Olympos

Even now, decades after you'd think that such ideas have passed, some people still have a prejudice against science fiction as some sort of unsophisticated kiddie fare. If there was ever an author to show just how wrong that belief is, it would be Dan Simmons, who is able to write novels that are not only great science fiction, but great literature as well. The two are not mutually exclusive, as his novel Olympos demonstrates.

Olympos is the second part of Simmons's grand 1600+ page epic that began with Ilium (so if you haven't read that book first, you need to before either reading this one or even continuing with this review (which will have spoilers about the first book)). Ilium had three separate but related storylines dealing with (1) a futuristic Earth where the remnants of humanity lead an Edenic existence with robots attending to their every need; (2) a group of intelligent robots called moravecs on a mission from Jupiter to Mars to investigate strange phenomena; and (3) the replaying of the Iliad with all the gods and heroes on an area of the terraformed Mars, with resurrected 20th century professor Thomas Hockenberry reporting on events.

As Ilium concluded, Hockenberry had derailed the Iliad's plot, creating an alliance between Trojans and Achaeans in a war against the gods. This is not a one-sided battle, thanks to the high-tech weaponry that the moravecs are providing plus the fighting skills of the unkillable super-hero, Achilles, who not even the gods can bring down. On Earth, the once benevolent mechanical beings known as the voynix have turned against the humans in a war that IS one-sided; the voynix are too tough and plentiful to not eventually win.

As Olympos begins - eight months after the events of Ilium - the war against the gods is continuing, but the Trojan-Achaean alliance is shaky, and various conspiracies among both gods and mortals threaten to start the Trojan War all over again. While characters from Greek mythology play a big part on Mars (or is it really an alternate Earth?), it is Shakespeare's The Tempest that is influential on Earth, with versions of Prospero, Caliban and Ariel affecting things. While Hockenberry and Odysseus are recruited on a moravec mission to Earth, the last humans, including an older version of Odysseus continue their losing war against the voynix, while another, more sinister and alien creature called Sebetos waits to take over the world as well.

If this all sounds complicated, it is, but Simmons keeps everything straight, and my brief summary can hardly do justice to all that's going on in the novel. While there are most of the trappings of science fiction - robots, space travel, super-weapons, etc. - Simmons puts it in a framework filled with literary references (it certainly helps to have at least a familiarity with Shakespeare and Homer) that elevate it above a mere genre work. But don't be intimidated: this is a real page-turner filled with plenty of suspense, romance and humor, and despite its size (even when combined with Ilium), a relatively fast read. Simmons is one of the best writers around today, and Ilium/Olympos may very well be his magnum opus.

The many thoughtful, literate reviews of Olympos are surprising. Ilium deserved the effort; Olympos does not. This book is not just bad, it is unrelentingly terrible.

Many elements contribute to Olympos's stink. Simmons speaks on religion: Jews are the chosen of God, Muslims the spawn of Satan. Women, strong and vibrant in Ilium, are trivialized in Olympos. The gods are tedious and shallow in their characterizations (significantly exacerbating a minor problem in Ilium): their conversations, when not sounding like heralds in a zero-budget Hollywood movie, are written in slang a 14-year old tough might come up with. The numerous sex scenes are gratuitous, detailed, and often grotesque (how about the forced rape of a comatose woman; great stuff, Mr. Simmons).

Finally, where Ilium's story was tightly multithreaded, regularly surprising, and very energetic, Olympos's is unconnected, boring, and ponderous.

The brilliant promise of Ilium makes the stench of Olympos all the more nauseating.

There was so much about the previous book, "Ilium", left unanswered, I felt compelled to read "Olympos". It does fill in the gaps, but Mr. Simmons' sci-fi opera was a little bit of a letdown. Maybe it's because I rarely read science-fiction, but midway through "Olympos" I just wanted the sucker to wrap up. Unlike the "Ilium", this book doesn't have any scary scenes. Swashbuckling adventure seems to be the major focus. There's also just enough blood, guts and graphic fornication to keep any pubscent boy happy til the cows come home. Practically all the major women are supposedly drop-dead gorgeous and randy little minks. The story also has some political intrigue, mystery and humor for the more mature crowd. Readers, however, who like their stories wrapped up in a neat little bow with nothing left unresolved, are going to be seriously upset. Much like life, the survivors aren't living in some version of Shangri-La. If he was so inclined, Mr. Simmons would have no problem continuing this adventure but I'll pass on another installment, thank you very much.

I loved the two Hyperion novels but was bitterly disappointed in the two Endymion novels, so after reading Ilium I feared the sequel, Olympos, might follow the same downhill pattern. What a relief to discover otherwise! And what a great ride! Unlike the hackneyed devices, static characters, verbal padding, and plethora of unanswered questions in the Endymion novels, Olympos was at least as inventive and engaging as Ilium and came to a satisfying conclusion. Both Ilium and Olympos take wonderfully unexpected twists and turns. The characters are memorable and are allowed to develop along the way. The sheer pleasure of hearing two robot friends discussing Shakespeare and Proust is worth the price of the book alone, but being a great fan of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, I thoroughly enjoyed the author's development of their characters as well. I only wish there were a third novel to look forward to!

