Still have more questions than answers, but with this book I felt close to Endymion, a regular man caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The chase scenes are exciting and the different worlds traveled to were exciting and wanting to know exactly what happened to the population of the planets is mysterious and fascinating “The Void Which Binds” is fascinating to me, it’s not a theme I’ve really come across before in science fiction. I enjoyed this book much more than the first two as the characters are caught up in something they do not yet understand completely and are still learning and growing. All three books have some powerful poetry. I’m excited to read the final book to get some answers to questions posed in all three of the books. I’m hoping that in the final book it comes together in a way that makes sense. With this book the authors writing style shines.

I like the literary and cultural references (though invoking Frank Lloyd Wright was a bit much) but the real charm of this book is its adventure stylings. A wild and sweet adventure through space, time and the metasphere.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. But the ick factor was too hard to ignore. Why did the author have to devote words to describing a 12 year old’s naked body? Gross. Apart from the subtly disturbing hints of Aenea & Raul’s future as lovers, I liked the book because it satiated my desire for more of the rich Hyperion universe. I was especially glad that Martin Silenus made an appearance, albeit a brief one. He was by far my favorite character from the previous Hyperion books. This book introduced some interesting new characters; in particular, I enjoyed Captain de Soya. It becomes clear early on that he has good intentions and is simply caught up in a scheme that is greater than himself. I wondered if his constant resurrections were going to make him go insane and turn him into a “real” antagonist, but in the end he was just a decent human being. It would have been an interesting turn of events if he had gone insane due to the cruciform, however. I’m on the fence about reading the 4th book. Aenea’s character was never that interesting to me (I actually found her somewhat annoying), but perhaps the story is better with her as an adult. At least then the ick factor would be gone.