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I was disappointed in this book. It's sad, because Ilium 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 Neil Gaiman'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.