The Fall of Hyperion

The end of Dan Simmons' novel is as bad as the beginning was good.  Whereas Hyperion slowly builds up suspense and complexity by setting six nearly unrelated tales within a minimal frame, The Fall of Hyperion simply wastes all that energy in a tangle of incoherent sub and sub-subplots, each of which culminates in its own earth shatteringly dramatic and final climax.  Again. The writing becomes much more repetitive, the descriptions more needlessly frilly, and the whole works starts to resemble nothing so much as a bad action movie script where there are constantly only seconds to go before the next thing blows up.  Again.  It's interesting to see how a writer can lose control of something so quickly; despite the fact that they are clearly conceived as a single novel, this sequel isn't just a little worse than the original, but downright awful.  Perhaps the root of the trouble is that Simmons tries to cram every idea he's ever had into a single story.  The plot becomes a pastiche of unrelated elements that get so tangled they require not merely one but two deus ex maquinas to resolve.