Two hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in
Fall of Hyperion, Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest. Retrieving Aenea from the Sphinx before the Church troops reach her is only the beginning. With help from a blue-skinned android named A. Bettik, Raoul and Aenea travel the river Tethys, pursued by Father Captain Frederico DeSoya, an influential warrior-priest and his troops. The shrike continues to make enigmatic appearances, and while many questions were raised in
Hyperion and
Fall of Hyperion, still more are raised here. Raoul's quest will continue in at least one more volume.
This series has something for everyone: Simmons's prose is imaginative and stylistically varied; point-of-view and time-scale are handled with finesse; the action is always gripping; the device of Old Earth allows Simmons to work in entertaining references to present-day culture; and the technology raises bizarre questions of ethics and morality in its use of repeated death and resurrection.
