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Olympos (Ilium #2)

3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 · rating details · 6,123 ratings · 261 reviews

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. Now an enraged Achilles joins forces with his archenemy Hector and turns his murderous wrath on Zeus and th...more

Paperback, 912 pages

Published July 25th 2006 by Harper Voyager (first published June 2005)

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Feb 22, 2011 Ian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kicked-my-ass, question-reality, unfulfilled-expectations, blowing-shit-up

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 t...more

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Jan 11, 2009 Kiri rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 unf...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Terran rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-fun, reviewed

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 Nei ...more

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Mar 17, 2008 roger rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: teenage boys who like to jack off in their sheets

Shelves: fiction-scifi, fiction-meh

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 tha...more

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May 27, 2011 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

WARNING: Not a spoiler, but the ending is talked about in extremely general terms.

I loved the world, the characters, the premise, and the story. So why only three stars? Simmons really wanted to end the series in two books, but there was just too much there to really do so. The result was that Olympos lacked the strong sense of climax that Illium had, while also having a drawn out resolution that left Simmons running through time and space and alternate realities tying up all the loose ends. I u...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in November 2006.

Like The House of Storms just reviewed, Olympos is the sequel to a favourite science fiction/fantasy novel of mine from the last few years; in this case, to Ilium. Unlike The House of Storms, Olympos is a continuation of the earlier novel: very much a traditional sequel. From the start it is clearly going to wrap up the many loose ends of the earlier novel. (This wrapping up extends to the last paragraph of Olympos, which is virtually identic...more Originally published on my blog here in November 2006.

Like The House of Storms just reviewed, Olympos is the sequel to a favourite science fiction/fantasy novel of mine from the last few years; in this case, to Ilium. Unlike The House of Storms, Olympos is a continuation of the earlier novel: very much a traditional sequel. From the start it is clearly going to wrap up the many loose ends of the earlier novel. (This wrapping up extends to the last paragraph of Olympos, which is virtually identical to the last paragraph of Ilium; both are translations of the opening of Homer's The Iliad, though from slightly different points of view.)

Since Olympos follow on directly from Ilium, the plot is hard to describe without revealing details which might spoil Ilium for those who have not yet read it. (Though like much science fiction and fantasy, there are many other pleasures in the novel other than the plot.) War continues in the recreated Troy, where post-humans take the place of the gods of Greek mythology and run a simulation of the events described in the Iliad.

This is the main point of both novels. The theory that post-humans will get the most fun out of running simulations so perfect that to the participants it will be like resurrection in heaven is not very convincing and has struck me ever since I first heard it as wishful thinking, a desire by somewhat sentimental atheists to replace Christian ideas of heaven. There should be so many more interesting things to do than pandering to an obsession with the history of far more limited individuals. Personal interactions with other post-humans, investigation of the universe, simulations which are entirely new and alien: these seem to me to be three obvious possibilities. Simmons paints a more believable post-human, a race that has retained many of the less pleasant facets of humanity, with the desire to play cruel and capricious deities the reason for running a simulation. (Imagine what it would be like to be a simulated character in many of today's computer games.) All the post-humans in these two novels are unpleasant, mad or alien; it is only the resurrected humans and the descendants of human beings genetically engineered to live in the outer solar system that are anything approaching sympathetic. Like the idea of entirely benevolent beings, this is surely an over-simplification. If post-humans ever come to exist, they may be in some part incomprehensible to us, but they will surely be at least as varied as personalities. There may be some backing for Simmons' scenario in the idea that power corrupts, but the lack of nice, stable post-humans is for me a weakness in his vision.

Ilium made an impact - being hailed as "a landmark in modern SF" on the cover of this edition of Olympos - by being different and innovative. Since its sequel cannot match these qualities of the original by definition, it is hard to feel that Olympos is as good. It is well written and, of course, fans of Ilium will be keen to see how things turn out.(less)

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Dec 06, 2012 Donovan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Olympos is the sequel to the Dan Simmons novel 'Ilium' and it is strongly recommended reading before reading Olympos. The novel centers on three main character groups; that of the scholic Hockenberry, Helen and Greek and Trojan warriors from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada and the other humans of Earth; and the moravecs, specifically Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io. The novel is written in present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Logan rated it 1 of 5 stars

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 al...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Corytregoart rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who can't tell a satisfying story arc from a hole in the ground.