Anti climactic. Messy. Filled with quotes of Shakespeare and other authors. Deus ex machina left and right wand the thin plot line fails.
not to mention the horse manure about the jews.
feels like Ilium should have been a bit longer and finish the story in one book. Instead of making a good one and a... very disappointing one.

Olympos by Dan Simmons is the sequel to Ilium. It is a sprawling and adventurous science fiction novel set in the far future. Olympos literally picks up right where Ilium left off. I strongly advise readers interested in these two entertaining novels to read Ilium first before launching into Olympos. Ilium sets up all the characters and the storyline.

Olympos has several plotlines going at once but like the previous novel they come together in the end. As readers of Ilium will know, the novel is set in a future where "post-humans" have transformed themselves into the Greek gods and are playing out the Trojan war with a human population they seem to have created from remnant DNA in what turns out to be an alternate universe. But in the previous novel the Trojan war suddenly no longer follows its due course as laid out in the Illiad because of the meddling of one, Thomas Hockenberry, a 20th century classics professor whose DNA has been recombined by the post-humans so he can follow the war and report on its progress to them. As the novel progresses, the so called gods war among themselves and Hockenberry, already out of favor with them, is a free agent.

Meanwhile, back on our earth, the "old style" humans who have been genetically modified for longevity are fighting for their very existence as creatures from another universe are trying to wipe them out. Much of the novel, in fact, focuses on Harman, one of the wiser and more learned humans, and his cadre of friends who are trying save themselves and the rest of the human population from obliteration.

And finally we have the moravecs from Jupiter who are basically cyborgs of various shapes and sizes. Originally created by humans to mine resources from Jupiter and its moons, they have become self-aware and are on a mission to find out what is causing the quantum fluxes around Mars and stop it before it destroys the universe.

Olympos is well written and entertaining science fiction. While there are a lot of different things going on in Olympos Simmons does a fabulous job of keeping the story moving at a brisk and exciting pace and he makes it easy for the reader to follow the big picture as the plotlines converge toward a conclusion. Further, the main characters are very well drawn, including the two key moravecs who are the focal point of that plotline. And despite the gruesome nature of what is going on through most of the novel, Simmons has a deft sense of humor that is peppered throughout the story. Finally, the zipping around through quantum teleportation in Olympos seems more like a natural part of this story than it did in Ilium, where it appeared to be a lazy plot device simply to wrap up difficulties.

Olympos also answers most of the questions left hanging in Ilium and are better viewed as one long novel than separate works. While I wouldn't place this in a pantheon of classic science fiction, its unique and clever story line and entertainment value should keep these books in print for a long, long time.

Review by C. Douglas Baker

What if everything from a genius imagination was real? It all boils down to that in Olympos. That simple yet complicated question is explored in depth. Brilliantly

After reading Ilium I had no idea what to expect from Olympos... Ilium is the only other book I've seen fit to write a real review for. And Olympos follows suit. Ilium was, no matter how thrilling, predictable in it's Iliad storyline, we all knew what was going on, and how everything would happen. Then the curve at the end of the book leaves you hanging, with all those questions unanswered. Olympos explained everything I had questions about from Ilium, but it also raised a few more, and left some things open.

The conclusion to the two book saga is every bit as rewarding as I was hoping it would be, but there is room for more. Perhaps Mr. Simmons is planning another Cantos like his also brilliant Hyperion saga. I certainly hope so.

The best I can do to sum all of this saga up is that it seems like it WILL be real. All of us have that feeling when reading Lord of the Rings that this is something that DID happen, it seems historical, and no matter how fantastical it gets, it's still grounded and thrilling. Olympos has that feeling, only in a future sense. It is something that WILL happen. Brilliant books altogether. I truly believe that these works, Ilium and Olympos, are every bit the masterpiece of such books as Lord of the Rings, Ender's Game, Dune... and more. It's rare to discover true literature in Sci-fi, but oh so rewarding when you do.

I know it seems as though I've not said much about the book, but there is far too much information to shrink into anything less than the novel. You just can't sum it up without it losing somthing. I have no doubt that anyone who LOVES to THINK while they are reading will love this book. I'm just hoping I can get a leatherbound edition so that I can pass these two books to my grandchildren.

But don't even try this one unless you've read Ilium first.

Olympos is the sequel to Illium and continues the inter universal conflict begun in book one. It is spell binding and fun. The concepts are both startling and convincingly portrayed. Definitely a good read. I purchased the item on the store.com and received it within just a few working days.

It seems in the gap between illium and Olympos, Dan Simmons became a creepy pervert. I know that odd sex sometimes comes with the sci fi genre but this was just over the top. Also, literally nothing was explained. If there's a book three or something, everyone dies

The mystery created by 'Ilium' is exposed in 'Olympos'. The scientific explanation is FANTASTIC!! (This series has inspired me to read 'The Tempest', Proust and relive my high school Latin classes of Homer and The Iliad!!)

Dan Simmons is amazingly skilled as a writer. He has obviously spent much time with great literature to his benefit and his readers'. The Hyperion tetralogy still contains more archetypal images in less space than any book or series of books I know.

