Oh, Hyperion. I can't say with any certainty how I feel about this book. On one hand, I'm ridiculously fascinated by the world(s), and definitely want to know where the Shrike actually came from and what its true purpose is, but for the most part I was just kind of bored. My dad explained it best: I just kept reading and reading, certain that eventually it was going to get really good, and it never did. The writing was good. The characters and their stories were neat. But somehow I'm just mostly ambivalent to the characters, and honestly just wasn't invested in anything other than the Web of worlds Simmons had created. I've never seen Treeships in anything before, nor living islands, and am curious about what was going on with the sharks, and just why, exactly, Keats' poem Hyperion is so important. (Granted, I might be able to figure it out better if I'd actually read Hyperion, but I've only read excerpts and have issues getting through epic poetry, so I guess I'll never figured it out. Oh well.) On the other hand, a lot of the storyline itself was trite and predictable, and the epilogue was so ridiculously cheesy I literally laughed out loud. So, yeah. This novel gets a perfect "meh" response from me; I'll probably look up the sequel some day, but I'm not going to run out and buy it tomorrow like I did with the last book I read.