Hyperion took its time pulling me in. Described to me as “Canterbury Tales in space”, the book is composed of vignettes told by each character interspersed with present-day interludes after they’ve all found themselves heading toward the planet Hyperion.

The prologue was pretty jarring from a worldbuilding perspective. A swamp on an alien planet, a personal spaceship equipped with a Steinway piano and a wet bar stocked with Scotch. Most faster-than-light space operas I’ve read, like Dune or Foundation, have wholly lost the memory of Earth and certainly lost actual artifacts from the 20th century.

After that opening I was skeptical that I would enjoy the stories set in this universe, but the vignette structure worked really well. Each revealed a new slice of the society these characters live in, and by the midpoint it all started to fit together. The Hegemony of Hyperion has a few technologies beyond our understanding of physics, but that technology comes with real constraints and certainly comes with real costs and consequences. In between reading sessions I found myself thinking more about how such a society would function. Taking up headspace when I’m not reading is one of my hallmarks of a good book, and Hyperion cleared that bar.

Given all of that I don’t feel like Hyperion stuck the landing. The last vignette, which the book kept building up throughout, revealed twists along with large exposition dumps that didn’t feel properly set up by the preceding chapters. I think I like where Simmons was moving towards in the end, but he put too much emphasis on unexpected twists rather than building his authorial point of view through the perspectives of all his characters.

The present day narrative itself ended in anticlimax to be continued in the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion. Unsatisfying endings normally either rush to an unearned climax or fail to reach one at all. Simmons somehow did both in the final chapters of Hyperion.

I ultimately feel thoroughly invested in the universe of the book but disappointed in the narrative, which isn’t where I thought I’d be after reading the first chapters.