You have been chosen to join the Pilgrimage to Hyperion.
The Consul: There are people who are destined to live a life ignorant of the taste of a great scotch, of betrayal, and of beautiful works of literature. For those others, we live a deeper more painful existence. Understanding we are doomed to our limited visions, our finely honed points of view, divergent from another. We must seek to see with the eyes of our fellow pilgrims if we are to glimpse even a sliver of reality.
The Priest: Sometimes there is a thin line between reading a book and experiencing it. In many ways, I am this novel Hyperion. Different tales, people, and experiences – unified, wrapped up, and bound in a common skin. I could finish this book ten thousand times over, but it keeps resurrecting itself in my mind, telling me, not yet — begin again.
The Soldier: PASSION! Whether in a riveting book, delicious food, or making love on an active battlefield to what may or not be the most angelic ghost you could ever imagine, find it and live in it!
The Detective: Most recommendations are acts of selfish, mindless passion committed by someone the victim knows well. Family, a friend, or lover. I didn’t trust this one from the beginning. Books have unreliable narrators even if it’s their own authors. Where are these tales leading? How are they connected? What’s the link between a long-dead English poet and a mysterious, terrifying monster covered in blades that can control time? Although, I somehow feel like the connection might not be as important as how we go about understanding them.
The Poet: Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. Thus, what is someone’s collection of words worth? An invitation to escape our mansion and visit theirs, that rare opportunity to steal other’s distortions and make sweet love elsewhere is to see clearer, to approach, even if by just one breath, the nature of reality, the purpose of life, and the role of humanity in this larger, meaningless universe.
The Scholar: Novels do not change one’s life. That rest solely in the hands of the individuals. We are responsible for our actions and words. That said, we are not alone, we can influence and be influenced. From a single sentence to ultimate sacrifices, we pass on who we are until that is all that’s left. I thank the author for their words which affected me in a most thought-provoking manner.
10/10