This is the “lost entry” from when everything was erased. Hooray for backups!

The Rise of Endymion is the conclusion of the Hyperion series, which we can all know for sure took me a LONG time to read, however it was worth it.

It left me with a few questions unanswered and I’m wondering if I didn’t read a tiny little paragraph that might explain one or two of those questions, but I’m not going to re-read all four books again to find that out.

I can tell you it’s wonderfully written, you get excited about what will happen in the end, you don’t want to put it down, you want to go on and on until you finish but your eyes are closing and, damn you have to work tomorrow.

However it all comes back to Religion, Power and Love in the end. Hasn’t the church been powerful enough in our lifetime? Imagine a future where you HAVE to convert to be helped with the greatest medical advancements, to be able to travel and not be persecuted.

Think of us humans and the inevitable fear of death. So the church takes away that fear. You can die, but you’re resurrected, as easy as 1, 2, 3. You just have to add this thing to your body, which will help you to be, as Captain Jack Harkness, of Doctor Who and Torchwood fame says “the man (or woman) that can’t die”. Oh, but you can’t accept the church and not take the thing it’s all or nothing!

And one girl helps set it straight. She does not consider herself a messiah, even when everyone does. However she helps people realize you don’t need to live forever. You don’t need a thing strapped to you, and if the church was REALLY following what God/Jesus/Buddah/, they would care for EVERYONE not just those that accepted your favorite brand of religion.

Have I enticed you enough to read all four of those books? Good, go right ahead! You won’t be disappointed.

Endymion is the third part of four in the Hyperion series. This was the simplest yet, as it was a pretty straightforward adventure. Go here. Go there. Stuff happens.

I was mostly impressed by Aenea ( and I still can’t pronounce her name correctly, I swear), how mature she could be at times, being that she is only 11, and how she would misplace her own time. Apparently she has seen all she will be and all she has been, so she knows most of what will happen next, and I think that will be what I’ll see in Rise of Endymion.

Raul Endymion and A.Bettik are strong characters, but Raul is there just because the poet wanted him there… or was it already written that he had to be there? He protects and cares for Aenea, while A.Bettik cares for both. Being that Bettik (the A. Stands for Android) is not entirely human, it’s very interesting to see certain emotions and interests in him.

I’m wondering about the PAX. If it was started by one of the Hyperion travelers, why would they create such a universe? Definitely, Religion manages to keep a stronghold even in the future. I guess people need to have something to believe in always.

All in all, Endymion was the easiest to read of the first three books. I wonder what the last one has in store for me. However, as usual, after a “difficult” book, I am taking a small break and reading The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks and Eternals, by Neil Gaiman.

Fast forward to about 2 or 3 years ago, when The Boy mentioned that he played Dungeons and Dragons with his friends, live, not online. After having played World of Warcraft for a bit, I wanted to try the real thing. So, along with The Boy, Aldar, Said, Kezzerdrix, and a few others we began playing. I do NOT regret it at all.

I also had to mention the guys because this book was written in the Forgotten Realms setting, which is our setting. The places and several characters were recognized the moment I read about them in this book.

I had to give this bit of a prologue because Pool of Radiance is a book based on a Dungeons and Dragons game, mostly written from the Thief (or Rogue)’s point of view. Kestrel is a thief, and a good one at that, however she is extremely egotistical and only thinks of herself.

Getting herself drunk was a mistake. She agreed to get into a party of people who would face a dracolich, in order to help repair the Mythal of Myth Drannor. She doesn’t trust anyone… at first. After a while she begins trusting each and every one of them, except for the Paladin. Corran would be someone I, personally, would also hate. He seemed, at the beginning, so very much conceited and worried about himself that he would put Kestrel to shame. After a bit you start understanding a bit more about Corran, and about each of them. You don’t get to see all the aspects of every one of them, but I can say each of them has good qualities (yes, even Corran).

The characters meet with different, problematic, foes, everytime getting to a point where Kestrel will despair a little and rethink what she’s doing there, however she keeps at it.

I can’t mention many details about it, as usual, because I REALLY would like people to read it. I can’t lend it to anyone because this was one of those books that The Boy lent to me (I’m cleaning up, reading HIS books first because I REALLY need my space), but it’s definitely an easy read for anyone who wants to get into the D&D thing… though it’s better if you just play it on your own first, and find out about different characters after you’ve grasped a bit of it!

I don’t want to give much away about the Fall of Hyperion though, I will just quote the wondrous tenth Doctor Who (as played by David Tennant) who mentions time is not as we imagine but it’s all “Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey”. Proved impressively in this book, I was just left with my mouth agape at the end, which is only the beginning for the next book, “Endymion”.

The Boy told me this is “A book so big it had to be divided in four books” and I’m currently halfway through the story, but I REALLY need to rest of it because of how complicated it felt for me reading it, so I took a simpler book (which I will end soon, and will write about with a bit more detail than this one) this time around.

And Wilson told me that there were several books and comics which were probably IMPOSSIBLE to make into movies, one was my all time favorite: Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and another was the whole Hyperion thing. I can see why! It’s too twisted and confusing, but wonderful and beautiful at the same time.

I don’t think I’ll be able to say much about any Hyperion or Endymion books without giving much of the plot, but, I can definitely recommend them!

First off, I should have never said Killer takes all is an easy read, it made The Boy want to give me something more challenging, and Boy, Hyperion fit the bill.

Right now I have only finished the first book out of four, which could only be described as the beginning of the end. Hyperion focuses on 6 stories, which have everything to do with the next installment, when they will try and defeat The Shrike, a god that doesn’t seem to be very kind AT ALL.

The interesting thing is that Dan Simmons, the writer, takes it very seirously when he’s telling each of the characters’ stories. He gives them different shapes and forms and details that they completely seem to be as if they were being told by 6 different “real” people.

All six stories are interesting in their own right, however, probably the two most impacting for me would be “The Man Who Cried God” and “The RiverLethe’s Taste is Bitter” I would like to leave it to whoever comes into my blog, to go and find at least a small summary on them, and maybe feel a bit enticed into beginning this collection.

Me? My next book is 1984, which I’m currently reading, and after that, I will go back to the Hyperion universe and se what happens there.

You see, a long, long time ago, back when Geocities, Hotmail and mIRC ruled the Internet, I had just finished reading Barbara Steiner’s book, The Dreamstalker. In it was a character with the name Alysia. I just loved so much how it looked as “Alysia” instead of “Alicia” that I wanted to use it. Sadly, Alysia was taken… so was Alicia, Alisya and Alysya. I tried several other combinations, till I got to Alysey. It was my first Internet friend, Marshall Munyaka, who added an extra “s”… and so, Alyssey was born.

So as you can see, there’s nothing really, REALLY interesting about me being Alyssey. It sounds pretty, and I think it fits me perfectly. It’s just me.