The Fall of Hyperion picks up pretty much from where Hyperion left off. We open with a young man going under the name of Joseph Severn being invited to a major party on the governing world of Tau Ceti Centre, to celebrate the departure of the fleet that will take back the world of Hyperion from the Ousters. We see much of the novel through Severn’s eyes, and through them, we also find out what happened to the pilgrims of the original novel.
The scope of this book is absolutely huge. It spans time and space, it covers the rise and potential fall of gods and still has time to deal with the minutiae of human life, and this makes it extremely an compelling read. For me, it really put the ‘opera’ into ‘space opera’. It has the huge scope and wide brush strokes that I associate with classical opera, and also, to be honest, has that thing where the plot doesn’t entirely makes sense but you get so swept up in it that you hardly notice. It also has a mixture of a huge sense of loss combined with a great change that changes everything. Whether for better or worse, is left in the air.
So a compelling book, with satisfying conclusions to the stories of most of the pilgrims, especially Sol Weintraub and his daughter, Rachel and one that expands the scope of the story in a satisfying way.