Ilium, the predecessor to this book, was an interesting set-up and I enjoyed it. [What's not to like when an English professor gets to become the bedmate of Helen of Troy? Shades of "The Kugelmass Episode"!]

I was eager to find out how Simmons would get himself out of the many traps he had put himself into. Nobody is a better speculative fiction Houdini than he is.

And here we are with gazillions of pages that lead to one of those "Huh?" last-volume-of-the-Dune-series endings. Lots of loose ends here and no third volume in sight.

No spoilers here, but I have to note that the trajectories of the characters seems arbitrary sometimes - Achilles especially with a bizarre wind-up.

I also find some of the writing self-indulgent in a crass kind of way. A character of immense age and power spends much time talking like an oracle and some like a trailer trash Jerry Springer guest.

In the same way, some of the important plot events happen offstage and seem designed simply to move characters around and get them in and out of the narrative.

If you enjoyed Ilium, you ought to read this one, but bear in mind that it's middling Simmons. Middling Simmons is far better than the best of many other writers. And yet, Simmons's best writing and thinking promises a book - or a series of books - much better than this one. It's a promise that he's never lived up to, not even in the Hyperion books. I hope he someday writes the book that he's capable of.

Meanwhile, consider this a kind of placeholder for that book. It's Simmons on cruise control.

Dan Simmons completes the Illium with a great story and a character driven conclusion. Those familiar with his work have much to look forward to as Hockenberry, Achilles, Harmon, Moravecs and more finally find out what happens on Mars and Earth and who is behind it. Highly recommended and hopefully a movie will develop out of these two books.

After "Illium," I couldn't wait to read this.

Unfortunately, it was a huge disappointment.

The biggest problem is that almost no resolution is given to the many fantastic plots and characters. This book merely adds more stories, more figures, and never explains, resolves or wraps up any of it.

The few explanations that finally are given are absolutely ludicrous.

It's a shame because this story - which had a brilliant start - degenerates into disjointed, boring, nerdy garbage.

Suddenly, after all the cool stuff in Illium, you get robots who are Star Trek fans (a few thousand years after the series aired), a supervillain who is a big brain bug with hands as feet (how silly is that?) that feeds on human suffering (yawn), trite anti-Islamic-terrorism stuff, a silly D&D-ish sex scene, an alien giant who appears out of nowhere and - can you say deux ex machina? - resolves a few plot lines, a cool moravec army that never does anything, a verse-talking monster who... oh yeah, that's one of the unresolved plot lines, a verse-talking hologram who... oh, that's another unresolved plotline, a major character who just disappears in another silly sex scene with Odysseus, an ex-Eloi going on a completely senseless and unexplained trek through an artifical ocean canyon, a Post-Human who is finally awoken with great fuss and never does anything but walk around invisible (another big yawn there), a long, harrowing but completely unnecessary journey in a giant cable car (an aerial repeat of Hyperion's wind car) and, finally, a main character - Hockenberry - who apparently was brought back to life for a reason by Zeus (whatever happens to Zeus, anyway?) but we never learn that reason.

Also - and I should mention I'm not a gay rights activist or anything - but there is a strangely conspicuous anti-gay slur near the end of the book.

Apparently, other reviewers noticed that, too.

It doesn't fit in at all and it's almost as if someone hacked into the manuscript after the editors approved it and added it.

Perhaps that's the explanation for this whole mess of a book?

What can I say?

I guess the only thing I can say is:

"What's the point?"

After having finished Ilium, I couldn’t wait to start its sequel Olympos, and I wasn't disappointed. Ilium was about 640 pages and Olympos is about 840 pages, but it sustained my interest throughout. I rate Ilium as five stars and Olympos four.

Olympos is an attractive interesting read, albeit it leaves plenty of loose ends, and does not satisfactorily account for all of the mysteries raised in Ilium. However, I didn’t read it simply to 'find out the answers', but for the sake of the narrative texture, the characters, and continuation of the story; and these alone amply rewarded me. I'd recommend it.

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD.
FOCUS OF THE THREE PLY NARRATIVE
Olympos inevitably has some change of emphasis from Ilium, since in the first novel the action has already diverged from Homer’s Iliad, ending with war by the humans on the Olympic gods and a moravec invasion of Mars. Olympos opens with some further eight months of this, the moravecs supporting the human Trojans and Acheans. Generally speaking, the action and behaviour of the beleaguered humans is coarser and more brutal than in the first book, the Olympians get more hectic.

More of the narrative emphasis shifts to the predicament of the rabbit hutch Old Style Humans, now deprived of their comfortable livelihood by complete breakdown of servitor facilities. They are faced, without knowledge or skills to cope, not just with the need to produce their own necessities but with massacre by the voynix.

Essentially, I think, Ilium and Olypos raise the relevant question of what could happen to Humanity socially & mentally in a post technological age, if science continues to evolve to utmost conceivable bounds, but we humans part with the knowledge & control of it, or if it becomes the property of an elite section of humanity alone (such as the post humans in this fiction). I’m not normally a science fiction reader, so for all I know this could be a well explored theme by now. But technology doesn’t only extend human physical & cognitive activity, it often also displaces it.

