The following review originally ran in the Des Moines Register on 28. January, 1996. Dorman T. Shindler is the Science Fiction columnist for the Des Moines Sunday Register and a contributing writer/reviewer for the Dallas Morning News, the Denver Post, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel the San Antonio Express-News the St. Petersburg Times the Bloomsbury Review and The Armchair Detective. The review is Copyright © 1996 by Mr. Shindler and reprinted here with his permission.

Endymion by Dan Simmons

Although the type above the title on the jacket cover declares this book is the sequel to Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, it is nothing of the sort. As Raul Endymion, the narrator of Dan Simmons' new novel, so aptly puts it: "You are reading this for the wrong reason...If you are reading this because you are a fan of the old poet's Cantos and are obsessed with curiosity about what happened next in the lives of the Hyperion pilgrims, you will be disappointed. I do not know what happened to most of them. They lived and died almost three centuries before I was born."

True to this beginning, Endymion does not take up where the "Hyperion books" left off. This is the story of Raul Endymion and a young girl, who may or may not be the messiah, named Aenea. The events which took place in Hyperion serve only as history: a prologue to the political and social tenor of Raul Endymion's world.

Having survived a rebellion by Artificial Intelligence computers, humans of this far future have rejected all the lessons, structures, and ideas of their past (a societal structure far more tolerant and liberal). Religion and politics have become familiar bedfellows, and the dominant religion is Catholicism. The Catholics have enlisted new members by gaining the secret to controlling a symbiotic organism from the planet of Hyperion: shaped like a cross, it provides its host with eternal life.

The Pax, a military and religious alliance which allows priests and nuns to become soldiers, is run by Pope Julius XIV. A man with ties to the events on Hyperion some three hundred years ago, he has many secrets of his own.

It was Pope Julius who introduced the majority of humans to the crucifix-shaped symbiote. And it is the Pope who helps engineer an attempt to obliterate the Ousters (highly evolved humans who live in zero gravity), and orchestrates a hunt for the child, Aenea. Those pursuing her -- Father Captain Desoya, Sergeant Gregorius, and Corporal Kee -- are told only that Aenea represents a danger to the Pax, and to humankind. She must be apprehended at all costs. They are given "Papal" authority to do and act as they please, as long as the child is captured.

An elderly man claiming to be the poet who wrote the "Hyperion Cantos," talks Raul Endymion (saved from wrongful execution on his home world of Hyperion) into helping Aenea escape the clutches of the Pax. Though she literally does most of the thinking and planning, and is the true protagonist of this novel, Raul is her designated hero/disciple/protector. He is something more than a Jay Gatsby, and less than a David Copperfield. This unlikely pair is joined by a blue-skinned Android, named A.Bettik, as they affect their escape. Just to keep things off balance, Simmons brings back the Shrike (a multi-armed, razor sharp metal machine, which is part monster, part avatar). There are other surprises in store for the reader as well.

Like everything Simmons writes, Endymion is filled with concerns faced by the entire human race: bigotry, religious intolerance, ecological destruction. It is also, like the "Hyperion books," written around the themes in the poem of the same title by John Keats. And Simmons is always at his best (as in "The Great Lover" and The Hollow Man) when using the themes and images of classic poetry as the foundation for thoughts about the fate of mankind. His singular talent allows him to take the metal of poetry, science, and philosophy, temper them into suspense-filled plots, and polish the entire package with memorable characters and beautiful prose. The result is always a novel (or short story) both highly entertaining and profoundly moving. Endymion is just that. In fact, this book is one of his most tightly plotted and fast-paced, allowing only short periods of time for the reader to catch his proverbial breath. After reading it, I found myself recalling a comment about Charles Dickens, by writer John Irving:

"He never pretended to be an explorer, discovering neglected evils. Nor was he so vain as to imagine that his love or his use of the language was particularly special; he could write very prettily when he wanted to but he never had so little to say that he thought the object of writing was pretty language...The broadest novelists never cared for that kind of original language...The larger, plainer things -- the things they are preoccupied with, their obsessions -- these will last: the story, the characters, the laughter and the tears."

With Endymion, Dan Simmons has written yet another book which is thought-provoking, moving, and unrelenting in its desire to entertain. Like the readers of Charles Dickens, I hungrily await the next installment from this modern master of narrative.