What do you think?
Rate this book
Ilium #2
Olympos
Librarian's Note: Alternate Edition with same isbn & isbn 13: January 2011
THE EXTRAORDINARY AND MAGNIFICENT EPIC CONCLUSION TO THE HUGO AWARD-NOMINATED ILIUM
Beneath the gaze of the gods, the mighty armies of Greece and Troy met in fierce and glorious combat, scrupulously following the text set forth in Homer's timeless narrative, but that was before twenty-first century scholar Thomas Hockenberry stirred the bloody brew, causing an enraged Achilles to join forces with his archenemy Hector and turn his murderous wrath on Zeus and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators; before the swift and terrible mechanical creatures that catered for centuries to the pitiful idle remnants of Earth's human race began massing in the millions, to exterminate rather than serve.
And now all bets are off.
THE EXTRAORDINARY AND MAGNIFICENT EPIC CONCLUSION TO THE HUGO AWARD-NOMINATED ILIUM
Beneath the gaze of the gods, the mighty armies of Greece and Troy met in fierce and glorious combat, scrupulously following the text set forth in Homer's timeless narrative, but that was before twenty-first century scholar Thomas Hockenberry stirred the bloody brew, causing an enraged Achilles to join forces with his archenemy Hector and turn his murderous wrath on Zeus and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators; before the swift and terrible mechanical creatures that catered for centuries to the pitiful idle remnants of Earth's human race began massing in the millions, to exterminate rather than serve.
And now all bets are off.
891 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
488 people are currently reading
9,225 people want to read
About the author
Dan Simmons
265books13kfollowersDan Simmons is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works that span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes within a single novel. Simmons's genre-intermingling Song of Kali (1985) won the World Fantasy Award. He also writes mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 794 reviews
August 15, 2021
Watch in awe while the last, currently, written science fantasy epos of one of the most fascinating authors of our time comes to an end.
In the second part of the series, the world is more and more escalating, fractions getting mad, gods being sad, Mars getting hot, poor protagonists stumbling around between mighty entities, and the big aha moment towards the end gives a satisfying conclusion.
In contrast to the Hyperion series, the a bit stronger focus on mythology and magic makes if more fantasy than science, although whenever the two clash, the old saying that advanced enough technology is indistinguishable from magic is true. There would be even a third way, the often underrepresented biopunk option, that could see much more use in hybrid works, because already simple seemingly fantasy magic vs technology, especially nano, makes incredible plot goals, characters´ motivations, suspense potential, possible, and biotechnological fueled Gaia fraction would be great extra to see.
I wish Simmons would have continued writing big science fantasy series, maybe even with a bit of horror, instead of starting to just keep writing standalone novels, often with close to no real fantastic elements as far as I see from the reviews and descriptions, just some magic and stuff. The real irony is that most of his newer novels seem to be even that bad that I won´t ever read them and that readers first confronted with whatever happened to one of the greatest authors will never touch his groundbreaking Hyperion and Ilium series, which is a true shame.
Nobody knows what might have happened here, I don´t know examples of authors who downed their rating in such a way, especially not in that order and timeline and never when they´ve once been so good. Bad first works are ok, everybody has to learn, but getting weaker and seemingly even below average?! Maybe the lonely writing in the cabin in the woods in the mountains concept has had some substantial change or something, I really can´t grasp it.
And that´s such a sad development, so please, go with the classic and forget the rest of his work, do as if it doesn´t exist.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
In the second part of the series, the world is more and more escalating, fractions getting mad, gods being sad, Mars getting hot, poor protagonists stumbling around between mighty entities, and the big aha moment towards the end gives a satisfying conclusion.
In contrast to the Hyperion series, the a bit stronger focus on mythology and magic makes if more fantasy than science, although whenever the two clash, the old saying that advanced enough technology is indistinguishable from magic is true. There would be even a third way, the often underrepresented biopunk option, that could see much more use in hybrid works, because already simple seemingly fantasy magic vs technology, especially nano, makes incredible plot goals, characters´ motivations, suspense potential, possible, and biotechnological fueled Gaia fraction would be great extra to see.
I wish Simmons would have continued writing big science fantasy series, maybe even with a bit of horror, instead of starting to just keep writing standalone novels, often with close to no real fantastic elements as far as I see from the reviews and descriptions, just some magic and stuff. The real irony is that most of his newer novels seem to be even that bad that I won´t ever read them and that readers first confronted with whatever happened to one of the greatest authors will never touch his groundbreaking Hyperion and Ilium series, which is a true shame.
Nobody knows what might have happened here, I don´t know examples of authors who downed their rating in such a way, especially not in that order and timeline and never when they´ve once been so good. Bad first works are ok, everybody has to learn, but getting weaker and seemingly even below average?! Maybe the lonely writing in the cabin in the woods in the mountains concept has had some substantial change or something, I really can´t grasp it.
And that´s such a sad development, so please, go with the classic and forget the rest of his work, do as if it doesn´t exist.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
January 24, 2012
(Contains spoilers towards the end)
This is my least favorite book.
It's not the worst book I've ever read. "Manos: The Hands of Fate" is perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's not my least favorite. It takes more than simple technical ineptness to rise (or sink) to the rank of my least favorite. A least favorite work needs to commit some special crime. Olympos' crime is that it took the plot threads of Ilium, one of the top two or three most creative and ambitious science fiction books I've yet encountered, and bungled them to an astonishing, almost insulting degree.
Ilium, as I've just said, is an incredible book. It's perhaps Simmons' most imaginative work so far, and that's saying something. In what other single book can you find posthumans posing as Greek gods on Mars, intelligent machines discussing literature on the moons of Jupiter, a legendary Greek hero hunting prehistoric mammals on the pampas of South America, and a society of pampered partiers to whom getting devoured by an Allosaurus causes scarcely more of an inconvenience than a bad hangover? And that's just the tip of that book's iceberg of wonderful and unlikely inventions. All of these unusual and fascinating things are packaged into three more or less distinct storylines, each of them exciting, purposeful, and compelling. I found the Caliban sequence towards the end to be a somewhat abrupt and strange change of pace, but I could live with it. When I put the book down, I could not wait to dive into the sequel.
It was bad.
Hockenberry's tale in Ilium was exhilarating. Hockenberry, a seemingly rather weak character, through deception, desperation, and pure ballsiness managed the manipulate the Greeks and Trojans into turning their war against the cruel posthuman Gods. He's not given anything nearly as interesting or compelling to do here. In fact, besides flying halfway to Earth with the Moravecs and then deciding to teleport back, I don't remember him doing much of anything notable. As I found his story in Ilium to be especially compelling, this was a real let down. Simmons instead chose to spend much of his time on the Greek side of things with Achilles and his campaign against the gods. Which is unfortunate, because Achilles really does not have the depth to carry such storyline weight. Olympos should have stuck with the continuing story arcs from Ilium rather than focusing so much time and energy on this.
But, it turns out, that's what Olympos does. It sidetracks. It goes on tangents, abandoning the story arcs that made Ilium so compelling. Take Harman's storyline, for example. For the most part, it is rather interesting, and actually does contribute to the story and our knowledge of the mythos of this world. However, near the end of his journey his story arc veers wildly off course to focus on a wrecked submarine containing black hole bombs. Where did that come from? How did that contribute in any way to the plot? What mysteries did that solve? With so many interesting possibilities in this wonderful setting, why did Dan Simmons choose this non-sequiter as the climactic moment for one of his main characters? It makes me want to tear my hair out!
That is another thing Olympos does: introduce things at the last minute. We finally meet Syxorax/Circe well towards the end of the book, after hearing so much about her. Her scenes do nothing to explain things, and in fact only serve to make it less clear exactly how the Odysseus of the Trojan war became the Odysseus that Harman and company encounter on Earth. Introducing an important character like that with only a small fraction of pages left makes things feel very cramped towards the end. In fact, the entire last section of the book felt very rushed and crampled; I was reading the half-hearted and generic epilogue almost before I even realized it.
I'm just getting started with the laundry list of things that frustrate me to no end about Olympos, but by now I'm getting tired of typing and you may well be tired of reading, so I'll keep the rest brief. Major conflicts peter out to nothing. Setebos, who seems to be the ultimate evil of this story, flees and vanishes without a fight. In the final showdown between Caliban and Daemen, nothing more climactic happens than Caliban uttering a few more of his inscrutable verses. Even Zeus' demise felt meaningless and disappointing. Childishly gross as well, honestly. And finally, most of the major mysteries put forth by Ilium never get solved. I still don't know how or why the Posts of Earth became the Gods of Olympos. I still don't know how Odysseus ended up on Earth. An explanation is put forth as to where the alternate ancient Greek Earth came from, but I found it extremely weak and unsatisfying. An afterthought. Dan Simmons throwing up his hands and admitting that he doesn't know.
So yeah, this is a rather long review. But, my frustration and contempt for this book has been stewing in me for years, and I needed the catharsis of getting it all out in a place where others could perhaps commiserate with me. Thanks for reading, and may all sequels you read be better than this one.
This is my least favorite book.
It's not the worst book I've ever read. "Manos: The Hands of Fate" is perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's not my least favorite. It takes more than simple technical ineptness to rise (or sink) to the rank of my least favorite. A least favorite work needs to commit some special crime. Olympos' crime is that it took the plot threads of Ilium, one of the top two or three most creative and ambitious science fiction books I've yet encountered, and bungled them to an astonishing, almost insulting degree.
Ilium, as I've just said, is an incredible book. It's perhaps Simmons' most imaginative work so far, and that's saying something. In what other single book can you find posthumans posing as Greek gods on Mars, intelligent machines discussing literature on the moons of Jupiter, a legendary Greek hero hunting prehistoric mammals on the pampas of South America, and a society of pampered partiers to whom getting devoured by an Allosaurus causes scarcely more of an inconvenience than a bad hangover? And that's just the tip of that book's iceberg of wonderful and unlikely inventions. All of these unusual and fascinating things are packaged into three more or less distinct storylines, each of them exciting, purposeful, and compelling. I found the Caliban sequence towards the end to be a somewhat abrupt and strange change of pace, but I could live with it. When I put the book down, I could not wait to dive into the sequel.
It was bad.
Hockenberry's tale in Ilium was exhilarating. Hockenberry, a seemingly rather weak character, through deception, desperation, and pure ballsiness managed the manipulate the Greeks and Trojans into turning their war against the cruel posthuman Gods. He's not given anything nearly as interesting or compelling to do here. In fact, besides flying halfway to Earth with the Moravecs and then deciding to teleport back, I don't remember him doing much of anything notable. As I found his story in Ilium to be especially compelling, this was a real let down. Simmons instead chose to spend much of his time on the Greek side of things with Achilles and his campaign against the gods. Which is unfortunate, because Achilles really does not have the depth to carry such storyline weight. Olympos should have stuck with the continuing story arcs from Ilium rather than focusing so much time and energy on this.
