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Olympos (Ilium #2)

by Dan Simmons

3.93 · Rating Details · 12,462 Ratings · 462 Reviews

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 centur ...more

Mass Market Paperback, 891 pages

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

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Jul 19, 2010 Ian rated it liked it · 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 ...more

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Feb 25, 2008 roger rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: teenage boys who like to jack off in their sheets

Shelves: fiction-meh, fiction-scifi

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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Jan 23, 2012 Corytregoart rated it did not like it

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 (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. ...more

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Dec 25, 2009 bobby rated it it was ok

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 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. ...more

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Jan 11, 2009 Kiri rated it it was amazing

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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Nov 27, 2014 alireza rated it did not like it

didn't answer anything.
the quite one didn't show up.
setebos just left.
islamophobia left a bad taste in my mind.

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Nov 24, 2016 Derek rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy-syfy-sorcery, favourites, fav-writers-dan-simmons, read-in-2016

This was too long, but so worth the long hours.

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Jun 09, 2012 David rated it did not like it

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 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. ...more

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Mar 15, 2016 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Asshole gods, robots from Jupiter, professors who get to bang Helen of Troy

Shelves: science-fiction, audiobook, doorstopper, gods, space-opera, robots, war, greek-myths

This sequel to Ilium follows a pattern I've noticed with Dan Simmons, now that I've read his entire Hyperion Cantos - his first books in a series are really, really good, while the follow-ups are still good, but seem to lose a bit of the brilliance of the original and wind up going in strange places.

Olympos, the second book of this fat duology, continues the saga of a classics professor from 21st century Earth resurrected 3000 years later to witness a recreation of the Trojan War on a terraforme This sequel to Ilium follows a pattern I've noticed with Dan Simmons, now that I've read his entire Hyperion Cantos - his first books in a series are really, really good, while the follow-ups are still good, but seem to lose a bit of the brilliance of the original and wind up going in strange places.

Olympos, the second book of this fat duology, continues the saga of a classics professor from 21st century Earth resurrected 3000 years later to witness a recreation of the Trojan War on a terraformed Mars. Although it's not really accurate to call this Hockenberry's saga; he is just the unifying character flitting between the subplots and separate groups of characters, but being a middle-aged temporally displaced academic with a few technological artifacts and his modest wits, he's hardly as epic a figure as vainglorious, undefeatable Achilles, tricky, crafty Odysseus, beautiful and scheming Helen, or the entire Greek pantheon, the two "gods" who created the gods, and the ever-escalating series of gods above them that these various figures meet in what turns out to be a multipart, often disconnected quest not only to unravel the mystery of this futuristic Trojan War, but save the world.

Hockenberry is the only first-person narrator, and he remains a rather milquetoast protagonist, though it's hardly his fault that he got yanked from a Midwestern university 3000 years into the future where suddenly the gods themselves want him dead.

The more interesting chapters are those describing the continuing adventures of the Greek and Trojan heroes, now that recreated plot of the Iliad has gone completely off the rails and Achilles and Hector have teamed up to go to war with the gods. The gods are really masters of magic-like nanotechnology, though their true nature and where they came from is finally revealed in this book. As Olympos opens, the sentient robots from the moons of Jupiter who'd come to investigate a big mess of quantum shenanigans taking place in the inner systems, where Mars was thought to be uninhabited and humans on Earth thought to be long extinct, are helping defend Troy from siege by the gods. Meanwhile, the remaining humans on Earth, whose miraculous ancient technology has fallen, forcing an Eloi-like civilization to learn how to actually survive the hard way, even as long-dormant mechanical beings have awoken and begun seeking to exterminate them, are also forced to contend with Caliban, the cannibalistic genetically engineered monstrosity who was one of the chief villains in the previous volume.