As long as human beings are still doing the programming for the ever more complex generations of computers in specialised areas of application, we humans are amplifying, rather than seceding, our knowledge. The borderline might happen when Artificial Intelligence is eventually developed (which it hasn't yet, due to the 'Moravec paradox').
In this fiction, the post humans have passed this line, by creating AI in the moravecs, and the logosphere, noosphere and biosphere entities Prospero and Ariel. These elite post humans possessing the science and technology have then gone elsewhere, and the automatic servitor mechanisms they left in place on Earth are now disrupted, leaving the surviving old style humans reduced to less than the Trojan Greek Bronze Age technology again, when faced with an emergency. They have no culture, no history, no stories, no technology of their own, little mechanism of combining and organising to meet survival or social needs. Within the Ardis community, the human spirit is shown to be flexible and able to react.

The moravecs including the delightful Mahnmut and Orphu, supplemented by the militaristic belt moravecs, are forced to bale out from the Mars/Bronze Age Earth and then send an expedition to the modern Earth, as a new menace has appeared there, the monster Setebos, who has travelled by a Brane Hole from Mars, creating quantum disturbance there. Eventually, the three ply narrative converges.

LOOSE ENDS
Much of the background of how the Earth got into its parlous Lost Age state IS explained by the end of the book, largely by the Prospero and Moira figures, as is the nature & purpose of the p & e rings.
But there is undeniably an overall failure by Simmons to underpin the narrative with sufficient logical basis. This doesn't spoil the book for me. Principally, we never get a satisfactory explanation of why some of the post humans should have ever have chosen to be morphed by Prospero into the entire cast of Greek gods with all their mythological grotesque monsters and appurtenances, or why they should have made a Brane hole link back to the Earth Bronze Age to observe The Trojan War. Anyone expecting an adequate rational explanation would be naive since there could hardly be one. Dan Simmons wanted the scenario of a gorgeous wonderful Ilium, a replay of the Trojan War described in Homer’s Iliad, happening on a terraformed Mars, it’s a sci fi space opera, that most enjoyed, so you have to accept it.

Simmons’ use of the logosphere, noosphere and biosphere entities Prospero & Ariel, and a single post human, Moira, is not fully underpinned, as regards the general extent of their powers or their sporadic interventions. If the Prospero entity has such powers, why was he not able to prevent the degeneration of humans into such a rabbit hutch non culture in the first place? Instead of which, he has let the automatised system go on, keeping it maintained, that mollycoddled them; and when he finally does intervine, first at the rings with Harman and Damian, and then half way through Olympos, it is like a deity playing at human Free Will, giving a bit of guidance and help, but taking the line that they must get out of their problems largely by self exertion if they are to grow.

Throughout the two books, the characters ‘in the know’, Savi, Odysseus & Prospero, give very little away at a time, instead of giving Harman and the others a compete low-down - a narrative device, since from the start, the reader is made cognitively involved by having to piece the whole scenario together along the way. The reader must be put in the same position as the character, and share his state of mind.

Between reading Olympos, I started reading Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces', and found a lot of the Harman parts of Olympos fall into place as archetypal myth, with the old style humans Harman and Daeman cast as the Hero, who must undergo a violent disruption of their comfortable lives, a journey that is spiritual as well as physical, ordeals, dangers and hardships, mutilations on a drastic scale, before returning to society with the benefits they have gained. at cost of great pain.

This is the Prometheus, Gilgamesh or Theseus archetype hero, who kills a monster or brings gifts and knowledge back to Humanity, regenerating his static society – not the 'hero' of the Achilles or even Odysseus type, who are largely selfish individualists, and who I think belong to legend, not myth. Olympos supplies this contrast in the continuing career of Achilles, left to prosecute his war on the Olympians: he is admirable for bravery and endurance, but absolutely violent and selfish, set on glory, and self gratification only.

The ‘Prometheus type hero’ usually has a supernatural guide or helper to aid and advise him, ie Prospero, Ariel, avatars of the noosphere, logosphere and biosphere, and one surviving post human, waked by Harman. Simmons here uses a lot of symbolism reminiscent of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with Setebos as a monstrous intelligence,whose appearance is utterly horrible and fascinating, but really to appreciate that you need to read Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue poem ‘Caliban Upon Setebos’. Setebos ‘many handed as a cuttlefish’ and Caliban with his strange idiom then both fall into place.

Many of the things which happen to Harman, or which they oblige him to do, have a MYTHICAL rationale and meaning (a la Joseph Campbell) or a literary referential parallel in The Tempest (symbolic drowning in the tank, and rebirth), but Simmons often fails to underpin this with a LOGICAL rationale : for instance, Harman’s being made to start walking the Atlantic Breach, or discovering a deadly nuclear Black Hole sub, which Odysseus and Sycorax have unsealed, for some reason we are never told.

There is some explanation given for the time travelling Odysseus whom Savi found, but another associated character, Sycorax/Circe/Calipso, does not make much sense. Her origin is not explained, and her motives are simply incredible.

