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On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike.  There are those who worship it.  There are those who fear it.  And there are those who have vowed to destroy it.  In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.  On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives.  Each carries a desperate hope--and a terrible secret.  And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.   [Edit review] [Delete review]

PROLOGUE


The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's
Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green,
saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below. A thunderstorm was brewing to the
north. Bruise-black clouds silhouetted a forest 0f giant gymnosperms while stratocumulus
towered nine kilometers high in a violent sky. Lightning rippled along the horizon. Closer to the
ship, occasional vague, reptilian shapes would blunder into the interdiction field, cry out, and
then brash away through indigo mists. The Consul concentrated on a difficult section of the
Prelude and ignored the approach of storm and nightfall.

The fatline receiver chimed.

The Consul stopped, fingers hovering above the keyboard, and listened. Thunder rumbled
through the heavy air. From the direction of the gymnosperm forest there came the mournful
ululation of a carrion-breed... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete review]