But, it turns out, that's what Olympos does. It sidetracks. It goes on tangents, abandoning the story arcs that made Ilium so compelling. Take Harman's storyline, for example. For the most part, it is rather interesting, and actually does contribute to the story and our knowledge of the mythos of this world. However, near the end of his journey his story arc veers wildly off course to focus on a wrecked submarine containing black hole bombs. Where did that come from? How did that contribute in any way to the plot? What mysteries did that solve? With so many interesting possibilities in this wonderful setting, why did Dan Simmons choose this non-sequiter as the climactic moment for one of his main characters? It makes me want to tear my hair out!
That is another thing Olympos does: introduce things at the last minute. We finally meet Syxorax/Circe well towards the end of the book, after hearing so much about her. Her scenes do nothing to explain things, and in fact only serve to make it less clear exactly how the Odysseus of the Trojan war became the Odysseus that Harman and company encounter on Earth. Introducing an important character like that with only a small fraction of pages left makes things feel very cramped towards the end. In fact, the entire last section of the book felt very rushed and crampled; I was reading the half-hearted and generic epilogue almost before I even realized it.
I'm just getting started with the laundry list of things that frustrate me to no end about Olympos, but by now I'm getting tired of typing and you may well be tired of reading, so I'll keep the rest brief. Major conflicts peter out to nothing. Setebos, who seems to be the ultimate evil of this story, flees and vanishes without a fight. In the final showdown between Caliban and Daemen, nothing more climactic happens than Caliban uttering a few more of his inscrutable verses. Even Zeus' demise felt meaningless and disappointing. Childishly gross as well, honestly. And finally, most of the major mysteries put forth by Ilium never get solved. I still don't know how or why the Posts of Earth became the Gods of Olympos. I still don't know how Odysseus ended up on Earth. An explanation is put forth as to where the alternate ancient Greek Earth came from, but I found it extremely weak and unsatisfying. An afterthought. Dan Simmons throwing up his hands and admitting that he doesn't know.
So yeah, this is a rather long review. But, my frustration and contempt for this book has been stewing in me for years, and I needed the catharsis of getting it all out in a place where others could perhaps commiserate with me. Thanks for reading, and may all sequels you read be better than this one.
February 23, 2011
Oh, frack it. I’ve started and deleted and restarted this review too many times already. Dan Simmons�
Ilium
and
Olympos
have left me speechless. (If you ask my wife, you’ll discover that’s a rare occurrence indeed.) I don’t think I can put together an entirely coherent review, much less something with any significant insight on the author’s ideas. So I’ll just share what I’m able to get out in a little solitary brainstorming session.
First of all, you have to realize that Olympos isn’t merely the sequel to Ilium; neither book is complete without the other and I must review them together. That bugs me insofar as I like the idea of a book standing on its own. Prequels and sequels and subsequesequels (that should be a word, yes?) are fine and dandy—indeed I encourage them so long as the author doesn’t screw it all up with some lazy cop-out—but each book, or at least the first book, should be able to stand on its own. Ian Tregillis� Bitter Seeds is a good example of a book that clearly leaves the door open to be part of a larger series but stands on its own as a satisfying story. I can see how Dan Simmons wanted Ilium to stand on its own, how he left the story at a good place to pause, but that’s all it was: a good place to pause. Ilium by itself simply is not a satisfying read. And it’s too bad, really, because Ilium is fucking brilliant—I was stunned by the breadth of imagination and creativity expressed while maintaining depth and quality of character—you’ll read nothing like it, I guarantee. But I give it four stars because it doesn’t stand on its own. Olympos gets three stars because it also doesn’t stand on its own and because it’s just not as good as Ilium, which seems to be the near-universal consensus if GR reviews are to be trusted.
(Admittedly, I gave five stars to Dan Simmons� other epic work, Hyperion , despite the fact that it doesn’t stand on its own. Hyperion, however, is different, and someday when I review Hyperion properly I’ll explain why.)
Second thing you have to realize is that Ilium and Olympos are long, grueling, complex, at times tedious ... oh, did I mention they’re long? Put together they are 1,664 pages in paperback or 1,296 in hardback. I read both books on the iPhone Kindle app and, let me tell you, it was A LOT of page turning. Still, I don’t have a problem with length if it’s needed and if the story is worth it. In this case, the main story arc is complex enough to justify a great deal of length by itself, but the author threw in sub-plots and side-plots that, although interesting, when all was said and done, served to lengthen the books without adding significantly adding to the books.
Now, having said all that, Ilium and Olympos were fascinating, original, creative, challenging, and, in the end, rewarding. I put a lot of time, and expended a good deal of mental energy, into reading and understanding these books and I’m glad I did. The author’s central idea around which he crafted the Ilium Universe is intriguing, to say the least, and presents some awesome opportunities for original world-building.
So doesn’t that mean they’re good books? Isn’t that why we read books? To be challenged and rewarded? To learn new ideas? And if we’re glad we read something, then what’s the problem?
I’ll tell you the problem: I’m stuck in Dan Simmons� goddamn self-indulgent head-trip of a universe. That’s the fucking problem. The books were so loooong and so complex that, now that I’m done, I don’t know what to do with myself. I was roommates with the main characters, whether they be ancient human, old-style human, post-human, moravec, or god (it’s hard to explain ... you just have to read it) and, now that I’ve moved out, I’m finding it difficult to make new friends. I need a literary pallet cleanser. I need a new best friend. I need to move on. Any recommendations?
First of all, you have to realize that Olympos isn’t merely the sequel to Ilium; neither book is complete without the other and I must review them together. That bugs me insofar as I like the idea of a book standing on its own. Prequels and sequels and subsequesequels (that should be a word, yes?) are fine and dandy—indeed I encourage them so long as the author doesn’t screw it all up with some lazy cop-out—but each book, or at least the first book, should be able to stand on its own. Ian Tregillis� Bitter Seeds is a good example of a book that clearly leaves the door open to be part of a larger series but stands on its own as a satisfying story. I can see how Dan Simmons wanted Ilium to stand on its own, how he left the story at a good place to pause, but that’s all it was: a good place to pause. Ilium by itself simply is not a satisfying read. And it’s too bad, really, because Ilium is fucking brilliant—I was stunned by the breadth of imagination and creativity expressed while maintaining depth and quality of character—you’ll read nothing like it, I guarantee. But I give it four stars because it doesn’t stand on its own. Olympos gets three stars because it also doesn’t stand on its own and because it’s just not as good as Ilium, which seems to be the near-universal consensus if GR reviews are to be trusted.
(Admittedly, I gave five stars to Dan Simmons� other epic work, Hyperion , despite the fact that it doesn’t stand on its own. Hyperion, however, is different, and someday when I review Hyperion properly I’ll explain why.)
Second thing you have to realize is that Ilium and Olympos are long, grueling, complex, at times tedious ... oh, did I mention they’re long? Put together they are 1,664 pages in paperback or 1,296 in hardback. I read both books on the iPhone Kindle app and, let me tell you, it was A LOT of page turning. Still, I don’t have a problem with length if it’s needed and if the story is worth it. In this case, the main story arc is complex enough to justify a great deal of length by itself, but the author threw in sub-plots and side-plots that, although interesting, when all was said and done, served to lengthen the books without adding significantly adding to the books.
Now, having said all that, Ilium and Olympos were fascinating, original, creative, challenging, and, in the end, rewarding. I put a lot of time, and expended a good deal of mental energy, into reading and understanding these books and I’m glad I did. The author’s central idea around which he crafted the Ilium Universe is intriguing, to say the least, and presents some awesome opportunities for original world-building.
So doesn’t that mean they’re good books? Isn’t that why we read books? To be challenged and rewarded? To learn new ideas? And if we’re glad we read something, then what’s the problem?
I’ll tell you the problem: I’m stuck in Dan Simmons� goddamn self-indulgent head-trip of a universe. That’s the fucking problem. The books were so loooong and so complex that, now that I’m done, I don’t know what to do with myself. I was roommates with the main characters, whether they be ancient human, old-style human, post-human, moravec, or god (it’s hard to explain ... you just have to read it) and, now that I’ve moved out, I’m finding it difficult to make new friends. I need a literary pallet cleanser. I need a new best friend. I need to move on. Any recommendations?
May 6, 2023
"To know that everything in the universe - everything in history, everything in science, everything in poetry and art and music, every person, place, thing, and idea - is connected, that is one thing. To experience that connection, even incompletely, that is quite another."
4.5 🌟's
Initial Thoughts
Dan Simmons, you continue to amaze me! After finishing every book I've read by this guy, I'm left contemplating what it would be like to have his limitless imagination. It's one of the key reasons he's able to write such fantastic entries in multiple genres. But his Locus award winning, sci-fi epic Ilium almost took it to a new level.
Yes, I'm a huge fan of Simmons' work and although he's brilliant in whatever genre he decides to write, I'm continually left in awe when he focuses on sci-fi. The scope and depth, the ambition and level of detail is just astonishing. It really does take my breath away.
Ilium for example, which was the first book in this duology. It's as far from generic sci-fi as you can get, as the author melds the history of the Trojan war with all manner of futuristic concepts. I'm talking quantum physics, bio engineering, robotics and alternate realities. He then incorporates all manner of literary references in a way that makes it fundamental to the actual story, while using multiple points of view. It sounds messy, and with almost any other author it would be, but Simmons makes it work, giving us a fast moving and extremely engaging narrative.
Those Moravecs just love Shakespeare
Let's see if he can do the same again in the sequel... Olympos.
The Story
First of all this is a duology and what you're getting with this book is a direct sequel to the first installment Ilium. In fact I believe it was written as one original manuscript and then split in two. Simmons did the same with his Hyperion duology. So you definitely need to read the first book for any of this to make sense. Why you would want to start with the second book in a duology is beyond me but there you go.
The first book finished with Hockenberry completely de-railing the ongoing narrative of Homer's Iliad that was playing out on Mars by orchestrating an alliance between the Trojans and Greek's and starting a war with the Gods of Olympos. So we start here with the funeral of Helen of Troy's hubby, Paris, and already you can see the fractures starting to form between the two sides. They clearly have no love for one another and there's a lot of scheming and underhand business taking place.
"the threat of being disemboweled by a humpbacked voynix tends to focus the mind wonderfully well."
Things go from bad to worse as we catch up with what's happening on good old fashioned Earth. Harman, Daeman and Ada are getting back to basics and trying to learn basic survival skills now that their former servants, the voynix, have turned on them. It's looking like one of the most one sided wars in history as the human race is staring square in the eye with complete annihilation.
Mahnmut and Orphu
Finally, my personal favourites the cyborg Moravecs are on a rescue mission to save those remaining humans and it's a race against time. Mahnmut and Orphu need all the help they can get and soon recruit Hockenberry and Odysseus. With a team like that how could they fail? As long as they can stop Hockenberry from chasing after Helen of Troy it's guaranteed! Thus were going to see a number of unrelated storylines pull together as this one hurtles toward the finish.
My Thoughts
This book seems to have a lot of negative reviews and as a result I went in with pretty low expectations...and then had them blown completely out the water. To each their own, but I absolutely loved Olympos. It wasn't quite as good as the first book in terms of overall quality, I'll freely admit that. But it was very, very good.