There IS an explanation for the mysterious voynix who begin to massacre the humans in Olympos, and for the Lost Age and Rubicon pandemic. Some readers didn’t like it. Some accuse the author of misogyny, anti-Islamism, and because of a single remark by a character, homophobia.
Putting aside anti-Islamism (The Flashback, etc) nothing of this is born out by the text, as far as I can see, and the accusation of misogyny (I say this as a female) is particularly of the kind levelled against authors without any justifiable foundation at all. Ilium and Olympos are chock filled with strong woman characters throughout, of whom the humans (Savi, Ada, Hannah) are peculiarly brave and unselfish. The post humans, clearly far more competent and effective than old styles, all elected for female bodies. Claims are made by this or that reader that Simmons only cares for beautiful women. So was he supposed to make Helen of Troy, Andromache and Cassandra plain? Or the Greek goddesses? One favourite character, Mahnmut, has a passion for Shakespeare’s Sonnets, whose tenor is bisexual at least.

Some reviewers complain that they 'can’t see the point' of the Black Hole submarine. I'd suggest Simmons is drawing a parallel between two societies, one Bronze Age (The Greeks and Trojans) the other ultimate hi-tech science 24th century AD, who both obsessively pursue a destructive war even when they are the only survivors of a catastrophe and most of the human race has died. I found this appropriate in its parallel to The Iliad epic which encapsulates the horror, negative destructiveness and pain, and often the agonised beauty of war, in the sense of its fatal fascination. Simmons parallels this Ilium world scenario with another equally destructive one which it transpires had happened in the Lost or Demented Age, about the 24th century AD.

I gather from a reference on Simmons’ website, that he was originally considering a third novel, to be called The Odyssiad, but has abandoned this idea. So maybe some loose ends were left in Olympos for this reason. Anyway, I felt the novel well rewarded my pains. Everyone has to find their own meaning in a book. What we should not do is try to limit others by our own limitations by telling them not to read it.

Dan Simmons' "Ilium" was a Hugo award nominee for good reason. It is a good old-fashioned sci-fi romp, complete with sleek spaceships, bantering robots, little green men on Mars, mysterious beings with god-like powers, dinosaurs, alternate universes, alternate histories, time travel of a sort, Star Trek-style transporters, and more. "Olympos" has its own share of sci-fi wonders -- including an enormous atom-bomb-powered spaceship based on a 1950s-era design, an aerial tram stretching across Eurasia that runs atop replicas of the Eiffel Tower, a doomsday submarine armed with black-hole-tipped ICBMs, and an unspeakably evil brain from another universe that feeds on the residue of past human suffering -- but it unfortunately lacks the dynamism, charm, coherence, and narrative economy of its predecessor.

"Olympos" suffers from two big problems. First, "Ilium" posed a whole bunch of questions, like who the Greek gods really are, how they established a link between Mars in the 50th Century AD to Earth in the 12th Century BC, what happened to the missing posthumans, and why somebody is using energies that threaten to destroy the solar system if not the entire universe. The difficulty is that readers expect "Olympos" to answer these questions. Does it? Er, well, yes, more or less. In a convincing and satisfying fashion? No, not so much.

Second, Simmons makes a number of questionable choices in "Olympos" that try the reader's patience. He pads the book with sideshows that might function well in a weekly serial but just bog this novel down. Examples include one character's pointless journey on the aforementioned Eiffel Tower network, the same character's equally pointless trek across the Atlantic Ocean, and an overly long sequence of battles between human communities and vicious voynix attackers. Also, Simmons decided that there were a number of moral and political points he had to squeeze in. Simmons moralizes, for example, about the importance of relationships between fathers and children and praises the heterosexual-married-couple-headed nuclear family (via characters Harman and Ada). He also, gratuitously, has Islamic extremists plunging Earth into a 2,000 year dark age, nearly driving humanity to extinction in two different attempts to exterminate the Jews, and nearly destroying the planet altogether in order to further the glory of God. Jews, for their part, save humanity. Chalk another one up for the Chosen People! Um, yeah. Simmons has enough story to tell without these adding ill-fitting diversions.

As you can see, "Olympos" gives critics plenty of nits to pick. The bottom line, though, is that "Ilium" is not complete without "Olympos". Readers who enjoyed "Ilium" are likely to find "Olympos" frequently slow, sometimes implausible, occasionally offensive (I don't even want to get into Simmons' awkward and often unpleasant treatment of women and sex), and ultimately unsatisfying in a number of respects ... but they will not regret having read it. Probably.

In "Ilium", we readers were treated to a wonderfully epic and engrossing story involving elements from both science fiction and fantasy, seamlessly blending in the Greek drama of the Trojan War with quantum teleportation, a near-deserted Earth, robots that read Shakespeare, and a deliciously evil villain that brings to mind Tolkein's Gollum. The direct sequel (or perhaps more accurately described as the second part of one large novel) continues more of the same, but the more pages you read into "Olympos" the more you begin to understand Simmons is only going to let you down. There's a lot to love in this novel, particularly in its first half, but it is not difficult to get the sense that the author simply grew weary of the tale and was ready to move on to other projects.