(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...more (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.(less)

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Sep 24, 2011 Христо Блажев rated it 5 of 5 stars

Величавото двутомие “Илион” и “Олимп” е фантастика от друго измерение!: http://www.knigolandia.info/2009/11/b...

В “Олимп” нещата продължават да се развиват ударно – марсианският Олимп е обсаден от гърци, троянци и моравеки, които пък изпращат и експедиция към Земята, там се завръща чудовището Сетебос, което се храни с ужаса, натрупан по места като Аушвиц и Хирошима, войниксите от слуги стават врагове на хората и започват методично да ги избива. По някое време боговете се изпоскарват помежду си...more

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Dec 02, 2010 Jasmine Giacomo rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had someone gush to me about Ilium and Olympos, so I bought them on his word, excited to know that Hyperion would await me afterward. Sorry I did that. The story never really gelled for me, and I never really identified with any of the characters. It felt like all the history the author wanted to present wasn't as relevant to the plot as he thought it was. I kept wanting to know about this or that feature, this or that lost tech, and he never took me there. The main storylines really focus on...more

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Jul 23, 2010 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sci-fi fans, people who like twists on greek mythology, horror fans

Shelves: 2010, sci-fi

The Ilium/Olympos duology is some of the most fantastic sci-fi that I have read for ages. The depth and breadth of the story is so utterly satisfying that it puts other books to shame.

Ilium is difficult to get into to start with as the three different main story strands don't really start to relate to each other until 3/4 of the way into the book which makes things a bit confusing and difficult to keep up with. The story comes into its own in Olympos, and unlike a lot of Simmons characters, you...more

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Dec 14, 2009 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Fantastic follow up to Illium. The only thing that kept this from 5 star was the last couple pages. More on that later.

First, the good.

ACHILLES!! As someone who has read the Iliad, you spend most of these books internally thinking "what would achilles or hector actually do if confronted with this situation?" This is where Dan Simmons really shines as an author. You really feel like Achilles jumped right out of the Iliad and started right up in this book. I don't know about other readers, but I f...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Michael Seidel rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

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 rea...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Scott Rhee rated it 4 of 5 stars

The sequel to Dan Simmons' epic sci-fi space opera "Ilium", "Olympos" continues the story of 21st-century Professor Thomas Hockenberry, who has inexplicably been resurrected on Mars to be an observer of the Trojan War. Confused? So is he, and so is the reader for a considerable amount of time. Thankfully, in the deft hands of consummate storyteller Simmons, we begin to piece together what is happening in the universe. It's the distant future, and the Greek Gods have all returned to set up their...more

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Feb 03, 2010 Arun Divakar rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ilium was a mind blowing work on scale and on the grandiose measure of imagination. Olympos takes senses to overload with scenes and characters in situations beyond the literal wildest imaginations. The heroes from the Iliad, Sentient Machines, Greek Pantheon of Gods, Monstrous world devouring creatures and Humans all inhabit this book and all of them in a plot that literally brims with imagination.

Comparisons are but weak ways to judge a book, but for a sequel it is but pre ordained to look at...more

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Jan 07, 2010 bobby rated it 2 of 5 stars

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...more 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.(less)

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Apr 28, 2010 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like Ilium, Olympos is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it is a truly impressive collection of literary references and obviously the result of a ton of research. Simmons brings together Shakespeare, Proust, Robert Browning, Nabokov, Joyce, Homer, Virgil, and other major literary figures to frame his world. On the other hand, I have the same complaint that I had with Ilium: the characters aren't that riveting. There is more character development in this second book, especially when the old-st...more Like Ilium, Olympos is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it is a truly impressive collection of literary references and obviously the result of a ton of research. Simmons brings together Shakespeare, Proust, Robert Browning, Nabokov, Joyce, Homer, Virgil, and other major literary figures to frame his world. On the other hand, I have the same complaint that I had with Ilium: the characters aren't that riveting. There is more character development in this second book, especially when the old-style humans leave behind their life of leisure and start struggling for survival. Ada, Daeman, and Harman all become more interesting as their lives become harder. In other words, conflict is more interesting than no conflict.

