Exactly how steamy is this story?
NC-17
Dan Simmons shies away from nothing in Hyperion, especially not the sex lives of his characters. Each of the six stories includes a sex scene of some type, except, as you might expect, The Priest's Tale. Although Father Duré really does want a quick peep of the private bits of the weird culture he's studying. Purely scientific, though!
We can't say there's the same objective interest in the rest of the sex scenes, although some are surprisingly anatomically detailed. Simmons's male characters give much more attention to the bodies of their female companions than does Brawne Lamia to her handsome cyborg suitor, Johnny.
None of that seems like that big of a deal, right? Sex is sex. But where the book crosses the line into Shame territory is during the final intercourse (pun intended) between Kassad and Moneta, a scene that reads like torture porn meets real porn, a scene that just might be one of the most shocking sex scenes in all of literature. What are you still doing here? Go read it!