Regarding Rachel's timeline, my thought was that she got sick with Merlin sickness, aged backwards, went with Sol into the future as a baby and then grew up and was sent backward in time to her future, but our past where she would eventually meet Kassad (remember it seemed that his future was her past and vice versa). At some point, she is sent into the future with Kassad and they fight the legion of shrikes. Again, the problem is that Kassad should know all about this since he is OLD and since she has not met him yet based on the fact that they are moving in opposite directions in time. In Hyperion, as he knows more about her, she knows less about him.
So Hyperion doesn't seem to jive with Rise of Endymion, where Rachel knows she will love Kassad in the future (in Hyperion, this was never the case), and Kassad is OLD and doesn't even know who Rachel is, yet in Hyperion, he knew of her when he was in his twenties.
I think Dan Simmons, or some Hyperion guru needs to do some serious explaining to have these two characters' timelines make any kind of sense. <i></i>
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