As with most Dan Simmons' books, particularly his sci-fi ones, you can't pick this up and expect an easy read. The concepts and multiple plot threads are going to challenge your grey matter. But trust me it's one hundred percent worth the effort.
And don't be put off by the size. Yes it's an absolute doorstop and could stop a 9mm round, but it's still a page turner. Well apart from one part where Hockenberry is ascending a tower, but we'll forget about that. The storyline builds fantastically and is packed with action, humour and even a little bit of romance for you softies who like that kind of thing.
The characters are brilliant and you really grow to care about them over the course of almost two thousand pages. The author but a lot of effort into developing them and they really do burst off the page. Particularly those loveable Moravecs. I'm really going to miss those guys.
"If Quasimodo - the hunchback of Notre Dame - had been assembled out of bits of flesh and used car parts, with boneless arms, a wandering multitude of eyes in assorted sizes, and a narrow maw that looked like a mail slit, and then miniaturised - he might have been a sibling of interrogator Cho Li."
One slight Criticism is that the ending came slightly out of nowhere. There's a major villain in this one and there wasn't really a resolution and that was a massive anticlimax. But I did find out Simmons was planning a third book, called Odyssiad, that seems to have hit the scrapheap so maybe he was leaving it open for that. Anyway, there's an epilogue that does tie things up nicely.
But I can certainly forgive Simmons with that minor issue considering how many things he did right and how he tied all those intersecting plot threads together. He really did a stunning job.
So let me put it this way. If you enjoyed Ilium, you'd be crazy not to finish that journey and read Olympos. Simmons is giving you more of what he delivered in that first novel but on an even bigger scale. And if you loved Hyperion then I would definitely give this series a whirl. It definitely needs a bigger audience.
But before I go, I've no idea if he's planning to write that third book. But in the meantime I discovered that there's a short story called The Nineth Of Av that's a prequel of sorts to Ilium. So I'm going to have to track that down right now. I'll catch you later!
Thanks for reading and...cheers!
January 7, 2010
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
I have tremendous problems with this book, not the least of which is that I wanted to enjoy it so badly. Simmons has a talent for writing good scenes and decent characters, but the overall structure of this book is so sloppy and disappointing that I can't help but feel cheated. I felt this way at the end of Rise of Endymion as well, and I'm starting to think that it's systemic to all of his epic sci-fi narratives. He comes up with a neat idea, creates hint that he's going to explain everything at the end, and after thousands of pages arbitrarily ends things without any sense of resolution.
What was this book about? What was the conflict? You begin thinking that it's about the gods of Olympos and the quantum disturbances they're creating that threaten the very existence of the solar system. Okay. But then it turns out that the Olympian gods are pawns of larger gods or Gods, including Setebos and Prospero. At this point I'm enjoying the direction of the book, thinking that events will hinge on what these larger gods are planning. But then, with a little more than 200 pages left in the combined 1700 pages of Ilium/Olympos, a heretofore unmentioned 2500-year-old Islamic submarine carrying 700 mini black holes becomes the focus. While the submarine is being taken care of, Setebos just... goes away. Zeus' out-of-nowhere desire to become the One God of the Universe is foiled by Achilles and Hephaestus begins his reign on Olympos, clearing up those pesky quantum disturbances from way back in the book as an afterthought.
There were so many unnecessary elements. Where was Simmons' editor in all of this? You could have cut out anything to do with Sycorax and Odysseus, and the narrative wouldn't have changed. You could have deleted almost everything going on with the Trojans and Achaens and the only thing that would have been affected would have been Achilles killing Zeus at the end. But that didn't matter either, because there's no reason for the gods' storyline either. They were post-humans, now they're gods, maybe there are larger forces at play. That's the sum total of the gods in the course of the story.
If I may, a partial list of things that are set up but never resolved:
-Why did Prospero want to elevate the post-humans to god status?
-If each universe is created by "singular genius," wouldn't the Greek gods already exist in the universe the Trojans and Achaens come from? In fact, why did the post-humans choose the Iliad to recreate at all?
-What the hell was the point of the Titan war at the end?
-Why did Zeus all of a sudden want to become the One God? There's no mention of this desire anywhere in the book.
-Who was the Quiet? It's mentioned for 1000+ pages, and then without showing up, everything is resolved when Setebos senses it coming and runs away.
-Why didn't Daeman and Caliban get to fight when they meet at the end?
-Why did Hephaestus put all of the humans into a blue tachyon beam on Ilium-Earth?
-Why were the voynix afraid of the Setebos egg?
I could go on. It seems like Simmons is okay with the explanation for any of these events being "for some reason." I guess it's deeper and more ambiguous that way. I don't think I'd be nearly this upset if the promise of Ilium/Olympos hadn't been so great. I gave the first book 5 stars, and I stand by that. The setup was incredible. The individual parts are amazing. But the whole is so utterly disappointing as to make me angry.
I have tremendous problems with this book, not the least of which is that I wanted to enjoy it so badly. Simmons has a talent for writing good scenes and decent characters, but the overall structure of this book is so sloppy and disappointing that I can't help but feel cheated. I felt this way at the end of Rise of Endymion as well, and I'm starting to think that it's systemic to all of his epic sci-fi narratives. He comes up with a neat idea, creates hint that he's going to explain everything at the end, and after thousands of pages arbitrarily ends things without any sense of resolution.
What was this book about? What was the conflict? You begin thinking that it's about the gods of Olympos and the quantum disturbances they're creating that threaten the very existence of the solar system. Okay. But then it turns out that the Olympian gods are pawns of larger gods or Gods, including Setebos and Prospero. At this point I'm enjoying the direction of the book, thinking that events will hinge on what these larger gods are planning. But then, with a little more than 200 pages left in the combined 1700 pages of Ilium/Olympos, a heretofore unmentioned 2500-year-old Islamic submarine carrying 700 mini black holes becomes the focus. While the submarine is being taken care of, Setebos just... goes away. Zeus' out-of-nowhere desire to become the One God of the Universe is foiled by Achilles and Hephaestus begins his reign on Olympos, clearing up those pesky quantum disturbances from way back in the book as an afterthought.
There were so many unnecessary elements. Where was Simmons' editor in all of this? You could have cut out anything to do with Sycorax and Odysseus, and the narrative wouldn't have changed. You could have deleted almost everything going on with the Trojans and Achaens and the only thing that would have been affected would have been Achilles killing Zeus at the end. But that didn't matter either, because there's no reason for the gods' storyline either. They were post-humans, now they're gods, maybe there are larger forces at play. That's the sum total of the gods in the course of the story.
If I may, a partial list of things that are set up but never resolved:
-Why did Prospero want to elevate the post-humans to god status?
-If each universe is created by "singular genius," wouldn't the Greek gods already exist in the universe the Trojans and Achaens come from? In fact, why did the post-humans choose the Iliad to recreate at all?
-What the hell was the point of the Titan war at the end?
-Why did Zeus all of a sudden want to become the One God? There's no mention of this desire anywhere in the book.
-Who was the Quiet? It's mentioned for 1000+ pages, and then without showing up, everything is resolved when Setebos senses it coming and runs away.
-Why didn't Daeman and Caliban get to fight when they meet at the end?
-Why did Hephaestus put all of the humans into a blue tachyon beam on Ilium-Earth?
-Why were the voynix afraid of the Setebos egg?
I could go on. It seems like Simmons is okay with the explanation for any of these events being "for some reason." I guess it's deeper and more ambiguous that way. I don't think I'd be nearly this upset if the promise of Ilium/Olympos hadn't been so great. I gave the first book 5 stars, and I stand by that. The setup was incredible. The individual parts are amazing. But the whole is so utterly disappointing as to make me angry.
February 13, 2025
Хубаво продължение на „Илион�, но имах малко по-големи очаквания към финала... Сюжетните линии в „Олимп� отново са три. Героите, сражавали се помежду си в Троянската война, неочаквано се съюзяват. С помощ от моравеките, те започват да воюват срещу високотехнологичните богове... Хокънбери и Одисей пък отиват на изключително важна моравекска мисия до Земята, като заедно с тях тръгват Манмът и Орфу. Третата линия проследява приключенията на старостилните човеци...
Дан Симънс по страхотен начин отдава почит на древногръцката митология, Шекспир и Пруст в тази заплетена научнофантастична история!
„� Още ли вярваш в боговете? � пита схоластикът и отпива голяма глътка от силното вино. � Даже след като воювахте с тях?
При тия думи брадатият стратег се намръщва, после се усмихва и се почесва по бузата.
� Понякога може да е трудно да вярваш в приятелите си, Хокънбери, сине Дуейнов, ала винаги трябва да вярваш на враговете си. Особено ако имаш честта сред враговете ти да има богове.�
Дан Симънс по страхотен начин отдава почит на древногръцката митология, Шекспир и Пруст в тази заплетена научнофантастична история!
„� Още ли вярваш в боговете? � пита схоластикът и отпива голяма глътка от силното вино. � Даже след като воювахте с тях?
При тия думи брадатият стратег се намръщва, после се усмихва и се почесва по бузата.
� Понякога може да е трудно да вярваш в приятелите си, Хокънбери, сине Дуейнов, ала винаги трябва да вярваш на враговете си. Особено ако имаш честта сред враговете ти да има богове.�
March 17, 2008
I enjoyed the beginning of this book as it picks up where Ilium left off. Leading up to about the middle of the book the story line is interesting and exciting. And then wham! Stinky turds from there on out. The rest of the story is a classic example of everything I can't stand about bad science fiction.
No or very little insight into the science... The author just assumes you know what the *+!? he is talking about.
So many people and characters interacting in blurry loops of potential meaning that go nowhere. For example about 5/8 the way through you are introduced to a "historical" character named Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep! (Say that three times fast) I'm sorry but as a reader I'm so tired of being brutalized by authors with names like this. Crap like this even makes skimming irritating.
Characters reintroduced/reincarnated after having their heads bitten off - the only difference is now their boobs don't sag.
Chapter 91: You get to enjoy the back seat activities of two teenage characters you've never even been introduced to. Oh come on! If I wanted to read this kind of shit it's all over the internet or TV.
I LOVED Hyperion. This "series" isn't worth the paper it's printed on and unfortunately you'd give yourself a paper cut on your bunghole if you used this book properly.
No or very little insight into the science... The author just assumes you know what the *+!? he is talking about.
So many people and characters interacting in blurry loops of potential meaning that go nowhere. For example about 5/8 the way through you are introduced to a "historical" character named Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep! (Say that three times fast) I'm sorry but as a reader I'm so tired of being brutalized by authors with names like this. Crap like this even makes skimming irritating.
Characters reintroduced/reincarnated after having their heads bitten off - the only difference is now their boobs don't sag.
Chapter 91: You get to enjoy the back seat activities of two teenage characters you've never even been introduced to. Oh come on! If I wanted to read this kind of shit it's all over the internet or TV.
I LOVED Hyperion. This "series" isn't worth the paper it's printed on and unfortunately you'd give yourself a paper cut on your bunghole if you used this book properly.
