John Hassall’s Reviews > The Fall of Hyperion > Status Update

The shrike seems to come when people are alone. The consul crashed his hawking mat and masteen revealed that the templars had been colluding with the shrike cult and that he and the erg were supposed to lead the tree of pain (the big metal tree) through space-time then he died. Dure has disappeared and brawne lamia and the metallic umbilical have also disappeared leaving only sol and his one day old daughter left.

While brain dead, lamia is now jacked directly into the datumplane with Keats also free with her ready to fully dive into the cores secrets. Kassad has been transported to a future Hyperion who’s atmosphere and sun are gone, sand turned into glass and the cliffs melted away with the time tombs still there and he has charged to fight the shrike who now numbers in the thousands protecting the metallic tree, holy shit

Het still hasn’t told his story. The consul brought the flying carpet and there is some non linearity to the story which seems to reflect the time tides which is awesome also kassad briefly travelled into the future to see the ouster ground invasion which was described awesomely

Brawne is not dead but only brain dead with a metallic lead coming out of her shunt and leading into the sphinx, het masteen disappeared when he released the erg originally which is supposed to be the only true ally against the shrike but the shrike stopped him. Het also seems to share some beliefs with the shrike church as the Yggdrasil was sacrificed in ‘atonement’ with some tie to the cybrid

It is also mentioned that the techno core was asked to choose the pilgrims because their wishes were the ones that would impact the outcome of the war between the hegemony and the ousters and Gladstone also threatened to declare war against the techno core for betraying humanity. This book is awesome

Brawne lamia was killed by the shrike and Martin Silenus was hung on its metal tree. Kassad watched the conflict with moneta showing the superiority of the skin suit and has challenged the shrike to combat where if he wins he will control the shrike. The ousters have surprise attacked the web using sub-light speeds so the hawking drives do not give them away and are not due to attack significant portions of the web

Father dure was resurrected from the body of Hoyt carrying both cruciforms, kassad has gone with moneta who even without the skin suit is stronger than kassad fully armed while moneta claims to be the consort and keeper of the Shrike. Meina Gladstone seemingly is willingly sacrificing humanity as she knows it for humankind to prevail as if she knows something we don’t and Het Masteen has returned to the group cool

Gladstone, Severn and other high ranking hegemony officials and figures just had dinner in treetops the universes number one restaurant in gods grove the templars planet overlooking all of the other smaller trees. The conversation there is cool and then they went to a tactical meeting where the hegemony forces needed 200 more warships in the Hyperion system a commitment of two thirds of the webs warships

Kassad then has a firefight with an unknown maybe moneta maybe het masteen or some other unknown and the description of the different heat seeking or four klick accurate or light heat beams that need his armour to react to different wavelengths to dissipate the heat while the armour becomes completely rigid under kinetic impact is also so freaking cool.

Father Hoyt is dead and it will be three days till he is resurrected. The war is progressing while Joseph Severn and Leigh hunt visited Hyperion after casting from gladstones office then getting on a drop ship from a main ships command centre which is just filled with people in shunts using the forces ai they then return to Gladstone all in a 90minute window which is awesome.