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It took me some time to get through this book but I am so glad that I finished it. This is a magnificent book and a true literary classic.
Simmons brilliantly organises his book in the style of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" with the complex plot developed through a series of personal accounts of members of a Pilgrimage, each of whom is on a quest to meet a strange creature called The Shrike.
The various chapters are as follows:
Prologue
The Priest's Tale: The Man Who Cried God
The Soldier's Tale: The War Lovers
The Poet's Tale: Hyperion Cantos
The Scholar's Tale: The River Lethe's Taste is Bitter
The Detective's Tale: The Long Good-By
The Consul's Tale: Remembering Siri
Epilogue
The individual stories are perfectly integrated stylistically with the personalities of the various narrators and Simmons creates a remarkable literary kaleidoscope of personality, setting, and motive which is absolutely breathtaking. And the cosmos created by Simmons is unforgettable. It is beautiful, frightening, exotic--and relevant.
Be prepared for surprises in this wonderful book and while I haven't read the sequel, I understand that it is comparable in quality.
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