May 6, 2020
It's like Simmons wanted to write a sequel to Ilium but told himself he was going to make it the exact opposite in almost every way imaginable. This book was much darker in tone and much more violent then the first book but it still totally worked for me. None of what's in these pages should make any sense being an amalgamation of many different styles and influences as well as many characters, real and imagined, from history and literature but holy hell it is entertaining. Almost all the characters from Ilium are back with some taking on bigger roles while others have smaller but Simmons does a great job of explaining everything and tying up loose ends. Not EVERY single question is answered but the majority of them are, enough to satisfy me and help me "see" what was really going on, but since Simmons does not seem to be writing anymore (Omega Canyon has been in the works for years), I doubt there will be any sort of final book to wrap everything up nice and pretty. Regardless, these books both deserve five stars IMO.
February 13, 2024
El vate de la ciencia ficción, el hombre que descubrió que la combinación de Shakespeare, la cibernética y la space opera no solo no era imposible, sino que era necesaria, cierra esta particular bilogía que es Ilión con un final tan delirante como su premisa. Es sorprendente cómo el inicio de la secuela cambia radicalmente en solo cien páginas, convirtiendo casi todo el tercio de la novela anterior en una sucesión de escenas inútiles. Eso sí, al fin se responden todas las preguntas que fueron apareciendo en la entrega anterior de manera más o menos satisfactoria.
¿Qué es lo mejor de Ilión-Olimpo? La imaginación y creatividad que tiene Dan Simmons, capaz de incluir en varios párrafos cuatro ideas de ciencia ficción que en manos de un escritor menos hábil darían para rellenar cuatro libros diferentes, y gracias.
¿Qué es lo peor de Ilión-Olimpo? Que su trama se alarga artificialmente par incluir ciertos giros de guion que, a la postre, resultan intrascendentes; que la historia de los terrícolas en este libro se hace aburridísima, especialmente la de Harman, que es un vía crucis insoportable.
Por supuesto, mi amor incondicional es para los moravecs, los encantadores robots del cinturon de asteroides y los satélites jovianos enamorados de la cultura humana. Manmhut de Europa y Orphu de Io, siempre en mi corazón.
¿Lo recomendaría? Hasta el peor Dan Simmons es mejor que muchos escritores de ciencia ficción y fantasía, y esta bilogía esta muy lejos de ser lo peor: solo es lo más delirante. Si queréis pasar una buena temporada disfrutando de la guerra de Troya en suelo marciano, de las desventuras del pobre observador escólico Hockenberry, de las despreocupadas vidas de los eloy terrícolas y de las conversaciones sobre Shakespeare y Proust de dos robots exploradores, este es vuestro libro. Ningún otro libro os va a dar lo que os dará este.
Eso sí, leedlo solo si ya habéis leído Hiperión. Porque TENEÍS que leer Hiperión.
¿Qué es lo mejor de Ilión-Olimpo? La imaginación y creatividad que tiene Dan Simmons, capaz de incluir en varios párrafos cuatro ideas de ciencia ficción que en manos de un escritor menos hábil darían para rellenar cuatro libros diferentes, y gracias.
¿Qué es lo peor de Ilión-Olimpo? Que su trama se alarga artificialmente par incluir ciertos giros de guion que, a la postre, resultan intrascendentes; que la historia de los terrícolas en este libro se hace aburridísima, especialmente la de Harman, que es un vía crucis insoportable.
Por supuesto, mi amor incondicional es para los moravecs, los encantadores robots del cinturon de asteroides y los satélites jovianos enamorados de la cultura humana. Manmhut de Europa y Orphu de Io, siempre en mi corazón.
¿Lo recomendaría? Hasta el peor Dan Simmons es mejor que muchos escritores de ciencia ficción y fantasía, y esta bilogía esta muy lejos de ser lo peor: solo es lo más delirante. Si queréis pasar una buena temporada disfrutando de la guerra de Troya en suelo marciano, de las desventuras del pobre observador escólico Hockenberry, de las despreocupadas vidas de los eloy terrícolas y de las conversaciones sobre Shakespeare y Proust de dos robots exploradores, este es vuestro libro. Ningún otro libro os va a dar lo que os dará este.
Eso sí, leedlo solo si ya habéis leído Hiperión. Porque TENEÍS que leer Hiperión.
November 27, 2014
didn't answer anything.
the quite one didn't show up.
setebos just left.
islamophobia left a bad taste in my mind.
the quite one didn't show up.
setebos just left.
islamophobia left a bad taste in my mind.
January 11, 2009
Mind-blowing, adrenaline-pumping, world-expanding science fiction at its very best. Dan Simmons has big ideas and grand schemes, and he is never content to simply tell a story; no, he must weave it into our own reality in a seamless fashion, reaching backward and forward in time and literature. In this story (I’m grouping the previous book, Ilium, into the “story�), he brings together Shakespeare, Homer, Proust, quantum teleportation, terraforming, robots, and so much more. Each new bit that unfolds reveals new amazements, filled with both horror and wonder. I definitely recommend both Ilium and Olympos to any fan of science fiction. Or Greek/Trojan history. Or Shakespeare. Or ignore all of the connections and enjoy it for its own sake!
July 2, 2012
Dan Simmons' Olympos consists mainly in two threads. In the one, most of our various characters (Harman and Daeman, the moravecs, Odysseus, Achilles, et al) undertake long journeys in time and space, bringing them at an unbearably slow pace towards the future Earth. On these journeys, they endure various ordeals of little consequence, and a great deal of nothing occurs and is described at great length and in extraordinary detail by Simmons. In the other thread, we are treated to pages and pages of expository monologues from Prospero, Moira, Harman and others as Simmons attempts to explain just what the fuck is going on and unload the enormous backstory omitted from the largely-incomprehensible
. This exposition is heavy-handed and clumsy. Explanations proffered for the events we have followed and wondered about for over a thousand pages vary from merely stupid to jaw-droppingly, cringe-inducingly idiotic. Simmons repeatedly "solves" mysteries he has been building since the first page of Ilium in a single tossed-off sentence or paragraph. His explanation of the voynix (complete with unnecessary and unconvincing connection to the Voynich Manuscript) in particular is not just unsatisfying but infuriating, while I actually had to put the book down and walk away after he tried to explain Setebos through World As Myth bullshit stolen from Robert Heinlein and mixed with New Agey quantum mysticism.
A word on mechanics. Simmons's prose is by and large effective, and deserves no special praise or blame. Where the story falls is in the construction of the plot, which in addition to its overall incoherence proceeds in fits and starts, with long stretches of inaction punctuated by world-changing events treated in brief. Both gods and machines regularly serve as dei ex machinae, with characters brought together on the thinnest of pretexts to haul one another out of intractable jams. The novel's conclusion is full of these convenient escapes, plot holes and simple omissions, and several major threads are left unresolved.
Simmons' fascination with juvenilia is a distraction and regularly breaks the flow of the narrative, rangingfrom fart jokes and locker-room obscenities in the mouths of Greek gods to pervasive, explicit descriptions of sex (including rape and thousand-year-old entities in 16-year-old bodies) and of nude bodies, done throughout in a register not just clinical but often creepy.
Simmons' literary approach to science fiction does deserve praise and is something I would like to see more of. He has a strong familiarity with Homer, Shakespeare and Proust, although I was annoyed by many egregious errors in his use of Greek. Unfortunately, Simmons' sometimes-delightful festival of allusion is hamstrung by his failure to convincingly integrate the use of literary connections by his characters and in his backstory into the plot. Both literary allusion and descriptions of sexuality carry the sense that the author feels he is getting away with something, delivered with a smirk and a self-congratulatory chuckle. While his audaciously-literate story occasionally soars, it never reaches the joyful madness it could have had in the hands of a writer like Roger Zelazny (of whom more below) or Umberto Eco, someone who understood and reveled in its absurdity. Simmons takes himself far too seriously.
I mention Roger Zelazny because Ilium and Olympos really demand comparison to his classic, Hugo-winning . There are so many similarities between the novels —the post-human, nanotech-infused gods recreating mythology, the elaborate literary allusions, the domed/forcefield-protected citadel on an inhospitable mountaintop, the oppressed, preindustrial populace reincarnating through "divine" machines, the war between gods and men, the final injection of Christianity into the conflict � that I cannot help but think Simmons is straight-up lifting from Zelazny.
So how do the two stories stack up? On my reading, Lord of Light wins on virtually every dimension. It is much, much shorter, at about 300 pages against close to 1800 for Ilium and Olympos together. It is tightly plotted. Although like Simmons' epic the story is convoluted in time, it ultimately makes more sense and is far better structured. It is funnier and spends more time enjoying its own audacity. Zelazny's use of mythology (Hindu and Buddhist, in this case) and literature is woven more effectively into the structure of the novel than Simmons' bizarre combination of Homer, Shakespeare and nonsense. Zelazny is happy to handwave most of the science behind his creation, avoiding Simmons' ad-nauseum repetition of the words "quantum" and "Calabi-Yau", well-defined scientific terms whose meanings I don't believe Simmons understands. Above all, Zelazny embraced the lunacy he created. Lord of Light is joyful, funny, occasionally insightful and always mad, with none of the cringing, self-conscious titillation of Olympos. It's simply a better novel and a more enjoyable read.
A word on mechanics. Simmons's prose is by and large effective, and deserves no special praise or blame. Where the story falls is in the construction of the plot, which in addition to its overall incoherence proceeds in fits and starts, with long stretches of inaction punctuated by world-changing events treated in brief. Both gods and machines regularly serve as dei ex machinae, with characters brought together on the thinnest of pretexts to haul one another out of intractable jams. The novel's conclusion is full of these convenient escapes, plot holes and simple omissions, and several major threads are left unresolved.
Simmons' fascination with juvenilia is a distraction and regularly breaks the flow of the narrative, rangingfrom fart jokes and locker-room obscenities in the mouths of Greek gods to pervasive, explicit descriptions of sex (including rape and thousand-year-old entities in 16-year-old bodies) and of nude bodies, done throughout in a register not just clinical but often creepy.
Simmons' literary approach to science fiction does deserve praise and is something I would like to see more of. He has a strong familiarity with Homer, Shakespeare and Proust, although I was annoyed by many egregious errors in his use of Greek. Unfortunately, Simmons' sometimes-delightful festival of allusion is hamstrung by his failure to convincingly integrate the use of literary connections by his characters and in his backstory into the plot. Both literary allusion and descriptions of sexuality carry the sense that the author feels he is getting away with something, delivered with a smirk and a self-congratulatory chuckle. While his audaciously-literate story occasionally soars, it never reaches the joyful madness it could have had in the hands of a writer like Roger Zelazny (of whom more below) or Umberto Eco, someone who understood and reveled in its absurdity. Simmons takes himself far too seriously.
I mention Roger Zelazny because Ilium and Olympos really demand comparison to his classic, Hugo-winning . There are so many similarities between the novels —the post-human, nanotech-infused gods recreating mythology, the elaborate literary allusions, the domed/forcefield-protected citadel on an inhospitable mountaintop, the oppressed, preindustrial populace reincarnating through "divine" machines, the war between gods and men, the final injection of Christianity into the conflict � that I cannot help but think Simmons is straight-up lifting from Zelazny.
