**Please no spoilers as I haven’t finished the 4th book.**
Even though I loved the first 2 books in the series and enjoyed the 3rd one, Rise of Endymion pales in comparison.
The book is filled with seemingly endless chapters that serve no real purpose. Going into excruciating detail about how every rock and tree is shaped, talking in circles about random activities that bring nothing to the story. It felt like watching a national geographic documentary, except that it was completely horrible and incredibly boring.
There’s also the fact that Dan Simmons has severe issues if he thinks it’s ok to sexualize the relation between a kid and a full grown adult.
I can’t remember Anea’s exact age when she is first introduced, I think she was around 12, and almost immediately the first interaction between her and Raul is of Anea hinting at the two of them having sex in the future…
Why is this such a crucial part of the story that it just couldn’t be left out? This borders on pedophilia.
The 3rd book is filled with such remarks, like how Raul talks about Anea’s naked body ( in detail, going as far as to describe her naked butt and chest ).
The author tries to fix this by making Raul say that he isn’t romantically attracted to Anea in any way and that it’s just her memories of the future that make her feel this way towards Raul, but all that utterly fails in the 4th book.
Now, Raul is jealous every time someone else interacts with Anea, to the point where it’s becoming an obsession for him.
It’s all made worse by the second part of the book. After a **convenient** time skip, Anea no longer is underage but is now a 21 year adult.
All that talk of Raul not being interested in Anea? Yeah that just dissappears.
This is like getting into a relation with your babysitter, here more like her legal guardian, immediately after becoming an adult.
There is no excuse for this, and this is just Simmons fucked up sexual fantasy that he’s obsessed with and that he vehemently wants to make a core part of the series.
Such a massive disappointment of a book. There are plenty more issues, like how the book drags on and everytime it looks like we’re about to find the answers to some long awaited question, the books just ends it with ” nah, this will be explained in a dozen chapters form now, just because “. But this rant is already getting too long.
I made this post because I was extremely weirded out by Simmons weird sexual fantasy that he tries to make a core part of the Hyperion series and I wanted to see how others felt about this. Most reviews on Goodreads ignore this and the book is really well received with a score of 4,17/5 stars.
by AndrewLocksmith
4 Comments
how did you like the part where Endymion hugs her and mentally comments on the feel of her budding breasts through the shirt?? 🙂
did you finish the book? do you intend to? there is some more ‘asshole’ behavior from him at the very end.
i think every single book, at least a series, by Simmons that i have read contains sexualization of a minor.
unfortunately i have yet to find any science fiction author who’s not also some kind of weird sex pervert. it almost seems correlated with the quality of the writing.
> Borders on pedophilia
*Is* pedophilia
There’s this scene in his book Illium where Helen of Troy, who is literally the most beautiful woman to have ever existed, simply must have sex with the out of shape time-travelling history nerd that’s our protagonist and it reads like a pizza delivery guy porno.