Continuation of this mind boggling epic. There's a lot to keep in mind in these books and I found some aspects of the denoument rather unconvincing. ( )

Uneven, but a tour de force. I have a million questions, but mostly one: does it stand up to scrutiny now that the mysteries are revealed? ( )

The first book promised so much, and the second book didn't really deliver. I wanted this book to be so much more. (SPOILERS AHEAD)
The first half of FoH was amazing. I could see all the piezes moving together, and i was trying hard to figure out where they were going. We get some closure on some stuff from the first book, but then we get a lot more questions that remain unresolved. I thought the first two books went together, so I was expecting to have a proper closure.
I didn't like the deus ex machina at the end. I like it when books are puzzles that the reader is able to put together, not when piezes just come up from nowhere.
For example, John Keats uses an erg to snatch the baby of the Shriek at the end. I don't think we are ever explained what an erg does or how it works exactly, and it plays such an important role in the plot that I wish we had been told from the beginning of its potential so that when this happened I could have said " aaah smart! well played!" Instead it just feels like it came from nowhere. I felt the same way with Shriek turning into glass, which is just so random and so convenient.
A lot of the characters seem pretty irrelevant to the story ie Het Masteen, Silenus... even Kassad! His fighting scenes were entertaining but nothing else came out of them. I thought their roles would be a lot more important and instead they were just... meh. :(


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I feel like I could even give this 2 stars and I admit that one reason I don't is that it is so highly rated I almost feel like I just missed something. The first book was verbose but in a... "good" way. This one just feels bloated. One reason is that the philosophizing/theologizing/moralizing is just too thick, too obvious, and too... ridiculous. So e.g. (spoiler alert) "god", or what will be/is god, is "love", by which is (mostly? actually?) meant people's relations/empathy/"empathy-as-woo", becoming self-aware at the quantum level. I mean, Jesus (no pun intended), one star right there. But the book gets a bump because the first book, [b:Hyperion|77566|Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)|Dan Simmons|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405546838s/77566.jpg|1383900], is really the first half of a story to which this is the latter half. Together I'd give them 3 or 3.5 stars. ( )

I am glad that I read this 'sequel' -- it really is more like the second half of a very long book than a true sequel. However, Simmons' vision of a possible future for mankind is bleak and the Shrike verges on horror (which is not my cup of tea at all!). I did like the ending and found the Ousters intriguing.

This book had a more straightforward storyline (even though it did switch narrators & points of view frequently) and so it was easier to follow than the first book. Despite that, I think that the first book would be the better novel if it had had a more conclusive ending. As I said above, these two read like two volumes of a single book.
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