A few nights ago I finished reading The Rise of Endymion and thus, the entire 4-book Hyperion series.

• Total # of books read: 4
• Total # of pages read: 2336

That’s a lot of pages and if that scares you, then I might suggest reading only the first two books. The first two books comprise one cohesive story and the second two books comprise another story which is related to the story in the first two books, but largely independent and different (the events of the second two books occur hundreds of years after the events in the first two books and with mostly different characters). The first two books were more enjoyable to me then the latter two (and also shorter!). This is not to stay that the latter two books were not enjoyable – they are. However, if you read them looking for answers to the mysteries in the earlier books, you might be disappointed in the end. In fact, some earlier explanations get a bit muddier and there are some new mysteries, some which are explained well and others which aren’t. In particular, the origins of the enigmatic Shrike seem a bit different in the latter two books and never get satisfactorily explained, IMHO. Also, the first two books are more pure science fiction, whereas the latter two get a lot more into mysticism and “quantum love” and a sort of sci-fi spin on some of the ideas of Buddhism. Some elements of the first two books like an oft-mentioned future war between deities get ignored. I did still enjoy the latter two books, so if you have the time, go ahead and read all four books.