Dan Simmons's Hyperion

I just finished Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, my first Dan Simmons.

I think it'll take some time to untangle my thoughts enough to put them into reviews. I can tell you I'm a fan, though. His prose is evocative and poetic, his characters are interesting and multi-faceted.

And then there are passages like this one, that took my breath away:

Sol realized that he had responded to a force more basic and persuave than (a monster's) terror or pain's dominion. If he was right--and he did not know but he felt--then love was as hardwired into the structure of the universe as gravity and matter/antimatter. There was room for some sort of God not in the web between the walls, nor in the singularity cracks in the pavement, nor somewhere out before and beyond the sphere of things...but in the very warp and woof of things. Evolving as the universe evolved.

Learning as the learning-able parts of the universe learned.

Loving as humankind loved.