"Olympos" picks up a little time after its predecessor, still on Mars. Due to previous events, caused almost exclusively by one Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., the Greeks and the Trojans have formed an uneasy alliance to fight the Greek gods. Both sides are under the impression the Gods have betrayed them, which is hardly the case at all, and an alliance built on lies is often a deal that quickly grows more complicated (and true to form, it does). The humans are now getting help from the moravecs, who have detected quantum instability issues in the area and are looking to solve the issue before it essentially destroys the whole universe. Meanwhile, down on Earth, the group at Ardis Hall (led by Ada, Harman, and Daeman) continue to try and survive, but a new threat is about to show up that could cause their extinction.

The novel does a remarkable amount of things right, especially in the first half of the story. The complications and politics at Troy between a multitude of different characters is very fun to watch, as leaders have to learn to put away their rivalries for the greater good (though many choose not to). The Gods have their own fair share of deception that occurs, a twist and focus on the story I was not quite expecting, and it was a welcome one. There's also the continued rivalry between Daeman and Caliban -- Simmons, at the very least, is able to set up a great amount of tension between the two characters, more than they even had after the end of "Ilium". Additionally, every scene that Hockenberry is in sparks and crackles with energy; after all, he is the major reason "Ilium" worked so well. The first 400-500 pages of "Olympos" in general just feels as tight, fast-paced, and energetic a story as the previous entry.

Then, inexplicably, everything changes. The action comes to a halt. In return, there are plenty of answers given (though not all), but the pace just seems to change and the energy seems lost. A lot of it is still interesting to read -- it wasn't that big of a difference -- but you can tell that something is off. The problem, unfortunately, continued to get worse and worse as the ending approached. Harman becomes the central focus of the story, a character who is not nearly as interesting as Hockenberry or Daeman. Everything occurring in the Trojan War plotline happens from Achilles's point of view, and he isn't even fighting in the war with the rest of his comrades at this point. Many characters make many forced decisions in order to move the story forward, decisions that do not match up at all with the intelligence they had previously showed.

Beyond everything else, though, I think there are three main problems that occurred. First, Hockenberry did not have much of anything to do. He spends pretty much all of "Olympos" standing around and we are not treated to his viewpoint as much as we could have been. It seems like he did what the plot demanded of him previously, and now Simmons has no more use for him. Second, after spending the first quarter of the book being exclusively on Mars, the focus of the story largely turns toward Earth. There is no problem with this except, when the major climax occurs of the story happens on Mars, the expectation is another is coming on Earth. No such climax happens, which only serves to leave the reader befuddled and confused. Simmons does overturn your expectations (a good thing) but he also underwhelms them. An epic story deserves an epic finish, but most of what happens in the final 150 pages just seems to be an afterthought -- there's a sense that the danger has already passed. Third, the final pages has a lot of characters doing a lot of stupid things. One character launches an attack on a city with a one percent chance of success, completely ignoring the fact that there is backup that can take care of the threat no problem. Zeus's fate occurs as a result of him being dumb, as well -- the typical "main antagonist makes a crucially stupid mistake" that plagues all too many stories. There are some questions in regards to character motivations that are not answered, either. Aphrodite's overall plan is not explained, which is important considering she started the whole mess. More severely, Prospero and Moira never give clear answers to anything and essentially sends Harman to his death. Considering they have a stake the fate of Earth, you'd think they would use less riddles and have more common sense.

These major mistakes don't even include the fact that Sycorax (who turns into a major villain) doesn't even have to be defeated. Lots of time were spent on the calibani but they don't do too much. Daeman and Caliban's final battle doesn't even really happen. Plus Simmons seems to have some issues with the Islamic tradition, as he essentially says they were the reason the world was nearly destroyed. This anti-Muslim disposition is startling, as it becomes a plot point seemingly out of nowhere and doesn't really seem to belong.

In the end, "Olympos" leaves a bad taste in my mouth because Simmons failed to meet any of the major promises he gives the readers in all the previous pages. This novel is receiving as high a rating as it is because of just how good it is at many different times. More and more, it really does give the impression that the author was just ready to move onto something else. The final 150 pages are just Simmons going through the motions, which is a shame considering the great world and story he built. He did everything right except for giving a conclusion that is worth anything. To those who have read "Ilium" -- I would recommend reading this just to see what happens, but be prepared to be disappointed at the end of it.

3/5

I must say, I was definitely hoping for more. The first book, Ilium, was a rollicking good read, gluing together robots, the Trojan War, and a human society thousands of years in the future that had largely forgotten what it was like to be human. Olympos, however, manages to squander a lot of what made Ilium so great.

For one thing, the tight-rope plotting comes apart here somewhat frequently. Short, lightning-fast chapters pinwheeling from storyline to storyline leave the reader dazed and unfocused. Just as each piece of the story begins to heat up, we're tugged off to another place. The timelines are also staggered and, in at least a few places I can think of, we are given major plot points in exposition that we have yet to see happen from the points of view of the characters who experience them.