There are a lot of characters and subplots here, and Simmons as usual loads this science-fantasy space opera with references from Proust, Homer, Shakespeare, Blake, and numerous others. He layers subplot over subplot, multiple layers of villainous schemes, each villain being the pawn of a greater one, and then starts shoving all sorts of reality-bending weirdness into the story, involving actual divine beings, quantum reality, the last remnants of an apocalyptic war, all still while having Shakespearean and Homeric figures running around doing battle.

Simmons definitely captures the barbaric nobility of the Greeks (and sheer assholishness of the Greek gods). And while at times I really had no idea where the story was going, it was never boring. In the end, I think it got a bit bloated and meandering and it seemed that Simmons was willing to throw any weird idea that came to him into the mix, which is why this was a huge doorstopper of a novel following a previous huge doorstopper of a novel.

An epic SF saga, which I recommend, but in my opinion slightly inferior to the first book. ...more

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Mar 10, 2010 Chris rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: people who like both Hienlien and Classical literature?

Shelves: my-reviews

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 ( ...more

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Feb 11, 2008 Du4 rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi

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 bul ...more

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Nov 14, 2008 Terran rated it liked it

Shelves: reviewed, for-fun

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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Sep 17, 2016 Susie rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Fans of literary sci-fi and/or Greek mythology

Shelves: the-future

Sometimes, life gets in the way of reading, and it takes a month to read a 900 page book. It can be frustrating to not have the time to absorb long sections, and there is the possibility of forgetting what was happening, resulting in feeling completely lost. But other times, dragging out consumption of a novel can make a reader (or me, anyway) actually feel even more immersed in the story. Over the course of reading Ilium and Olympos, I've spent a fair amount of real time in the world Dan Simmon ...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Michael rated it did not like it

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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Nov 16, 2012 Aaron Logan rated it did not like it

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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Feb 10, 2012 Mitchell rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi

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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Aug 27, 2008 Daniel (Attack of the Books!) Burton rated it it was amazing

Fascinating, creative, and epic. Got a bit racy at parts, and I found myself skipping pages...however, it was well worth the read. Long, drawn out, and complex, I enjoyed this novel.

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Apr 11, 2010 Erin rated it liked it

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 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. ...more

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Sep 13, 2016 Mars rated it did not like it

(abandoned halfway through)

The actual story is a solid 3 stars - vaguely interesting characters, a complicated world, etc. I actually rather want to find Ilium now and read it, because I feel that it might be orders of magnitude better.

As a standalone book, this is shit - things, characters and events from the first one are mentioned but not adequately explained (example: calibani are smaller and weaker versions of Caliban; first mention is pretty early in the book, but first, albeit partial, *d (abandoned halfway through)

The actual story is a solid 3 stars - vaguely interesting characters, a complicated world, etc. I actually rather want to find Ilium now and read it, because I feel that it might be orders of magnitude better.

As a standalone book, this is shit - things, characters and events from the first one are mentioned but not adequately explained (example: calibani are smaller and weaker versions of Caliban; first mention is pretty early in the book, but first, albeit partial, *description* of one of these things is after they've been talked about for 300 pages)

But what really kills it is the writing (or maybe just really, really shitty editing)

This is a physical book, so i haven't marked very many extremely cringe-worthy quotes, but here are a few glorious examples:

* "he pushed her away, but she had already danced out of range" (what does it even mean? I didn't write this one down so wording may be slightly changed)

* "about twenty kilometers long, roughly the size of their Lost Era city of Manhattan" (this is like using "the size of noah's ark" instead of "4 football fields" in modern conversation - these describe roughly the same area, but it's an utterly meaningless utterance within context)

* "escape velocity from the moon Phobos is a mere 10 cm/sec, but the Queen Mab quickly kicks herself up to 20km/sec acceleration in order to start the process of climbing up and out of Mars' gravity" (Phobos' escape velocity is closer to 12. Acceleration is in distance per second per second. Mars' escape velocity is about 5km/sec, but that number is the speed you have to start with on the planet's surface to make it out to space with no additional acceleration, so "20 to start" is, uh, what?)

