!

Dan Simmons has written a Cantebury Tale style masterpiece. Seven people are on their way as pilgrims to the time tombs to meet a monster called the Shrike. Each pilgrim tells their story of why they are going to meet the Shrike and what they want. Some see the Shrike as a monster and others as a god.

Dans Simmons has created a richly textured world that is very detailed and believable. The characters are neither good nor bad, just various areas of gray. The book is very deep and is worth the effort to read. The book is very readable but will take some time becasue it is not a super fast read. This is the first of four series and the others should also be read. Highly recommended.

This book is a collection of several stories of varying quality.

Overall, I found the writing style to be too wordy. I would rather be entertained by ideas than an unusual use of words.

While I did enjoy a couple of the stories, two others left me completely indifferent - if not annoyed at having to read them.

The overall story was intriguing enough that it kept me reading to the end. A secondary benefit I was hoping for, was reading about one particularly annoying character's death. Unfortunately, the ending has let me down on both accounts. Not only did the annoying character survive, but there was also nothing even remotely resembling a conclusion.

Two stars - for the two stories I enjoyed.

I have been on a reading quest to catch up with previous Hugo award winners. Having just finished the impressive Virnor Vinge novels I was anxious to continue my trek of great Science Fiction.

Hyperion is not a novel. That is the first thing a potential reader should realize. It is a collection of six short stories, each of which has an ending that requires the main character to meet a bug-eyed-multi-armed-time-traveling monster on the planet Hyperion. As a plotting ploy this is great, most of the characters have interesting stories to tell and you end up waiting impatiently to see what happens when they meet the monster.

They don't. I don't feel I'm spoiling the ending, because there is none. The entire set of stories ends with the "pilgrims" stepping foot on the monsters temple. Absolutely nothing is resolved in this novel. It isn't a question of disliking the ending, it is a question of where is the ending? Some might call it a cliffhanger, I would just call it a waste of time.

Having wasted too much time on this novel I cannot justify spending more money on the sequel. I have not guarentee that it will resolve anything or just be another setup to sell more books.

I'm disgusted that this "novel" is considered a Hugo winner in the company of such wonderful novels like "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky".

Well to start, I never post comments, and only sign up so i can express my true feeling having read this unimaginative garbage. i've seen all the review, and my honest opinion is that book lacks the luster that is usually expected of an award winning book (just goes to show that anyone can win an award these days).
The book starts with the author gathering all the pilgrims in a pilgrammage to the planet Hyperion. All the action that occurs to reach there destination could have been summed up in 100pgs or less, but it isn't--and why not? Well, the author (who people think is a genius) decides to fill the rest of the book with the pilgrims each telling their stories--each more boring than the rest. The story of the priest was interesting, but unmoving; the story of the military man was stupid space-military drama, and the poets story was a boring yarn. All in all, nothing worth remembering happens because the story is left at a cliffhanger. If i knew this book was going to be a cliffhanger, i would have asked my [money amount] back and gone with buying a more worthy book. I recommend Dune if your looking for a story filled with intrigue and conspiracies.

A would-be Foundation or Dune-style epic. The style is tedious and wooden. The story is not particularly imaginative though it has a number of pleasant conceits, ranging from the Canterbury Tales format of the first volume, to the various obsessive exploitations of Keats themes in the second, the zen koans of an AI nammed Ummon, and a pastiche of a famous scene from Romeo and Juliet. The author appears to be a widely-read magpie - occasionally a confused one, mistaking Brahe for Kepler. If his prose style were bearable, it could be quite entertaining.

While I prefer writers with a good style, such as Bradbury or Kim Stanley Robinson, or those who aspire to one, like Dick and Bester, still I'm perfectly happy with Herbert's Dune and Card's Ender series, which are adequately executed and reflect the authors' real commitments to their constructed worlds. In other words, as someone once said (Shaw?) "fortunately, I am a man of low tastes". But not low enough for this. The world of the book is unconvincing, and seems to be based on broad familiarity with the themes of science fiction rather than any internal vision, salted lightly with uninspired sex and violence (not always easily distinguishable) when all invention flags. Even the author seems to have succumbed to the tedium well before the end.
Toward the end of volume 2 Simmons repeatedly recapitulates recent events (from the same volume) in the apparent conviction that his readership is too cretinous to follow the plot. In this, I assume he is mistaken.

The book seems to be immensely popular. It won the Hugo Award, which is a "fan's award", as opposed to the Nebula Award, given by professionals. The Hugo went to Harry Potter this year, which in itself speaks volumes. On the other hand, when the Hugo ballots are counted, they have more submissions for the tv/movie award than for the novel award, which suggests that the generic fans' notion of SF is fundamentally non-literate.

This book had many clever ideas, and was a good vision of the future. However, this book had literally 0 plot. The entire story is a background of seven different characters, telling why they are on the planet Hyperion, and why they want to meet the mysterious creature the Shrike. The book climaxes to the night before the meeting of the shrike....and then simply ends. It was a pathetic end to a pointless book. If youre thinking about buying this book, think again

Hummmmmmmmmmm.....

After reading all the 5 star reviews & happy readers words I feel a little guilty writing this review. But I had to!! I couldn't get into the story, I wasn't able to read after the 100th page, I bearly read them!! I wanted to get to the end of the first story (The priest story) to see if I was missing something. But instead of being mystified, i was left feeling horrified & uninterested!!! It has more of a horror edge to it, no romance, no character development or interactions (from what I read from it).Obviously this book isn't to my taste. I got board with this story & it did nothing to me. So pick it up from the library & see if you like the way it's going then buy it! For me, I couldn't go through it!!

The book started quite ok. But the end is just a terrible disaster that was probably caused by the fact, that the author was starving and he had to give just "SOMETHING" to his agent so he would get some money for some food... It is obvoius that the book starts with a nice idea in authors mind. It is divided into 6 stories and the first few are excelently written. But when you get to about 2/3 of the book, one of the main characters dies (quite probably because the book is getting to thick for 7 stories). The last story looks like the author was in such a hurry, that instead of working on the story, he just substitued his "preliminary version of the text with his own comments". The last story is written in simple words the way a first grade kid would do it. My comment: he really must have been hungry to release that book...

The worst thing (this made me to rate it with 1 star instead of 2 stars) is that the book does not end. It is not even open end book. It simply does not end - as if you bought the book with last 20 pages missing. Is this an attempt to make the buyer also buy the sequel? Well then I am not going to buy the sequel, because there is quite a high probability the part II will end or better to say fail to end the same way.

I still have to give the author some credit (that is the reason for at least one star) for giving us some insight in the way people look at the world: "whatever can place us as humanity on its menu (even potentialy) has to die - and that applies for tigers and lions as well as for any extraterestrials".