Recommend: Yes<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spooktober is the informal extension of Halloween over a month before in a similar way to Christmas marketing starting in November. Fewer people know about Frightvember however. This is the trailing edge of Halloween as shops try to desperately clear stock and get rid of the pumpkins and spiders before they become too tasteless. It was on the eve of Frightvember, a haunting Sydney evening that I plucked Hyperion from the George Street Dymocks spooky front window display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The book follows seven strangers as they travel together to the mysterious world of Hyperion, each on their own pilgrimage. A priest, a soldier, a diplomat, a detective, a ship\u2019s captain, an academic and a poet. The story of the group descending to the planet\u2019s surface and begin the journey to the Time Tombs is more of a wrapper though. The actual stories are told on the way as each member explains their reason for wanting to come. These short stories within a story are all captivating and unique. All link back to the world of Hyperion and the mysterious entity of the Shrike that inhabits it in different ways. It is a great structure that works well to develop the world and maintain a sense of progression and character development. I see it as both a colelction of short stories and a novel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The priest for example has a history with Hyperion from when he tried to find a compatriot previously exiled to its far flung corners and subsequently discovers the priest’s lost diary. That short story had echoes of Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card as a mysterious semi-alien society gradually reveals its secrets. The soldier, during a life of combat and near genocide, keeps making love to the same woman in his dreams who finally appears when he crash lands on Hyperion. Each story develops in an unexpected way, but avoids cheap twists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hyperion and the Shrike as the common link to all this are unknowable entities. Both are acknowledged by the known world as something utterly alien. The Shrike itself is some murderous entity that roams Hyperion. It\u2019s never clearly described, but is uncomfortably humanoid and mostly composed of blades. There is a picture of what I assume is the Shrike on the cover that makes it look tacky and dated, but the actual book is much better. Initially I wondered if these mysteries would be explained, but thankfully while you get snapshots here and there, they retain their intrigue right up to the end. The lack of resolution for these mysteries is powerful and helps them maintain their impact. Some books, particularly sequels, tend to overexplain and I find this exposition often removes the magic that made them so good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hyperion is at its core a science-fiction novel. I already knew this when I saw it in the spooky section which intrigued me. The subtle horror of the Shrike and mystery of Hyperion were definitely standout elements though that gave it a deserved place as my Frightember read. I\u2019m curious now what other horror adjacent reads there could be in this space and am excited to explore part of a new genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Then it moved\u2026 or, rather, it did not move but ceased being there and was here, leaning less than a meter from me, its oddly jointed arms encircling me in a fence of body-blades and liquid silver steel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books","category-dek-recommends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}