Dan Simmons

[High Eight]

Is Fall of Hyperion the one with half a dozen chapters in blank verse? I thought it hilariously pretentious. Hyperion was OK, though.

I don't remember much about Ilium, to be honest, and I guess I'll get around to reading Olympos one day. Maybe.

Carrion Comfort is OK, I guess, but I'm just not that into vampires and I seem to recall a lot of James Bond - esque shennanigans with helicopters and heavy weaponry that stretched my credibility more than somewhat.

And, as for Song of Kali......... Do we really need 300-odd pages on how disgusting India in general and Calcutta in particular is? Especially as Simmons spent less than three days there before scuttling back to the US like a frightened rabbit? He comes across like a Daily Mail-reading retired colonel from Tunbridge Wells.

As you may have guessed I can take Simmons or leave him.

 

[Sathai]

I finished reading Olympos. I thought it was a good read, though like Ilium, it took me awhile to get into it.

What I liked about the Ilium and Olympos books...mostly the mystery of everything. There are many curious plotlines going on, and that's what would keep me reading, I wanted to know the answer to them all.

What I didn't like...mostly the characters. The only ones I liked were the moravecs, Mahnmut and Orphu.

 

[Connavar]

Dan Simmons suddenly gets much more respect from me for having the same favorite crime writer

"The Joe Kurtz series consists of three novels by Dan Simmons, who is better known for his award-winning science fiction.​

Joe Kurtz is a tough-as-nails (or hard-as-nails, I guess) private eye and this violent series seems to be Simmons' attempt to write the hardest-boiled crime fiction ever "
​

The first book, Hard Case, contains this dedication: "This book is for Richard Stark, who sometimes writes under the wussy pseudonym of Donald Westlake..."

Haha thats so funny

Gotta read Joe Kurtz books now !​

 

[Anthony G Williams]

I read Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion, and I absolutely loved both of them. They had idea and adventures, and were really well-written.

I've recently finished reading both (and posted a review of the first one in the Reviews section). I was very impressed by the quality of the writing and the imaginative ideas, especially in the first book, but unlike some felt the pace to be rather slow; especially in the second volume which was dragged out over too many pages IMO.