So how do the two stories stack up? On my reading, Lord of Light wins on virtually every dimension. It is much, much shorter, at about 300 pages against close to 1800 for Ilium and Olympos together. It is tightly plotted. Although like Simmons' epic the story is convoluted in time, it ultimately makes more sense and is far better structured. It is funnier and spends more time enjoying its own audacity. Zelazny's use of mythology (Hindu and Buddhist, in this case) and literature is woven more effectively into the structure of the novel than Simmons' bizarre combination of Homer, Shakespeare and nonsense. Zelazny is happy to handwave most of the science behind his creation, avoiding Simmons' ad-nauseum repetition of the words "quantum" and "Calabi-Yau", well-defined scientific terms whose meanings I don't believe Simmons understands. Above all, Zelazny embraced the lunacy he created. Lord of Light is joyful, funny, occasionally insightful and always mad, with none of the cringing, self-conscious titillation of Olympos. It's simply a better novel and a more enjoyable read.
August 15, 2023
The conclusion to the Iliad duology was pretty good. It was darker than the first book, but still drives the reader forward with more or less non-stop action cover to cover. I liked the narrative pace and the various perspectives taken as the various threads from the previous book came together in this one. As per usual, the concepts are often mind-blowing with Simmons and there is a loose tie-in to the Hyperion Canto. I am not sure though that it comes all that close to the excellence of that first book, but nonetheless is important to read once you have finished Ilium.
December 27, 2021
Den Simons je lud lik.
Njegova dela su suv kvalitet.
Privilegija je citati ga.
Sekspir ili Prust? Kakvo je to pitanje, pa Den Simons naravno! :D :D :D
Njegova dela su suv kvalitet.
Privilegija je citati ga.
Sekspir ili Prust? Kakvo je to pitanje, pa Den Simons naravno! :D :D :D
December 18, 2019
If you ever plan to read the Ilium duo-logy then i recommend doing it back-to-back. I picked up Olympos 18 months after Ilium and experienced a great deal of confusion. My usual go-to Wikipedia let me down so i resorted to finding spoiler reviews, which gave me snippets of names, events and what went down. I would still need to re-read Ilium to fully appreciate Olympos.
It continues in the same vein as Ilium with the three story lines still separate but slowly making their way to the inevitable convergence; the Moravecs and Hockenberry are investigating the quantum disturbances emanating from old Earth, the Trojans and Greeks are fighting the Gods of Mount Olympos and Harman, Ada and the rest of the Old-Style Humans are fighting the Voynix who've turn against them.
Much like his other science fiction classic, Hyperion, Olympos is thoroughly entertaining and packed with philosophy, psychics, history and likable characters. My only gripe is the length as at least 100 pages could have been cut.
It continues in the same vein as Ilium with the three story lines still separate but slowly making their way to the inevitable convergence; the Moravecs and Hockenberry are investigating the quantum disturbances emanating from old Earth, the Trojans and Greeks are fighting the Gods of Mount Olympos and Harman, Ada and the rest of the Old-Style Humans are fighting the Voynix who've turn against them.
Much like his other science fiction classic, Hyperion, Olympos is thoroughly entertaining and packed with philosophy, psychics, history and likable characters. My only gripe is the length as at least 100 pages could have been cut.
December 5, 2020
A very ambitious science fiction duology (Olympos being the direct sequel to Ilium). (MILD SPOILERS AHEAD:) This is a multi-universe far-future epic involving Greek gods and Homeric heroes, Artificial Intelligences obsessed with Proust, nanotech-enhanced posthumans, a resurrected Professor of Classics from the 20th century that attempts to seduce Helen of Troy, anti-semitic killer robots, characters from Shakespeare that have come to life due to Quantum-wave parallel universe framistatwhatsits (apparently Quantum=Magic), bloody battles, and evil telepathic brain-monsters.
While fascinating and stimulating as a whole, the ending of this novel seems very hurried, with some rather anti-climactic climaxes, and is lacking in some promised explanations of certain phenomena, and has several characters act oddly with only some vague explanation.
I also want to repeat here an observation made by another reviewer whose name I cannot remember: almost all the female characters in the book are described primarily through the size, shape, and consistency of their breasts. Simmons has written books with excellent, strong female characters. But he's rather gotten into the spirit of the Heroic Age of Achilles , though there are a couple of female characters in the story that are three-dimensional, including, in my opinion, Helen of Troy.
I honestly wonder if Simmons went a bit mad during the writing of this book, as plot threads were incoherently unresolved, characters suddenly leave the story, foreshadowed entities never appear, and his politics enter the story out of nowhere, seemingly only so he can point out that Islamic Jihadists are evil. What does this have to do with posthumans, quantum gods, and Shakespeare? Nothing really. A disappointing mess. Perhaps it could be rescued if Simmons were to write a third book, but that doesn't seem likely.
While fascinating and stimulating as a whole, the ending of this novel seems very hurried, with some rather anti-climactic climaxes, and is lacking in some promised explanations of certain phenomena, and has several characters act oddly with only some vague explanation.
I also want to repeat here an observation made by another reviewer whose name I cannot remember: almost all the female characters in the book are described primarily through the size, shape, and consistency of their breasts. Simmons has written books with excellent, strong female characters. But he's rather gotten into the spirit of the Heroic Age of Achilles , though there are a couple of female characters in the story that are three-dimensional, including, in my opinion, Helen of Troy.
I honestly wonder if Simmons went a bit mad during the writing of this book, as plot threads were incoherently unresolved, characters suddenly leave the story, foreshadowed entities never appear, and his politics enter the story out of nowhere, seemingly only so he can point out that Islamic Jihadists are evil. What does this have to do with posthumans, quantum gods, and Shakespeare? Nothing really. A disappointing mess. Perhaps it could be rescued if Simmons were to write a third book, but that doesn't seem likely.
December 4, 2020
"Олимп" и "Илион" са играчка в ръцете на боговете , но кои богове?Хората дръзнали да станат такива или тези които играят с човешките съдби .
И тук както в "Хиперион" Симънс дръзва да посочи едно високо технологично бъдеще след хиляди години , но докато в тетралогията е много по -лиричен , тук е доста пиперлив в думите си .
Хора, Богове , технологии, светове които се размиват , сякаш си в една гигантска холограма .
И тук както в "Хиперион" Симънс дръзва да посочи едно високо технологично бъдеще след хиляди години , но докато в тетралогията е много по -лиричен , тук е доста пиперлив в думите си .
Хора, Богове , технологии, светове които се размиват , сякаш си в една гигантска холограма .
April 21, 2023
Well I was intrigues by the story in this 2nd volume of the duology but was really let down by the ending. Seems the last few chapters were rushed and just chopped together. Overall the series is interesting. Recommended
November 16, 2012
I almost couldn't believe this book was written by the same author as Hyperion and Ilium. The various plots meandered while none of the big mysteries were answered. And where did all the misogynism come from? Simmons has always written such strong female characters. Suddenly Helen of Troy is calling herself a cunt and the formerly powerful/strong modern-day human female characters are suddenly crying and moody all of the time, while the men take front-seat on the adventures. And the Goddesses all become slutty, contemptible temptresses. The term "bitch" gets thrown around way too often by Achilles and the gods. Oh, and worst of all, there's a male character that is forced by a wizard to rape a sleeping female character in chryo-sleep because his ejaculate is the only way to wake her. And it's critical to the survival of the Earth for her to be awakened. So the dude wretches and forces himself to do the horrible deed. And hundreds of pages later at the end of the book the awakened female character has literally made no contribution to the plot. She pops into the picture and just walks around with an invisibility cloak on occasionally. What happened to her being the most important piece to human survival?
Then there are anti-Islam and anti-gay slurs in the last 1/3 of the book. Not to mention his absurd over-use of the term "interdict." I didn't count, but I bet it was in the hundreds. This book really disappointed me on a number of levels. I'll be very cautious before picking up anything new he writes.
Then there are anti-Islam and anti-gay slurs in the last 1/3 of the book. Not to mention his absurd over-use of the term "interdict." I didn't count, but I bet it was in the hundreds. This book really disappointed me on a number of levels. I'll be very cautious before picking up anything new he writes.
June 15, 2022
I've never written a review before, but I can't stop thinking about how weird and disappointing this book was and I need to get my thoughts down. These thoughts will probably be pretty disjointed, and they'll definitely be chock full of spoilers.
I really enjoyed my time with Ilium, and was excited to see where the story would go and how the many pieces would start to fit together in the finale. Almost immediately, however, it seemed like the scope of Olympus was out of control.
Ilium has 4 different POVs; Mahnmut the moravec on his journey to Mars, the Old Style Humans Ada and Daeman on future Earth, and the scholic Thomas Hockenberry during the Trojan War. (There is also one chapter randomly from Hannah's POV, but otherwise the narrative sticks to these 4 characters.) Each story is told in 3rd person omniscient voice, except for Hockenberry's, which is 1st person.
Olympus opens with a slew of chapters from the POV of side characters, including Menelaus, Helen and Hera. When we eventually cut to the familiar Hockenberry, his narrative is now in 3rd person. This abrupt shift in narrative scope between volumes was jarring enough that Olympus initially felt to me as though it had been written by a different author working off of Simmon's notes.
All these new narrative focuses are abandoned after Part 1, however, and the POV shifts back to the crew from the first novel, with the addition of Achillies and Harman. (If it isn't clear yet, inconsistencies in POVs are a huge pet peeve of mine) We continue with these characters until the end of the novel, although toward the end of Part 3 Hockenberry's narrative abruptly shifts back to 1st person and stays that way.
All this to say, the narrative structure is a bit of a mess. Not in any way that makes the story hard to follow, but in a way that makes the storytelling feel very clumsy at times.
Now I'm going to complain about the actual plot. My biggest gripe by far is with Odysseus's arc(?) There are two Odysseuses in the novel; the one from the battle of Troy who is kidnapped by the moravecs and brought to future Earth, and an older Odysseus that the Old Style Humans discovered during the first book.
This older Odysseus has been on Earth for some time. He has some history with Savi and says he came to the future Earth after escaping from imprisonment on Circe's isle. We never learn much about what he and Savi have been up to on Earth, but I'm gonna go on a tangent about two of the things we do know:
First, the Turin Cloths. Savi and Odysseus distributed these among all the Old Style Humans, allowing them to view the battle of Ilium in real time. They do this to acclimate the Old Style Humans to both warfare and Greek culture, because they suspect that war and Greeks will both be coming to Earth soon. They're right, but it's never really made clear why they know this.
There's a moment where Ada puts on a Turin cloth and decides to access the nanobot function that allows her to interface with their flying machine. For some reason this physically transports her to Ilium. She freaks out and removes to cloth, returning to her version of Earth. This ability is never used or even addressed again, and nothing of note happens during Ada's extremely brief trip to Ilium. I still have no idea why this scene happens.
Second, the submarine. Early in the story Harman is whisked away to the other side of the world. I'm going to talk more about this later, but eventually he is told that in order to return home, he must walk along the Atlantic Breach from Europe to North America, across the sea floor. He asks Prospero why he can't just get teleported home and is never given a straight answer.