My other complaint has to do with the treatment of women in the novel. The thing about all those literary giants who literally shaped the various worlds (and there are multiple universes involved here) in Ilium and Olympos? They are all dudes. Specifically of the very traditional dead white dude canon. Emily Dickinson is name-dropped once, and an unnamed female poet of the twenty-first century is referenced once.* Simmons also thanks Harold Bloom in his acknowledgments. I have nothing against Harold Bloom, but he is a very traditional literary theorist who tends to defend the very traditional dead white dude canon. I found this reliance on conservative literary values a strange juxtaposition to the truly mind-blowing sci-fi ideas in the novel. At one point, a character dying of radiation poisoning weeps because he will never see a Shakespearean play performed. Commence eye-rolling.

Female characters don't make out much better. Women are ranked as more beautiful than one but less than another. Ada sees a fair amount of development in the second novel, but most of the female characters are opaque, sexually monstrous, or tagging along after the men like puppy dogs. In short, the sexism in the book took me out of the experience of the rather brilliant science fiction ideas.

*Simmons names this poet in his afterword, but not in the main text.(less)

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Apr 06, 2013 Rafal Jasinski rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dan Simmons jednak nie zawodzi. Siłą wieńczącego "Ilion" tomu, w głównej mierze jest to, że niemal każdy wątek kończy się w sposób kompletnie nieprzewidywalny (wiadomo, gdy w grę wchodzą kwanty, wszystko może się zdarzyć). Autor widać świetnie się bawi, robiąc czytelnikowi na przekór, i ja nie mam nic przeciwko temu. Ostatnimi czasy cieszy mnie literatura, która nie biegnie z nurtem pratchettowskiego imperatywu narracyjnego, po prostu.

Jakkolwiek wciąż mógłbym zarzucić Simmonsowi to, że narracja...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Even though I really enjoyed the first book of this duo-logy, the comments in the review section at Amazon.com were less than stellar. However, I couldn't pass up the chance to follow all the characters I had rapidly come to know in Ilium. I'm glad that I disregarded all of those comments. While this rating is more a 4.5 (I thought the sex scenes were over the top and unnecessary) I still thought the book was really good. Some of the reviews I read complained about things not being explained ful...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Colin Higashi rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's honestly not a bad book, and it has some wonderful ideas in it, but I feel like it could have been executed so much better. I like how it takes history and twists it to make something new and different, and the whole concept of beings interacting with other timelines is fascinating, but the plot is horribly chaotic. The sections of the book taken individually each seem to be cohesive enough, but they don't transition or tie together well; Simmons tends to jump from place to place with no or...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars

What is a god? Taking Browning's poem "Caliban Upon Sebetos" as the starting point Simmons explores the concept of godhood. If Caliban is a god to those below him then what about humanity? Post humanity? Zeus? The creators of life and the destroyers.

The problem is that this, the followup to Ilium, fails to answer any of the questions raised in the first and instead gets lost in a maze of dead ends and digressions. It is almost as if the first book was planned out and the second simply made up...more

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Nov 06, 2007 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Olympos is the sequel to Illium . And while I enjoyed the latter immensely, I really didn't care for this book. Endings are so hard to pull off especially in books this ambitious and I just wasn't feelin' it.

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Aug 10, 2007 Joshua rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book, and its predecessor Illium, are the weirdest books I have ever read. They tell the story of a post apocalyptic world, Homer's Illiad and some giant robots from Jupiter. They are so nerdy, but truly so delightful.

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May 28, 2009 Kalyn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 07, 2012 William rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Second of a lengthy duology about a future solar system peopled by (a) robots who stand, oddly of all the characters, most squarely in the humanist tradition as humanity's legacy, (b) a few messed up, manipulative "post-humans," (c) ~100,000 beleaguered, unevolved (or are they?) humans, (d) sundry imaginary creatures inexplicably come to life, and (e) real live, mostly nasty ancient Greek gods.

