Fallen Dragon

Fallen Dragon by Peter Hamilton is a depressing read but I'm not sure it was intended to be depressing. Which makes the whole read just a little bit more disturbing. This is a book with a philosophy behind it and I'm not sure I personally support it. Still, I strive to be as unbiased as possible- a review loaded with individual preferences and opinions isn't much use to anyone after all.

Fallen Dragon follows a fairly simple structure in which chapters alternate between the present and flashbacks. The main plot follows career soldier Lawrence Newton on his latest adventure- yet another invasion of a colony world. The book doesn't waste time filling in his tragic past. In fact it deflates the action of the main plot completely as a large chunk of the first third of the book is devoted to Lawrence's childhood and teenage romance. There isn't much to recommend to these flashbacks- they are overly long and lack drama for the most part. It is all in the service of world building of course, the problem is the world being built isn't very compelling. For the most part it seems to be life as usual. Apparently alien worlds are mostly filled with hotels and ski resorts. The rest of the flashbacks I found interesting, so don't despair.

The future in Fallen Dragon is a grim one. Corporations based on earth have all the military power and use that power to raid the far flung colonies of man. Since Lawrence is one of the corporate foot soldiers and also a big believer in the benevolence of corporations towards the end of the book we are put in the awkward  position of kind of rooting for these monstrous pirates. The age of human expansion is ending as there is no money in creating more colonies. All opponents of the oppressive corporate mono-culture are dismissed by our hero as fanatics and idiotic idealists. As for the reason human progress is grinding to a halt, spoilers, its poor people. The mindset and cynicism behind the book I found a too ugly to get much enjoyment out of the book.

The book has it's good points though. Lawrence is an interesting character: he is jaded, a dreamer, and a nihilist in equal turns. Some of the technology in the book is pretty cool although descriptions of fictional spaceplanes and whatnot sometimes border on fetishistic. While grim, the plot at least is fairly engaging. And perhaps the best thing going for Fallen Dragon is that it IS disturbing and ethically challenging. The world of the future is going to be as morally horrifying to our modern day eyes as our culture would be to someone from the 1800s. If anything Fallen Dragon could have gone even further.

So, in summary, Fallen Dragon is definitely a book you could read. It isn't a great read but it's certainly not a horrible book. It would rate 4.5/10 on a sci-fi review blog.

That's all for now.

This little experiment has run it's course I feel. Feel free to re-read the reviews or whatever. If you are looking for quality sci-fi books... well there are tons of course but these are some of my favorites:
Neuromaner
Hyperion
Dune
Ender's Game
The Foundation


Nothing to revolutionary but classics are classics for a reason hahaha.

FALL OF HYPERION

Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons,  is the second book of the Hyperion Cantos. It certainly earns it's all Caps treatment in the title.This massive tome of sci fi goodness has taken me the better part of a month to read so I apologize that the updates have been a little scarcer than usual.

Fall of Hyperion can technically be read on it's own but I don't suggest it. There are plenty of recaps for those  picking it up off the shelves without reading Hyperion. Given that this book was fused with it's predecessor in the Cantos I actually found it a little annoying. But the background sketches are likely not enough to make Fall of Hyperion very fun. If you want to jump into this series (and it is a series as there are a set of books set after the Cantos called Endyimion) your going to want to start from the beginning. If for no other reason than Hyperion is the superior book.

Which doesn't mean that the Fall is bad by any means. It is beyond grandiose and does a a good job answering all the questions raised by the first book. It takes the vast foundation of Hyperion and builds a satisfying galaxy spanning conclusion that somehow makes all the disparate pieces work (for the most part). In many ways Fall is a paragon of the conventions of sci-fi. It is optimistic, bombastic, speculative, and towards the end there is a bit about the power of love. For some reason the power of love, along with talking sea mammals, are stalwarts of sci-fi. Not sure why.

The problems with Fall of Hyperion are all tied into the fact that it is so ballsy in its span. I missed the smaller, personal scope of the first books six stories. There are still plenty of nice character moments but they tend to gum up the frantic flow of Fall. For a book with time travel in it Fall follows a fairly linear timeline... but the characters narratives are all chopped to pieces which can be frustrating sometimes. The final flaw, in my personal opinion, comes from the nature of what Fall does. Hyperion was much like sci-fi TV series like Lost and Battlestar Galactica in that all these narratives had all sort of crazy mysteries and unexplained events. When it comes time to tie all of it together... the only explanation big enough to fit is 'God did it.' Which I find rather unsatisfying. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph fall does a good job wrapping things up and providing solid reasons behind a lot of the mysteries (certainly better reasons than Lost). My tolerance for deus ex machina is fairly low so like I said this is really just a minor quibble.

The Shrike: still awesome

In conclusion, if you enjoyed Hyperion you'll enjoy it's conclusion. Fall of Hyperion is a good book that occasionally suffers because of it's scale. It's hard to imagine a more satisfying conclusion to Hyperion though. Go! Read Hyperion! You'll love it, and you'll love it's sequel!