"Canada is America's hat."
These were two of the comments I overheard yesterday during a game of Apples to Apples. I take no responsibility for, nor do I endorse the comments, but I did find them entertaining.
Fun Fact: The British, having utterly failed to understand the position of the American colonists, decided that the best answer to the Boston Tea Party was the adoption of the Coercive Acts aimed at punishing Boston and Massachusetts. The Coercive Acts closed Boston Harbor until the damages for the loss of the tea were repaid, restricted Massachusetts' town meetings and made the governor's council an appointed body, made British officials immune from prosecution in Massachusetts, required colonists to house and quarter British troops on demand, and also extended freedom of worship to Catholics in Canada and allowed the continuation of their judicial system.
If the British thought the Coercive Acts would isolate Boston and Massachusetts from the rest of the colonies and prevent the fomenting of unified resistance to British rule, they should have thought again. The colonies sent supplies to Boston, formed committees of correspondence, sent delegates to the First Continental Congress, and mobilized resistance to the crown. Parliament's actions succeeded in pushing the colonists toward rebellion rather than reconciliation.
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I endeavored to finish writing Clamorous Harbingers, book three of the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire trilogy. I completed the draft on Friday night -- except for the paragraph or two I remembered that I needed to add after I went to bed, which I did add on Saturday. I could go on about how fabulous the trilogy is, and how fabulous is the book which ends this first part of the saga, but modesty restrains me. Now it's time for the editing. It shouldn't take long.
Oh--I just saw an actor in a role who reminded me of the commander in Tomahawks and Dragon Fire.
It's Brian Thompson in Dragonheart (1996). That is how I pictured the commander's face, complete with the moustache and beard. The only thing missing is the silver, rune-marked cylinder at the end of his beard.
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I finished this book last week, or maybe it was the week before. It was on sale for cheap, maybe even free--I don't remember which. It's currently priced at $4.99, and the rest of the books in the series are $8.99 each.
I can see why Harlan Ellison once called Dan Simmons the best writer in the room. Hyperion, the first book in the 4 book Hyperion Cantos, could be described as--or rather, this is my shorthand description for it--The Canterbury Tales meets Keats and The Wizard of Oz in space. Dan Simmons has won several awards for his work, and this book was a Hugo Award winner. As you might expect, Simmons' writing is very nearly flawless. He shows a lot without revealing too much. Canterbury Tales' style, the characters in this epic take turns telling their own stories as they journey on a pilgrimage to The Shrine or Temple of the Shrike, near the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion--which is named after Keats' unfinished poem. Time is a critical element in the story. One character's child is involved in a strange occurrence at the Time Tombs, and begins to age backwards. Another character has strange encounters with a warrior woman traveling through time. Travel by spaceship creates unusual time hitches in the aging process, such that some characters can be hundreds of years old in actual time, whereas their real age is much less. It's all very complicated. Religion is another significant theme. There's a priest, and a Jew who has lost his faith, and the whole religion of the Shrike complication. In addition to all of this, formidable enemies from outside threaten to attack, and one of the pilgrims is also a spy.
The book is long. long. long. I actually stopped about 60% through and read a couple different books to cleanse my palette, having grown fatigued with the story. One of the characters, a poet, is so obnoxious and foul-mouthed, that I could not stand to read his story. I may have skimmed part of that particular recitation. That may have been the primary reason that I needed a break from it before I could tackle it once more. Finally, the book ends without the completion of the journey. I shouldn't really complain about that, as I've done similar endings in my series. However, with a book of this length, I expected an ending more satisfying than what I got.
I have to conclude that Dan Simmons is a superlative writer -- and there are not many to whom I give that sort of praise. However, Hyperion wasn't a dish to my taste. I can't see myself resuming the tale. While I am curious about the further development of the story, the characters, and what may happen at the Temple of the Shrike, I didn't enjoy the experience sufficiently to want to invest in the remaining books.
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