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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 Ilium . 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, ranging from 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 Lord of Light . 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.