With about 150 pages left in the book, Harman stumbles on a submarine crashed on the sea floor. He becomes really curious and decides to explore it, ignoring a warning that it's filled with lethal radiation. Inside the submarine he discovers a ton of warheads filled with stable black holes, and also learns that their containment fields are deteriorating and they will destroy the earth in a matter of months.
This world ending threat comes out of nowhere and is resolved like 2 chapters later when the moravecs haul all the warheads into space and jettison them safely. It serves as nothing more than an extremely contrived way to get Harman and the moravecs in the same place. Later, when the older Odysseus tells Sycorax that the moravecs are hauling the black holes into orbit, she comments that they shouldn't have been a threat, as she'd sealed them in a stasis bubble millenia earlier. He replies that he and Savi disabled the bubble.
...Why? I guess we're meant to infer that Prospero made Harman walk down the breach so he'd find the submarine, and Odysseus disabled the stasis bubble so the moravecs would detect the submarine, all to make sure the moravecs and Harman meet up? How does Odysseus know that he should do this? It's such a contrived and stupid way to get the two groups together that I was in disbelief for that whole section.
Ok, anyways. Old Odysseus is injured by a voynix early in the book and removed from the story until the 11th hour. Meanwhile the moravecs kidnap Younger Odysseus from Ilium, promising him news from his wife to lure him aboard their spaceship. They then fly off to Future Earth on their mission to figure out what's going on.
As they approach future Earth, they're contacted by Sycorax, aka Circe, who asks them to bring Odysseus to her on her orbital isle. "AHA!" You may say. "So Oysseus is brought to Circe, is imprisoned there for a long time, then escapes backwards in time and down to Earth to go on his adventures with Savi, leading up to where he is now: injured and in a healing tank." Well that's what I thought, anyways.
The truth is dumber and doesn't make sense. Old Odysseus recovers from his wounds and reunites with Ada just long enough to demand her flying machine for "personal reasons." He flies up to Circe's isle right as the moravecs drop off young Odysseus. Then he busts in on his younger self and Circe having sex and announces that he loves her and wants to run away with her into the multiverse.
I cannot stress enough that there is NO build up to this. He explains that he's visited countless dimensions since he left Circe's isle, checked up on his wife and son, boned down on a bunch of alternate universe versions of Circe, and is now ready to commit to Dr Who Sex Adventures with her forever. How did he visit these other dimensions? How did he meet up with his wife, who has been reduced to tachyon particles and stored in a data beam? Who knows.
He then draws a gun and aims it at his younger self, which makes Circe freak out and say he's going to create a horrible paradox and descend the universe into Kaos. He kills young Odysseus anyway and there are no negative consequences and they fly off together and live happily ever after. Ok.
Speaking of sex. Good lord the sex. This book has a serious case of Men Writing Women. Female characters can't go more than a few pages without Simmons mentioning their breasts in some way. Most scenes involving women read like a horny old man's lecherous musings. This was an issue in the first book as well, and came to a head when Hockenberry took the form of Paris to rape Helen of Troy. Helen is largely fine with this when his deception is revealed, and they become lovers????? Yuck.
Simmons doubles down on this garbage in Olympos. When Harman is whisked off on his cross-continent adventure with Prospero, they stop at a tomb built atop Mt Everest. Inside is a young woman who looks just like Savi and is sleeping naked in a glass coffin. Prospero tells Harman that he must wake this woman, Moira, if he wants answers to all his questions, and the only way to wake her is to ejaculate inside her. WHAT.
WHY would you write this. Simmons could have written ANY method to wake this woman up; why was the one he settled on mandatory rape? Harman has a moral dilemma about this, not because of the rape but because he has a wife at home and he doesn't want to be unfaithful. (The narrative helpfully explains that rape is an alien concept to Old Style Humans because they can have sex whenever they want 🙄)
Moira wakes up and immediately starts referring to Harman as a rapist, which makes his poor feelings hurt and makes him feel even guiltier for being unfaithful. Then Moira is like "jk you old horndog, my coffin was full of aphrodisiacs, you had no choice but to rape my comatose body. Don't worry about it." For the rest of the novel all of Harman's man-pain is focused on his unfaithfulness, and otherwise the rape is never addressed. I hope i don't need to explain why this is all horrible.
Directly after this horrorshow is a great example of another problem I had with the book: the pacing. Events are dragged out for chapter after chapter after chapter, and the book ends up being probably a good 200 pages longer than it needs to be.
After Harman rapes Moira, she decides that he should go into a glass cabinet at the top of the tomb that will download the tomb's vast library into his head. Prospero argues that this will kill him. Moira says it won't. Harman agrees to do it. End of chapter, cut to other characters. We return in the next Harman chapter to find him walking up the stairs to the cabinet. He talks with Moira. Ariel shows up to do some poetry. They reach the top of the stairs. End of chapter, cut to other characters. Next Harman chapter: the cabinet starts filling with gold liquid; Harman doesn't want to get in because he might drown. Then he gets in anyways. End of chapter. Cut away, cut back. NOW the cabinet downloads the library into his mind.
Holy crap. WHY did this take so long?? A good editor could have easily brought these four chapters together into one and cut out tons of nonsense on the way. Events are stretched out like this through the whole novel. It quickly becomes an exhausting slog as you wait for anything to actually happen.
And when things finally do happen? How are all these story threads tied off? Setebos has come to Earth and is harvesting misery from the human population as they're hunted to extinction by voynix. Caliban leads an army of Calibani as Setebos' vanguard. The armies of Troy and Greece are lifted from their time and dumped onto future Earth alongside the Old Style Humans. The Moravecs show up at Earth with an army of rockvec troopers to assist where they can. This is going to be the clash of the century! It's all going to pay off!
Then Odysseus flies up to Circe's isle and asks her to run away with him. While he's there, he tells her to send her son Caliban down to Setebos with a message: the Quiet is coming. The Quiet is Prospero's god, and is never really defined further than that. It might be the one true God of the universe that the Demogorgon talks a lot about during the Tartarus scenes? Idk.
Regardless, Caliban passes this message on to Setebos and he goes "oh crap" and leaves. The Quiet never makes an appearance, there's no final showdown, the story just kind of fizzles to a halt before a brief Where Are They Now style epilogue, which features this quote about a 16 year old: "They were very young breasts - larger and firmer than an adolescent girl's little bud breasts, but still not fully formed."
Gross, dude.
I really enjoyed my time with Ilium, and was excited to see where the story would go and how the many pieces would start to fit together in the finale. Almost immediately, however, it seemed like the scope of Olympus was out of control.
Ilium has 4 different POVs; Mahnmut the moravec on his journey to Mars, the Old Style Humans Ada and Daeman on future Earth, and the scholic Thomas Hockenberry during the Trojan War. (There is also one chapter randomly from Hannah's POV, but otherwise the narrative sticks to these 4 characters.) Each story is told in 3rd person omniscient voice, except for Hockenberry's, which is 1st person.
Olympus opens with a slew of chapters from the POV of side characters, including Menelaus, Helen and Hera. When we eventually cut to the familiar Hockenberry, his narrative is now in 3rd person. This abrupt shift in narrative scope between volumes was jarring enough that Olympus initially felt to me as though it had been written by a different author working off of Simmon's notes.
All these new narrative focuses are abandoned after Part 1, however, and the POV shifts back to the crew from the first novel, with the addition of Achillies and Harman. (If it isn't clear yet, inconsistencies in POVs are a huge pet peeve of mine) We continue with these characters until the end of the novel, although toward the end of Part 3 Hockenberry's narrative abruptly shifts back to 1st person and stays that way.
All this to say, the narrative structure is a bit of a mess. Not in any way that makes the story hard to follow, but in a way that makes the storytelling feel very clumsy at times.
Now I'm going to complain about the actual plot. My biggest gripe by far is with Odysseus's arc(?) There are two Odysseuses in the novel; the one from the battle of Troy who is kidnapped by the moravecs and brought to future Earth, and an older Odysseus that the Old Style Humans discovered during the first book.
This older Odysseus has been on Earth for some time. He has some history with Savi and says he came to the future Earth after escaping from imprisonment on Circe's isle. We never learn much about what he and Savi have been up to on Earth, but I'm gonna go on a tangent about two of the things we do know:
First, the Turin Cloths. Savi and Odysseus distributed these among all the Old Style Humans, allowing them to view the battle of Ilium in real time. They do this to acclimate the Old Style Humans to both warfare and Greek culture, because they suspect that war and Greeks will both be coming to Earth soon. They're right, but it's never really made clear why they know this.
There's a moment where Ada puts on a Turin cloth and decides to access the nanobot function that allows her to interface with their flying machine. For some reason this physically transports her to Ilium. She freaks out and removes to cloth, returning to her version of Earth. This ability is never used or even addressed again, and nothing of note happens during Ada's extremely brief trip to Ilium. I still have no idea why this scene happens.
Second, the submarine. Early in the story Harman is whisked away to the other side of the world. I'm going to talk more about this later, but eventually he is told that in order to return home, he must walk along the Atlantic Breach from Europe to North America, across the sea floor. He asks Prospero why he can't just get teleported home and is never given a straight answer.
With about 150 pages left in the book, Harman stumbles on a submarine crashed on the sea floor. He becomes really curious and decides to explore it, ignoring a warning that it's filled with lethal radiation. Inside the submarine he discovers a ton of warheads filled with stable black holes, and also learns that their containment fields are deteriorating and they will destroy the earth in a matter of months.
This world ending threat comes out of nowhere and is resolved like 2 chapters later when the moravecs haul all the warheads into space and jettison them safely. It serves as nothing more than an extremely contrived way to get Harman and the moravecs in the same place. Later, when the older Odysseus tells Sycorax that the moravecs are hauling the black holes into orbit, she comments that they shouldn't have been a threat, as she'd sealed them in a stasis bubble millenia earlier. He replies that he and Savi disabled the bubble.
...Why? I guess we're meant to infer that Prospero made Harman walk down the breach so he'd find the submarine, and Odysseus disabled the stasis bubble so the moravecs would detect the submarine, all to make sure the moravecs and Harman meet up? How does Odysseus know that he should do this? It's such a contrived and stupid way to get the two groups together that I was in disbelief for that whole section.
Ok, anyways. Old Odysseus is injured by a voynix early in the book and removed from the story until the 11th hour. Meanwhile the moravecs kidnap Younger Odysseus from Ilium, promising him news from his wife to lure him aboard their spaceship. They then fly off to Future Earth on their mission to figure out what's going on.
As they approach future Earth, they're contacted by Sycorax, aka Circe, who asks them to bring Odysseus to her on her orbital isle. "AHA!" You may say. "So Oysseus is brought to Circe, is imprisoned there for a long time, then escapes backwards in time and down to Earth to go on his adventures with Savi, leading up to where he is now: injured and in a healing tank." Well that's what I thought, anyways.
The truth is dumber and doesn't make sense. Old Odysseus recovers from his wounds and reunites with Ada just long enough to demand her flying machine for "personal reasons." He flies up to Circe's isle right as the moravecs drop off young Odysseus. Then he busts in on his younger self and Circe having sex and announces that he loves her and wants to run away with her into the multiverse.