Also, despite the book having almost 900 pages, the conclusion comes out rushed and borderline nonsensical. In hopes of not spoiling the outcome, I'll simply point out that Zeus' actions at the end of the book are almost completely inexplicable. He makes certain choices only because Simmons needs him to make them, not because they flow naturally from his character in any way. Ditto Odysseus, who not only makes a very weird choice at the end, but makes a choice that someone as familiar with Homer as Simmons appears to be should know is completely impossible. A new god-like being, the Quiet, which was referenced obliquely in the first book, is shoehorned into the end of this book, although It still never makes an appearance or gives anyone a reason to believe It is as important as a few of the characters seem to believe.

This, of course, applies only to the parts of the book that Simmons bothers to conclude. The entire saga of Prospero, Ariel, Caliban, and Setebos is just left unfinished, taking what appears to be the central conflict of his story and just jettisoning it because it proves too difficult to finish.

All that said, you might be surprised to learn that I didn't actually hate the book. As with Ilium, Olympos is certainly a page-turner. Simmons is weaving lots of threads together, and he mostly keeps it interesting (if not always plausible). His characters are, for the most part, vibrant and believable, especially the robots (Moravecs), who stole the show in the first book and do so again here. Of special note is the character Orphu of Io, who must surely be the most lovable giant space-crab robot in the history of such.

One last note, in a good/bad/ugly sense (although this has been more like bad/good/ugly): Simmons' politics may either excite you or exasperate you (the latter for me), but he really isn't trying to hide them. Some disparaging comments about communism and socialism, a generally disparaging attitude toward gay men, and some vague Christian moralism are on offer. If you like that kind of thing, great. If not, there isn't enough of it to make or break your opinion of the book anyway. Just a fair warning.

The sequel to Ilium. Another marvelous read by Dan Simmons, worthy of comparison to his classic Hyperion cycle. Simmons is now on my short list of authors whose books I will read even if the premise seems unlikely. Somehow he always makes it work, and not just work, but pull you into a fully-realized world, one where good and evil exist, but also one that is believable and nuanced, with characters that engage. (Including non-human or even non-biological characters.)

What a crushing disappointment.

I read 'Illium' and 'Olympos' back-to-back, so in a way, it read like one giant novel. However, while the fascinating story of 'Illium' promised so much, the confounding resolution of 'Olympos' just failed to fulfill the first book's promises.

I don't want to spoil the story too much, but here are the basic problems:

1) Too much Deus ex Machina. In this volume, the heroes seldom seem able to save themselves, and the calvary's arrival to save everone's skins is just too well-timed not to be laughable.

2) Even though the body count is HUGE, all of the most likeable and interesting characters somehow survive (Can you say 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'?).

3) The story does meander, and while the calvary seems to arrive on a predetermined schedule, some resolutions just seem arbitrary.

4) There is no great climax in the Ardis-Earth storyline. After the arrival of the calvary/Moravecs, the villain just disappears.

5) Too many mysteries are not resolved or resolved badly with lame explanations. As I said, I don't want to include a list of spoilers, but here is one SPOILER that illustrates my gripe: It is not really believable that the 'quantum disturbances' that threatened the solar system are resolved by setting all the Titans loose from Tartarus so that they and the Olympian gods can have a free-for-all that Hephastus estimates will last at least a century. The threatening forces, as I understood them, were caused by all the activity between future Mars and the parallel Illium-Earth, and Hephastus indicates the war will occur in both places.

6) The author seems to imply that the old-style humans are better off at the end living in a squalid, libertarian, wild west town than in their previous paradise. Yeah, right. Their blissfully ignorant, illiterate paradise was not perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than leaving our heroes living in Deadwood. And considering that much of the lost knowledge of the post humans was restored to the old-styles, it does not seem necessary to pollute the future with a regression to base capitalism. You can be able to read, and still live in Eden.

. . . and I could go on.

But I won't. If Simmons ever does write another story in this sequence (which seems unlikely), I will definitely give it a chance because I loved the 'Illium' so much and do want to give the author a chance to redeem the disaster of 'Olympos.'

The sequel to Ilium, and unfortunately not as good. Olympos picks up where Ilium left off: On Mars, where the Trojan War has been lived again, the scholic Hockenberry has changed the course of events and started the Greeks and Trojans in a joint war against the gods--but the gods have plans to restart the war between the mortals. Meanwhile, on Earth life as they know it of the old-style humans has been completely changed, and rather than endless parties and good health they must now fight for themselves while being attacked on all sides by the very machines that used to serve them. Sentient robots called moravecs unite the two storylines when they leave Mars for Earth in order to stop the wild quantum fluxations that originate there. A sci-fi epic on a grand scale, Olympos unfortunately has too many concurrent plot lines to stay afloat and feels disjointed and incoherent. Nonetheless, the characters are interesting and the plot original. The book does bring to a satisfying close the story begun in Ilium, if you've read the prequel you'll care enough about the story and characters to make it through this volume, and the science-fiction aspects (while not particularly well explained) are innovative and make for a unique setting. I'm fairly ambivalent about this book: it was ok as a sequel, but I didn't enjoy it much in its own right.

