Seems like you read the books as two readers: one, the intellectual whose esteem is earned through logic and rigor, and and two, the empath, listening to the bard, captivated by his otherworldly tale of heroism, love, valor, adventure -- implausible, all of it, but lovely just the same. Yes, Aenea does go on a bit. And yeah, Raul could have been less of a dunderhead – and to address my biggest personal peeve, he could have stopped calling his lover “kiddo” well before he started being her lover. Ew. You call Simmons out for expecting certain criticisms and covering his ass, but why do you think he didn’t just fix those problems? Why did he go through with such obviously flawed schema, given that he had many, many years to get the second novel/s right? Because this is an epic poem in novel form, for TechnoCore’s sake, and Simmons wants it to be read that way! He included some of the more outrageously inexplicable pieces to hammer this home: Lamia’s denial (not defeat) of the Shrike, for example, is one part of an intensely oneiric scene in which “In [the Shrike’s] chest, where a heart might be, something that looked like a large, black moth fluttered and beat sooty wings against the glass.” This is quite possibly the least science fiction-y explanation for the inner workings of a robotic demon that I can imagine. That’s because it’s not an explanation at all – it’s tone. Mood. Myth. Legend. That’s not to say I always give other authors or even other of Simmons’ books the same pass. I suppose, for me, Simmons is just a better bard than he is for you. (So much so that, without precedent, I reread the entire series three times in eighteen months. That may lead you to conclude that I need to visit the (virtual) library more often, but I also read about a hundred other novels during that time: SF and otherwise. I just liked these that much.) I did find your post a good read, though, and I hope you’ll answer this question: would it really be more honest, or more satisfying, for fictional non-human agencies to be entirely scrutable? For me, for example, the (obviously retconned) reappearance of Dure’s own cruciform was more egregious than were the shadowy and unreliable logic behind the Shrike’s purpose or why one of the tombs ends up as a portal to Old Earth. Why? Because although the cruciform itself was inhuman, it was cut from Dure’s body in FoH—a human-level event whose reversal makes no sense*, since Dure never states anything about unexpected regrowth… probably because Simmons knew how lame that would sound. But the other two? Perpetrated by god-like beings. Would a tidy explanation really be more satisfying? Maybe. But wouldn’t it also reduce these god-like beings to operating on a human scale, in terms that humans understand? You mention Greek gods. They are variously described in the classics as capricious, vindictive, jealous, angry… using humans for their own ends, and aligning with our needs only when it suits them. Why not the LTB, or the “Human UI”? Isn’t inscrutability a valid literary device, if it feels right? * It makse no sense except, like Kassad’s reappearance, as a means toward an end: in this case, Simmons’ desire to draw unity between the fourth novel and the first two. There’s tone again, from our own memories of Dure’s/Kassad’s own legends. It’s no accident they’re virtual ciphers in RoE…