I cannot stress enough that there is NO build up to this. He explains that he's visited countless dimensions since he left Circe's isle, checked up on his wife and son, boned down on a bunch of alternate universe versions of Circe, and is now ready to commit to Dr Who Sex Adventures with her forever. How did he visit these other dimensions? How did he meet up with his wife, who has been reduced to tachyon particles and stored in a data beam? Who knows.
He then draws a gun and aims it at his younger self, which makes Circe freak out and say he's going to create a horrible paradox and descend the universe into Kaos. He kills young Odysseus anyway and there are no negative consequences and they fly off together and live happily ever after. Ok.
Speaking of sex. Good lord the sex. This book has a serious case of Men Writing Women. Female characters can't go more than a few pages without Simmons mentioning their breasts in some way. Most scenes involving women read like a horny old man's lecherous musings. This was an issue in the first book as well, and came to a head when Hockenberry took the form of Paris to rape Helen of Troy. Helen is largely fine with this when his deception is revealed, and they become lovers????? Yuck.
Simmons doubles down on this garbage in Olympos. When Harman is whisked off on his cross-continent adventure with Prospero, they stop at a tomb built atop Mt Everest. Inside is a young woman who looks just like Savi and is sleeping naked in a glass coffin. Prospero tells Harman that he must wake this woman, Moira, if he wants answers to all his questions, and the only way to wake her is to ejaculate inside her. WHAT.
WHY would you write this. Simmons could have written ANY method to wake this woman up; why was the one he settled on mandatory rape? Harman has a moral dilemma about this, not because of the rape but because he has a wife at home and he doesn't want to be unfaithful. (The narrative helpfully explains that rape is an alien concept to Old Style Humans because they can have sex whenever they want 🙄)
Moira wakes up and immediately starts referring to Harman as a rapist, which makes his poor feelings hurt and makes him feel even guiltier for being unfaithful. Then Moira is like "jk you old horndog, my coffin was full of aphrodisiacs, you had no choice but to rape my comatose body. Don't worry about it." For the rest of the novel all of Harman's man-pain is focused on his unfaithfulness, and otherwise the rape is never addressed. I hope i don't need to explain why this is all horrible.
Directly after this horrorshow is a great example of another problem I had with the book: the pacing. Events are dragged out for chapter after chapter after chapter, and the book ends up being probably a good 200 pages longer than it needs to be.
After Harman rapes Moira, she decides that he should go into a glass cabinet at the top of the tomb that will download the tomb's vast library into his head. Prospero argues that this will kill him. Moira says it won't. Harman agrees to do it. End of chapter, cut to other characters. We return in the next Harman chapter to find him walking up the stairs to the cabinet. He talks with Moira. Ariel shows up to do some poetry. They reach the top of the stairs. End of chapter, cut to other characters. Next Harman chapter: the cabinet starts filling with gold liquid; Harman doesn't want to get in because he might drown. Then he gets in anyways. End of chapter. Cut away, cut back. NOW the cabinet downloads the library into his mind.
Holy crap. WHY did this take so long?? A good editor could have easily brought these four chapters together into one and cut out tons of nonsense on the way. Events are stretched out like this through the whole novel. It quickly becomes an exhausting slog as you wait for anything to actually happen.
And when things finally do happen? How are all these story threads tied off? Setebos has come to Earth and is harvesting misery from the human population as they're hunted to extinction by voynix. Caliban leads an army of Calibani as Setebos' vanguard. The armies of Troy and Greece are lifted from their time and dumped onto future Earth alongside the Old Style Humans. The Moravecs show up at Earth with an army of rockvec troopers to assist where they can. This is going to be the clash of the century! It's all going to pay off!
Then Odysseus flies up to Circe's isle and asks her to run away with him. While he's there, he tells her to send her son Caliban down to Setebos with a message: the Quiet is coming. The Quiet is Prospero's god, and is never really defined further than that. It might be the one true God of the universe that the Demogorgon talks a lot about during the Tartarus scenes? Idk.
Regardless, Caliban passes this message on to Setebos and he goes "oh crap" and leaves. The Quiet never makes an appearance, there's no final showdown, the story just kind of fizzles to a halt before a brief Where Are They Now style epilogue, which features this quote about a 16 year old: "They were very young breasts - larger and firmer than an adolescent girl's little bud breasts, but still not fully formed."
Gross, dude.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 13, 2008
Welllll... I just can't get excited about this book now that it's over. After wading through 900 dense pages of literary influenced sci-fi, I feel a little cheated by where we ended up. Harman's journey into what was supposed to be the Earth's past (our future, I guess) was pretty dull considering the tantalizing hints Simmons drops. I love the idea, for example, that a Global Caliphate arose sometime in the 22nd Century, developed time travel and quantum spacetime science, and destroyed the bulk of civilization with a virus targeted at killing non-Muslims. That's comedy GOLD right there.
What's missing is the "so what?" Ultimately where our Earthen characters end up is so arbitrarily decided that it robs you of any real satisfaction for the closure. It seems that Simmons abandons his literary template for quick resolutions... and by page 800, you crave them anyway. It's ultimately unsatisfying if not for the allegorical comparisons between Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, and other classic epic poets and those poets' effects on a future full of quantum teleportation, moravecs, and black holes. But as fun as that can be, it doesn't help move a plot anywhere.
Sadly, there was a ton of potential in this story. The fates of so many characters could have been much better handled to much more satisfying ends (WTF was up with that shit between Odysseus and Sycorax???). Oh well.
What's missing is the "so what?" Ultimately where our Earthen characters end up is so arbitrarily decided that it robs you of any real satisfaction for the closure. It seems that Simmons abandons his literary template for quick resolutions... and by page 800, you crave them anyway. It's ultimately unsatisfying if not for the allegorical comparisons between Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, and other classic epic poets and those poets' effects on a future full of quantum teleportation, moravecs, and black holes. But as fun as that can be, it doesn't help move a plot anywhere.
Sadly, there was a ton of potential in this story. The fates of so many characters could have been much better handled to much more satisfying ends (WTF was up with that shit between Odysseus and Sycorax???). Oh well.
September 26, 2018
"Helen of Troy awakes just before dawn to the sound of air raid sirens."
Hour 1 of the 37 hour-long audiobook:
Not impressed with the narrator. Another 36 hours, sigh. The Greeks are a silly lot. Glad to have made it past the first few chapters and to Hockenberry.
Hour 2... mostly bored. The gods are not much of an improvement over the Greeks.
Hour 5. Oh my goodness, another 32 hours of this... Greek gods in a SF setting really do feel silly. Especially when this inept. And Simmons� description of women is very dated. Getting used to the narrator though. Although narrating female voices or doing various characters at all is not his strength.
This is going well.
Hour 16 or so. I have lost the will to live. There are some interesting bits and bobs, but mostly I am just massively bored. Queen Mab is fun, that‘s about it. Sorry, DNF around 46%.
I would actually quite like to know where this is all headed, but there seems to be plenty of reviews out there indicating that this is not going anywhere. Fast, slow, with the help of nuclear explosions or otherwise.
Hour 1 of the 37 hour-long audiobook:
Not impressed with the narrator. Another 36 hours, sigh. The Greeks are a silly lot. Glad to have made it past the first few chapters and to Hockenberry.
Hour 2... mostly bored. The gods are not much of an improvement over the Greeks.
Hour 5. Oh my goodness, another 32 hours of this... Greek gods in a SF setting really do feel silly. Especially when this inept. And Simmons� description of women is very dated. Getting used to the narrator though. Although narrating female voices or doing various characters at all is not his strength.
This is going well.
Hour 16 or so. I have lost the will to live. There are some interesting bits and bobs, but mostly I am just massively bored. Queen Mab is fun, that‘s about it. Sorry, DNF around 46%.
I would actually quite like to know where this is all headed, but there seems to be plenty of reviews out there indicating that this is not going anywhere. Fast, slow, with the help of nuclear explosions or otherwise.
July 7, 2021
Sometimes, Kara, you need to listen to yourself more. I really should have read my review of
Ilium
before diving into Olympos. Not only would it have refreshed me on the plot, but I actually mentioned the uncomfortable, rapey, male-gazeyness of Simmons� writing in that review. This is what clinched my dislike of Olympos. As with Ilium, I almost gave up on it—but I soldiered on, and honestly? Not worth it.
Picking up where Ilium left off, Olympos has a lot of plot threads/characters to summarize, so bear with me. First we have Thomas Hockenberry, a “scholic� rebuilt from the writings and DNA of a 21st-century scholar to bear witness to the ersatz Trojan War playing out on a terraformed Mars. He has had a part in convincing the Trojans and Greeks to unite against the Olympian Gods, who are actually posthumans. Into this fray come the moravecs, part-human and part-machine, descendants of machines sent out to Jupiter prior to humanity’s leap into posthumanity. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the “old style� humans need to rediscover a lot of technology and skills fast, because their former servitor robots the voynix are really keen on killing all the humans. This includes Ada, now preggo with Harman’s baby, and Harman himself, who quickly becomes embroiled further with the mysterious beings known as Prospero and Ariel. In the background lurks Setebos, some kind of alien incorporated as a brain with a terrifying number of hands for limbs.
I’ll give this to Dan Simmons: Olympos offers a lot of explanations for the mysteries broached in Ilium. It’s just that most of them aren’t great. My praise for the first book centred on how Simmons explores the nature of literacy and the benefits and drawbacks it has bequeathed on humanity. Olympos largely jettisons these themes in favour of action; the themes mostly seem to trend towards “lots of tech good, but play nice with other branches of humanity� without much clarity there either.
Oh, and then of course, there’s all the sex stuff. What is it with cis white male science-fiction authors and an obsession with sexytimes? Asimov was conservative enough at least to merely be sexist in his descriptions of women. Simmons is closer to Larry Niven, whose obsession with “rishathra� torpedoed any enjoyment I could get from the Ringworld series. Everyone in this book is so horny. Add to that the descriptions of things, not even people, but things in terms of “the shape of a woman’s thighs,� and I was so close to noping out.
Then Simmons decides it would be a good idea to include rape as a plot point. Not just any rape either. No, in this case, Harman has to have sex with an unconscious woman who looks like someone he knew from the first book (Savi) because the DNA in his semen is the key to unlocking her from stasis.
I am not kidding. I nearly threw my book across the room. I persevered mostly so that I would never, ever be tempted to pick up this book again just to know how it ends. But I am telling you all now, any readers of this review, that if you are in the middle of this book and wondering if it is worth it, it is not.
I would like to spoil the ending for you, but I am going to be honest, a lot of the explanation just doesn’t make sense in a narrative sense. Like, the Big Idea does—and it’s cool, but I have seen it done better elsewhere, and Simmons just kind of drops it onto the table like a flopping, soon-to-be-dead fish so that he can spend more time telling us how fuckable Helen of Troy is. Nor does the ending really matter. Everything gets tied up just a little too neatly, as if Simmons wants us to gaze upon him admiringly and say, “Oooh, look at how clever you are for plotting all that!� And hey, maybe I would, if you hadn’t been rapey as fuck.