I may come back to this again in the distant future, after reading the first book, but generally would highly recommend you to stay away.

Edit: Oh god, I've read some of the other spoilerific reviews. This thing is rapidly approaching my burn-before-reading list. The moral being, apparently, "stay away from Simmons' sequels" ...more

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Jul 23, 2010 Kate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: sci-fi fans, people who like twists on greek mythology, horror fans

Shelves: sci-fi, 2010

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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Jun 04, 2008 Nikki rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: greek-roman, speculative-fiction

I read this book very bittily, because I couldn't get into it very well. I thought it was okay. It was absorbing enough once I forced myself to concentrate on it. The technology, to my mind, made things a bit too easy. And if some things had been cut out, it would've made it more readable and made it make more sense. For example: why, if your only motivation so far has been to get back to your pregnant wife, and you have important information to deliver, would you go into a radioactive wreck whe ...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Scott Rhee rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

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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Mar 30, 2009 Ben rated it liked it

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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Jul 07, 2014 Clay rated it it was ok

Wow, what a weird book. The sentient robots from the asteroid belt were the most identifiable characters in it. It was definitely interesting at times, but the Trojan war bits dragged on. There are about 3 different plotlines that are seemingly unrelated. It is finally all explained, and it mostly makes sense. There were parts I really enjoyed and parts I didn't care for and some parts that were just bizarre. It took me forever to get through this. So is that a recommendation? Well, if you want ...more

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Aug 13, 2013 Michael Durant rated it really liked it

Shelves: modern-pulps, sf, thriller, mars, historical-fiction, fantasy, worldbuilding-triumphs, xenthropologic-gems, weird-west, post-modernism, diversity-women-protagonists, professional-fanfiction

A fair finish to Ilium, and still a four-star book. The sheer insanity of Simmons's post-modern "parallel universes glimpsed or created by mankind's geniuses" premise is wonderful, although the history of how humanity fell (a war between the Global Caliphate and a new Khanate and the near-extermination of the Jews) jarred. I feel like it would have been better left ambiguous, although I can see the argument that the specificity serves as a link between our time and the new fall of man.

The Sword ...more

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Oct 13, 2015 Shin Gaku rated it really liked it

This is the last volume of dazzling SF epic duology by Dan Simmons. The story is too long to a nonnative speaker like me, but it's worth reading. Many interesting ideas such as parallel universe, terraforming,and Quantum teleportation are packed into one book. Devoted SF fan is surely thrilled by this book. Simmons denounces violence and war in this book. That's why this epic is persuasive and moving.

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Oct 07, 2007 Randy rated it did not like it

Ilium was promising, but this book stank. Simmons has been uneven before, but this book finished it for me. Sorry, no more from this author.

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Dec 14, 2009 Nick rated it really liked it

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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Sep 23, 2013 Ethan rated it liked it

Like its predecessor, Ilium, this one is a wild mashup of capital-L Literature and crazy science fiction ideas that veer into mind-bending incomprehensibility (but the fun kind). (See my review of Ilium: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). With Ilium, I loved the wildness so much that I was willing to forgive its faults. I'm not so sure I can do that this time. My feelings about Olympos are a lot more mixed. Maybe it's because the thrill of the wildness wears off after dragging on for hun Like its predecessor, Ilium, this one is a wild mashup of capital-L Literature and crazy science fiction ideas that veer into mind-bending incomprehensibility (but the fun kind). (See my review of Ilium: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). With Ilium, I loved the wildness so much that I was willing to forgive its faults. I'm not so sure I can do that this time. My feelings about Olympos are a lot more mixed. Maybe it's because the thrill of the wildness wears off after dragging on for hundreds and hundreds of pages, or maybe all the craziness just didn't come together. Also, there are new faults.

