Hyperion

Hyperion is a book you'll find in many top ten lists of science fiction. I'd never read this author but I'm certainly an SF geek so I thought it time to check out what the fuss was about. Thankfully, I knew going into this book that it ends on a cliffhanger and gets resolved in the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion. The story is set about a hundred years or so into the future and many worlds are populated by the Hegemony of Man. One of those worlds is Hyperion. And on this world lives a mysterious entity known as the Shrike. The Shrike mostly hangs out by the mysterious Time Tombs, said to be moving backwards in time. Seven pilgrims are on a voyage to meet the murderous Shrike, each for their own reasons. It's entirely possible most of them, if not all, will die. As they travel towards the Shrike, these pilgrims relate their stories to each other and these stories make up 90% of the book. For the most part these stories are very interesting, sometimes exciting, and always unusual. But the Poet character is so annoying and his story was the weakest. I hope he dies gruesomely. None of the stories are like the others. Some of the other pilgrims are the Scholar, the Soldier, the Priest, the Detective, and the Starship Captain.

I tried to read the followup: The Fall of Hyperion, but I got bored about 30 pages in and chucked it. Come to think of it, I don't much care for this author's writing style.