I am done with you, Dan Simmons. Good day.
Originally posted on , where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
Picking up where Ilium left off, Olympos has a lot of plot threads/characters to summarize, so bear with me. First we have Thomas Hockenberry, a “scholic� rebuilt from the writings and DNA of a 21st-century scholar to bear witness to the ersatz Trojan War playing out on a terraformed Mars. He has had a part in convincing the Trojans and Greeks to unite against the Olympian Gods, who are actually posthumans. Into this fray come the moravecs, part-human and part-machine, descendants of machines sent out to Jupiter prior to humanity’s leap into posthumanity. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the “old style� humans need to rediscover a lot of technology and skills fast, because their former servitor robots the voynix are really keen on killing all the humans. This includes Ada, now preggo with Harman’s baby, and Harman himself, who quickly becomes embroiled further with the mysterious beings known as Prospero and Ariel. In the background lurks Setebos, some kind of alien incorporated as a brain with a terrifying number of hands for limbs.
I’ll give this to Dan Simmons: Olympos offers a lot of explanations for the mysteries broached in Ilium. It’s just that most of them aren’t great. My praise for the first book centred on how Simmons explores the nature of literacy and the benefits and drawbacks it has bequeathed on humanity. Olympos largely jettisons these themes in favour of action; the themes mostly seem to trend towards “lots of tech good, but play nice with other branches of humanity� without much clarity there either.
Oh, and then of course, there’s all the sex stuff. What is it with cis white male science-fiction authors and an obsession with sexytimes? Asimov was conservative enough at least to merely be sexist in his descriptions of women. Simmons is closer to Larry Niven, whose obsession with “rishathra� torpedoed any enjoyment I could get from the Ringworld series. Everyone in this book is so horny. Add to that the descriptions of things, not even people, but things in terms of “the shape of a woman’s thighs,� and I was so close to noping out.
Then Simmons decides it would be a good idea to include rape as a plot point. Not just any rape either. No, in this case, Harman has to have sex with an unconscious woman who looks like someone he knew from the first book (Savi) because the DNA in his semen is the key to unlocking her from stasis.
I am not kidding. I nearly threw my book across the room. I persevered mostly so that I would never, ever be tempted to pick up this book again just to know how it ends. But I am telling you all now, any readers of this review, that if you are in the middle of this book and wondering if it is worth it, it is not.
I would like to spoil the ending for you, but I am going to be honest, a lot of the explanation just doesn’t make sense in a narrative sense. Like, the Big Idea does—and it’s cool, but I have seen it done better elsewhere, and Simmons just kind of drops it onto the table like a flopping, soon-to-be-dead fish so that he can spend more time telling us how fuckable Helen of Troy is. Nor does the ending really matter. Everything gets tied up just a little too neatly, as if Simmons wants us to gaze upon him admiringly and say, “Oooh, look at how clever you are for plotting all that!� And hey, maybe I would, if you hadn’t been rapey as fuck.
I am done with you, Dan Simmons. Good day.
Originally posted on , where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
November 25, 2016
This was too long, but so worth the long hours.
March 9, 2011
What a complete disappointment!! Ilium was amazing, beautiful, epic story-telling, but Olympos was just a complete boring mess. I kept thinking it would get back on track, but it didn't. NOTHING was explained. Don't read this if you are looking for answers from the questions in Ilium, you won't get them. There are even two characters in the story that actually do know what's going on and can answer questions, but they refuse to and just wink at each other knowingly. Kind of insulting to your reader if you ask me.
The only redeeming thing about Olympos was the moravecs, who are the only characters through these two books with a clear story line to them.
The annoying thing about Dan Simmons is that he changes the style of his writing from book to book. Which is fine in itself, but not in the middle of a series when you've already spend 800+ pages getting used to a particular narrative style, format and flow to the story, and then to change it so dramatically is jarring and took me completely out of the story. He did this with the Hyperion books too, but not to this dramatic extent.
SPOILERS BELOW!!!
Then there are the overlong battle scenes. Then there are the overlong debates with the Greek generals. I know he was paying homage to Homer, but good lord! And then a new character introduced 100 pages from the end, but never explained and just sails off into space. And there was the ridiculous-looking Big Bad that just disappears (???) And the promised ultimate Big Bad looming in the aether that never shows up (???) And the chapter with of two teenagers having sex in a car in 1950-whatever (???)
The only redeeming thing about Olympos was the moravecs, who are the only characters through these two books with a clear story line to them.
The annoying thing about Dan Simmons is that he changes the style of his writing from book to book. Which is fine in itself, but not in the middle of a series when you've already spend 800+ pages getting used to a particular narrative style, format and flow to the story, and then to change it so dramatically is jarring and took me completely out of the story. He did this with the Hyperion books too, but not to this dramatic extent.
SPOILERS BELOW!!!
Then there are the overlong battle scenes. Then there are the overlong debates with the Greek generals. I know he was paying homage to Homer, but good lord! And then a new character introduced 100 pages from the end, but never explained and just sails off into space. And there was the ridiculous-looking Big Bad that just disappears (???) And the promised ultimate Big Bad looming in the aether that never shows up (???) And the chapter with of two teenagers having sex in a car in 1950-whatever (???)
January 27, 2009
I was disappointed in this book. It's sad, because was so promising. But I found this a real let-down conclusion to a probably over-ambitious beginning. Perhaps I had too high of hopes, because if anybody could have pulled off a conclusion to such an ambitious start, it would have been Simmons.
This novel seemed like a jumble of cool ideas thrown in together and stirred. They were all individually fascinating, but they didn't come together into anything... Well, "story shaped" (to steal 's turn of phrase). The disparate plot threads diverged into even more disparateness, the backplot was hinted at but not drawn into anything coherent, the characters didn't come to satisfactory conclusions, plot lines initiated in the first book were discarded, entities were multiplied without cause, and things that seemed like fascinating mysteries in the first book turned out to be merely blenders on legs. Subtlety gave way to bloodbaths.
That said, Simmons is a master, and even his off days are better than many people's best efforts. So I enjoyed it on a page to page basis. It's just the whole that left me feeling unfulfilled. A bit like dining exclusively on fois gras and creme mints. Lovely individually, but a bit discordant together. And definitely not a wholesome meal.
This novel seemed like a jumble of cool ideas thrown in together and stirred. They were all individually fascinating, but they didn't come together into anything... Well, "story shaped" (to steal 's turn of phrase). The disparate plot threads diverged into even more disparateness, the backplot was hinted at but not drawn into anything coherent, the characters didn't come to satisfactory conclusions, plot lines initiated in the first book were discarded, entities were multiplied without cause, and things that seemed like fascinating mysteries in the first book turned out to be merely blenders on legs. Subtlety gave way to bloodbaths.
That said, Simmons is a master, and even his off days are better than many people's best efforts. So I enjoyed it on a page to page basis. It's just the whole that left me feeling unfulfilled. A bit like dining exclusively on fois gras and creme mints. Lovely individually, but a bit discordant together. And definitely not a wholesome meal.
December 3, 2022
I'm going to be honest: I found this book disappointing.
This is the second duology by Dan Simmons I've read and similar to Fall of Hyperion, Olympos manages to take all of the intriguing ideas, plot threads, and characters set up in its predecessor and turn them into something that feels very different, while introducing dozens of new storylines, concepts, and elements. However, unlike Fall of Hyperion, which I think handles these major shifts surprisingly well to create a unique and unforgettable story, Olympos misses the mark.
While I admire the scope of this duology and how many different ideas found their way into these two books, I ultimately feel the vast majority of the storylines fail to capitalize on any of them. When I was reading Ilium, I found myself engaged in each individual character's storyline and was very excited to see how everything was going to be tied up in the sequel. However, most of what I was looking forward to in Olympos is either completely glossed over, avoided, or substituted for new plot threads that come out of nowhere and are unnecessary.
With all this being said, I found Achilles' plotline to be fantastic and enjoyed all of the literary references (for example: Homer, Shakespeare, Proust, etc.) scattered throughout the book.
2.5/5
This is the second duology by Dan Simmons I've read and similar to Fall of Hyperion, Olympos manages to take all of the intriguing ideas, plot threads, and characters set up in its predecessor and turn them into something that feels very different, while introducing dozens of new storylines, concepts, and elements. However, unlike Fall of Hyperion, which I think handles these major shifts surprisingly well to create a unique and unforgettable story, Olympos misses the mark.
While I admire the scope of this duology and how many different ideas found their way into these two books, I ultimately feel the vast majority of the storylines fail to capitalize on any of them. When I was reading Ilium, I found myself engaged in each individual character's storyline and was very excited to see how everything was going to be tied up in the sequel. However, most of what I was looking forward to in Olympos is either completely glossed over, avoided, or substituted for new plot threads that come out of nowhere and are unnecessary.
With all this being said, I found Achilles' plotline to be fantastic and enjoyed all of the literary references (for example: Homer, Shakespeare, Proust, etc.) scattered throughout the book.
2.5/5
February 2, 2018
and then there were none... no one writes like Simmons, and even when he has split open your skull, taken out your brains, juiced them with some Reyka vodka, chocolate sauce, coffee beans, and butter pecan ice cream (it's known in Hugo and Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke winning circles as a Medulla Mudslide, which is why you'll never have one, non-award-winner types hahahahahaha- OK, that's just me being silly) and then sluiced them back in and stuck a bendystraw in your mouth so you can sample the goodness, even after all that he still writes this book and makes you wish he'd just stopped after Hyperion and at least let some other authors do their thing and not feel too bad that their books may be darned good, but they're just not made of the same stuff as the books Dan Simmons writes... i read he penned this while he was getting facial reconstructive surgery so he would stop being swooned after by Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear, and Arthur C. Clarke... i read it on the internet, so... just read this, EVERYONE. it's OK to be jealous and stab your eyes out with anger, there is an audiobook version too! there are plenty of kneelers at the Altar of Dan Simmons...
March 12, 2020
Mult prea lungă această carte și în cele din urmă cam fără rost. Interesantă ideea că geniul poate crea un univers fizic numai prin puterea gîndului, dar pînă la urmă stîngaci dezvoltată. A, și toate personajele masculine vorbesc aceleași măscări. Ceea ce era pitoresc în exprimarea unuia devine patetic ridicol cînd toți cîntă aceeași muzică.
July 28, 2022
HIUL 🥳
Hochintelligente Unterhaltungsliteratur!
Band 2 hat vieles aufgelöst oder zumindest soviel verraten dass man die Zusammenhänge selbst erkennen konnte. Gefiel mir wahnsinnig gut - eine der besten, anspruchsvolleren Sci-Fi Reihen. Nicht für Sci-Fi Neulinge geeignet
Hochintelligente Unterhaltungsliteratur!
Band 2 hat vieles aufgelöst oder zumindest soviel verraten dass man die Zusammenhänge selbst erkennen konnte. Gefiel mir wahnsinnig gut - eine der besten, anspruchsvolleren Sci-Fi Reihen. Nicht für Sci-Fi Neulinge geeignet
Displaying 1 - 30 of 794 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.