First, the good: There are a lot of really cool ideas here, not to mention just sheer delightful craziness. It's a wild ride that gets even crazier than Ilium. All my favorites are back, like the amateur literature scholars who happen to be cyborgs from the moons of Jupiter (although they don't talk about literature as much and instead go on serious adventures, which was fun, but I miss their conversations). I even got into the old-style humans, who I didn't really care about before. Based on the reviews, I wasn't expecting many answers, but I was pleasantly surprised that you do get something of an explanation for what the hell is going on even if there are then new unresolved puzzles. I found this website helpful: http://ilium.pbworks.com/w/page/11035...

Whatever the faults (and there are many), I did find this interesting enough to keep reading nearly 900 dense pages.

Now the bad. This is even longer than Ilium and even more unnecessarily so, especially in the last third or so. At some point I thought, "Well, it seems to be wrapping up..." only to wonder why there were still over 200 pages remaining. There are just too many bizarre meanderings and unessential subplots. It's cool that Simmons had all these ideas, but he didn't have to use them all here. At first I was pleasantly surprised that Helen, Ada, and other female characters seemed to be doing more than they did before, but soon enough all the same problems with female characters were there (i.e., they're mostly passive, primarily described by their bodies, etc.).

And of course almost all the literary references are dead white guys, just like before (this time two female poets are mentioned). (MILD SPOILERS AHEAD)

This time it's not just Eurocentric by omission (although at one point all non-Greeks on one of the Earths are whisked away by a blue light or something, which is a kind of omission, I guess). About halfway through readers are reminded that non-Western people do exist, because several thousand years earlier some crazy Asian Muslims established a global Caliphate dedicated to killing all Jews. No, I'm not making this up (unfortunately). I can't decide if this is blatant Islamophobia or just an inscrutable choice to add a bizarre and unnecessary historical backstory. Could something like this happen in the future? I suppose. But I have little idea what it adds to the story other than a convenient scapegoat for a few of the explanations. I have no problem acknowledging that some non-Western people are bad. But the problem is that these bad ones are really the only non-Western people who have anything to do with the plot (as far as I can tell) and they are largely historical background. They, along with some real Others from another universe (I think?), are the real threat. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it all felt like a kind of deep xenophobia that didn't sit well with me.

At least this is what I can make of all this. The wildness is fun, but it goes off the rails. While I can't claim I understood everything in Ilium, I felt like I understood less in Olympos and generally had less fun. It was still a wild ride that people who liked Ilium might enjoy, but it failed to live up to its potential for me. Pity. I really wanted to love this book. SF needs more writers with this kind of ambition, but maybe with the ability to execute it more skillfully.

See my review of this and other science fiction with ancient themes: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20... ...more

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Oct 05, 2016 Emma Secton rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Bueno, a ver. Sé que Dan Simmons es una eminencia en cuanto a ciencia ficción. Sé que es el autor de los aclamadísimos "Cantos de Hyperión" y que es un autor que ama explicar todo. Pero debo confesar que este libro fue infumable! No puedo creer lo que veo mientras escribo esta reseña, que empecé este libro hace 1 año y 5 meses!! Es acaso así de infumable? Claro que sí, creo que si no abandoné este libro fue solamente porque odio dejar un libro a la mitad, y de verdad lo dejé por meses justo a la Bueno, a ver. Sé que Dan Simmons es una eminencia en cuanto a ciencia ficción. Sé que es el autor de los aclamadísimos "Cantos de Hyperión" y que es un autor que ama explicar todo. Pero debo confesar que este libro fue infumable! No puedo creer lo que veo mientras escribo esta reseña, que empecé este libro hace 1 año y 5 meses!! Es acaso así de infumable? Claro que sí, creo que si no abandoné este libro fue solamente porque odio dejar un libro a la mitad, y de verdad lo dejé por meses justo a la mitad.