Many of the latter class of characters receive horrendous comeuppances in keeping with the anti-theist...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Jeroen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction-soft

It's hard. Starting reading the second part of a story of which I have read the predecessor years ago, that is. As per divine intervention, I found out that there is actually a pretty nice website devoted to Simmons' Ilium/Olympos-duology, viz. http://ilium.pbworks.com. This was really cool, because Ilium had a diversity of storylines on itself and I got a chance of reacquainting myself with them.
With this little refresher course behind me, I still had some problems with getting into the story....more It's hard. Starting reading the second part of a story of which I have read the predecessor years ago, that is. As per divine intervention, I found out that there is actually a pretty nice website devoted to Simmons' Ilium/Olympos-duology, viz. http://ilium.pbworks.com. This was really cool, because Ilium had a diversity of storylines on itself and I got a chance of reacquainting myself with them.
With this little refresher course behind me, I still had some problems with getting into the story. A tale that features so many plots, references and allusions is bound to be challenging. And lo, so it came to pass. Luckily, Dan Simmons is up to the task of keeping things interesting—though I think I have missed out on this novel because Shakespeare's The Tempest did not crossed my vision yet, nor did Homeros' Iliad in its entirety. Nonetheless, Olympos remains an interesting novel, with—as Ilium did—separate storylines and enough characters to keep one busy for quite a while.
I don't feel like spoiling the story and/or clou of the story, but think about Proust, Shakespeare, quantum-stuff, Brane Holes, the siege of Troy and something of the scope of this novel becomes clear. It's never easy, yet never too hard as well. I found myself amused by Simmons' literary experiments and the references that I did get; he is smart with words and story.
Still, this novel left me behind with an unsatisfied feeling. The storylines converge, there is some closure, but it all feels to hasty, especially concerning one of the main villains. Yet maybe I'm just missing some reference or allusion. More than 800 pages long, Olympos succeeded in conjuring interesting ideas and telling a story that is at least somewhat original. Well, at least the combination of epics, classics and sci-fi. Ilium did not convince me completely, but Olympos did. This duology was totally worth my while. I think I'll return to it after having read The Tempest, Iliad, Odyssee, À la recherche du temps perdu and all the other stories that are referred to.(less)

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Sep 22, 2012 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Right after finishing Ilium it became apparent to me that its sequel won't be as good. However, I couldn't imagine that it would be not because of the weak plot, but due to the dragged out storyline. The book is almost 200 pages longer than Ilium, and I think those pages could be easily thrown out as containing lots of unnecessary references to the events described in Ilium. Hell, there even are loads of references to the events that were told a mere couple of pages ago.
As a result there are so...more

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Jul 02, 2012 David rated it 1 of 5 stars

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...more 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.(less)

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May 13, 2013 Aaron rated it 3 of 5 stars

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About Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction,...more Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.

Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years -- 2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York -- one year as a specially trained BOCES "resource teacher" and another as a sixth-grade teacher -- and 14 years in Colorado.

ABOUT DAN
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His last four years in teaching were spent creating, coordinating, and teaching in APEX, an extensive gifted/talented program serving 19 elementary schools and some 15,000 potential students. During his years of teaching, he won awards from the Colorado Education Association and was a finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year. He also worked as a national language-arts consultant, sharing his own "Writing Well" curriculum which he had created for his own classroom. Eleven and twelve-year-old students in Simmons' regular 6th-grade class averaged junior-year in high school writing ability according to annual standardized and holistic writing assessments. Whenever someone says "writing can't be taught," Dan begs to differ and has the track record to prove it. Since becoming a full-time writer, Dan likes to visit college writing classes, has taught in New Hampshire's Odyssey writing program for adults, and is considering hosting his own Windwalker Writers' Workshop.

Dan's first published story appeared on Feb. 15, 1982, the day his daughter, Jane Kathryn, was born. He's always attributed that coincidence to "helping in keeping things in perspective when it comes to the relative importance of writing and life."

Dan has been a full-time writer since 1987 and lives along the Front Range of Colorado -- in the same town where he taught for 14 years -- with his wife, Karen, his daughter, Jane, (when she's home from Hamilton College) and their Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Fergie. He does much of his writing at Windwalker -- their mountain property and cabin at 8,400 feet of altitude at the base of the Continental Divide, just south of Rocky Mountain National Park. An 8-ft.-tall sculpture of the Shrike -- a thorned and frightening character from the four Hyperion/Endymion novels -- was sculpted by an ex-student and friend, Clee Richeson, and the sculpture now stands guard near the isolated cabin.(less)

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Books by Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #2)

The Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #4)

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“Context is to data what water is to a dolphin” — 3 people liked it

“Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Shame on any man who gets used to that taste.” — 0 people liked it

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