Empecemos por el principio. Arranqué Ilión hace mucho y me pareció una idea excelente, mitología griega explicada en términos de ciencia ficción, dioses que en realidad son humanos muy evolucionados volviendo al pasado a molestar a los pobres griegos y troyanos. De verdad me pareció muy interesante y a la vez entretenido, muchas escenas épicas de acción en la batalla y aunque la ciencia ficción es muy dura, las largas explicaciones densas se compensaban con acción y giros en la trama bastante intensos.

Sobre Olympos, me habían avisado que era mejor Ilión, pero nunca pensé que iba a ser tan denso y enroscado en explicaciones de física y metafísica que lo iba a dejar tirado por meses. Tirado es una forma rara de decirlo, siendo que lo leí desde mi tablet. Pero para que entiendan mi pesar, les dejo un pasaje muy particular del libro, la ciencia ficción más dura que me ha tocado leer (les recomiendo no leer todo, en serio):

"¿Por qué no se habían disparado los misiles? Harman registró la IA hasta sus entrañas cuánticas y no pudo encontrar ninguna razón. La orden humana se había dado, los cuatro juegos de llaves físicas habían sido girados, las coordenadas de blanco de la IA y las órdenes de lanzamiento individual habían sido confirmadas y transmitidas, los misiles habían sido colocados en la secuencia de lanzamiento adecuada, los interruptores (virtuales y literales) se habían activado. Todas las enormes escotillas de metal de los misiles se habían abierto con éxito con redundante maquinaria hidráulica: sólo una fina cúpula azul de fibra de vidrio separaba los tubos de los misiles del océano, y cada uno de aquellos tubos de lanzamiento se había llenado de nitrógeno para igualar la presión e impedir que el océano entrara hasta el momento mismo del lanzamiento. Los cuarenta y ocho misiles habrían sido impulsados por generaciones de nitrógeno gaseoso, una carga de dos mil quinientos voltios que prendería la descarga de nitrógeno. El gas mismo habría producido más de cuarenta y cinco mil kilos por centímetro cuadrado de presión en menos de un segundo, enviando los misiles hacia arriba con sus propias burbujas de nitrógeno hasta que salieran del mar como corchos, y entonces el combustible sólido de cada misil los habría encendido en el momento en que los misiles alcanzaran el aire. Había iniciadores de lanzamiento e ignición redundantes y de doble redundancia. Los misiles tendrían que haber corrido hacia sus objetivos. Los indicadores de lanzamiento de la IA estaban todos en rojo. En cada uno de los cuarenta y ocho silos del vientre preñado de La espada de Alá la secuencia había pasado adecuadamente de ESPEREN a PREPARADOS a LANZAMIENTO a LANZAMIENTO CON ÉXITO. Pero los misiles estaban todavía en sus tubos. La IA, muerta y deteriorada, lo sabía y comunicaba algo parecido a la vergüenza y el chasco a través de la palma cosquilleante de Harman."

Sí, todo eso para decir que unos misiles se tendrían que haber disparado pero no se dispararon nada, y no se sabe por qué.

Verdaderamente es un libro que no logré disfrutar tanto como Ilión, pero que al final fui feliz de poder terminar, no hay nada peor que desear que un libro se termine. Encima con un final que me pareció demasiado simple, de repente todo está mal y de repente todo se arregla y listo, todos felices. Ya está, y unas últimas páginas a modo de epílogo que cuentan como se desarrolla todo felizmente años después de todo el caos.

Como soy duro y no aprendo, igual ahora voy a dedicarme a leer Los cantos de Hyperión, aunque antes voy a tomar un descanso leyendo otra cosa distinta a la ciencia ficción al menos. Voy a descansar de Dan Simmons y voy a intentar que se redima con los (según dicen) geniales Cantos. ...more

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About Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons 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 Master Dan Simmons 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
Biographic Sketch

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. ...more

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“Context is to data what water is to a dolphin” — 14 likes

“Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Shame on any man who gets used to that taste.” — 3 likes

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