This sequel is quite a change from the first book. While the first followed and played off of literary allusions to Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's Tempest, the sequence of events has separated this book from those sources. The characters from the Iliad are still around and new characters from the Tempest are introduced, but for the large part the book has become more independent than the original. As a result, there are fewer worrisome interpretations of both texts but it's also less enjoyable for those that picked up the book for these elements. The author tries to make up for it by introducing more Proust quotes and, at one point, a poem written by his wife, but these addictions seems cursory--slapped on late in the game in order to keep some symmetry with the original book. Furthermore, in the case of the poem, they don't nearly rival the importance or depth of the original inspirations and allusions.

More bothersome than the literary allusions or lackthereof is the sheer number of characters and plot lines that Simmons tries to balance throughout this text. The Greek, human, and moravec stories are all split up into one or two subplots, and the text is still constructed with one chapter dedicated to a plotline, ending in a cliffhanger, and moving to another plotline in the next chapter. With so many plotlines and so many cliffhangers, the book quickly becomes fragmented, cliche, and even annoying to read. In his attempt to create an epic and remain faithful to Ilium, Simmons put himself in a bind: the combination of plots and writing style don't work well together, and are perhaps the biggest problem with this book. I still contend that readers of Ilium will make it through this text because of interest in characters and plot piqued in the original book, and ultimately Olymos brings the plotline to a satisfying, almost too-quick conclusion. However, on its own this is a shoddily-crafted, disjointed novel that tries to take off more than it can handle in a style that doesn't compliment the content.

All in all, I recommend Olympos only as a sequel. Ilium leaves off at such a cliff-hanger that it's almost necessary to read this book simply in order to resolve the story. At 700 pages, it is time consuming, but luckily the writing style isn't very complex--rather, Simmons seems to delight in profanity, sex, and violence to an extreme that almost seems comical--and so it's not a huge investment of time and energy. It does provide a conclusion to the original story, one that ties up all the plotlines and saves everyone we care about. The science that runs throughout both novels is interesting--a little too explained at points, a little unrealistic at others, but overall a unique idea and sci-fi geeks should enjoy. Nonetheless, independently this is a pretty middle of the road, poorly constructed sci-fi epic, and on that basis I have a hard time being passionate about it and am hesitant to recommend it.

This is the sequel to "Ilium". Although sequel isn't really the right word, because that implies each book can stand independently. This is one long story that, for whatever publishing or marketing reasons, is being sold as two different books. The "Kill Bill" of literature, if you will.

I suspect that the primary reason for this would be the sheer length of the story. At a combined total of close to 2000 pages, it would be hard to fit it all into one binding. However in my opinion, the publishers of this book are being slightly dishonest, because the book jacket really should read, "Don't even think about buying this book if you haven't read 'Ilium' yet, because it will make absolutely no sense." But there's not a word about this book being a sequel on the cover. In fact for someone just wandering through the bookstore, like I was a couple months ago, it is very hard to tell just by looking at the book covers which book is a sequel to which.

Marketing quibbles aside:

I thought Simmons did an excellent job of re-writing the characters from Homer's Iliad. At this point in the story, the meddling Dr. Hockenberry has succeeded in diverting the Trojan War from its normal course, and Homer's characters are now off on a new adventure, but all the more fun to follow these classic characters as they go down a new unknown path.

I was absolutely glued to this book during the Trojan War sections. However, as I noted in my review of Ilium, unfortunately the Trojan War sections are only 1/3 (maybe even less) of this story. The rest deals with the standard post-apocolyptic future being terrorized by cyborg killing machines, resurrected dinosaurs, Caliban and the characters from Shakespeare's "The Tempest", and some strange half organic robots from Jupiter. It all ties together somehow at the end, but for me, it got a bit too bizarre. Furthermore I never really got interested in any of Dan Simmons's original characters the way I was interested in the Greek and Trojan heroes.

Dan Simmons is juggling several balls at once in this story line, and I don't think he really does any of them justice. The plot, to the extent there is a plot, becomes this huge monster of a story line, which has several loose ends and unanswered questions by the time the book comes to a close. Furthermore several of the side stories could easily have been pulled from this book without making a difference. For example, the whole story about the Trojan War taking place in the future didn't really impact the other storylines in this book all that much.

Furthermore there are several errors in this book, both in regards to Homer's story, and continuity errors in regards to Dan Simmon's own story, which indicate a lack of thorough proof-reading or editorial oversight. To give one example from many: Dan Simmons claims Sarpedon was killed by Patroclus, which is technically true in Homer's Iliad, but Simmons apparently forgot that in his own story Patroclus was kidnapped by professor Hockenberry before the last chapters of the Iliad were allowed to unfold. These kind of things don't spoil the whole book, but there were enough of them to annoy me.

Ilium had three distinct storylines, Scolic Hockenberry's adventures dealing with the gods and mortals fighting the Trojan war, the "Moravecs" (intelligent cybernetic creatures) Mahnmut and Orphu trying to figure out what had happened to the post humans and what was causing major quantum fluctuations on Mars and the "old" humans back on earth discovering their idyllic world of leisure and parties had a darker side. Ilium built up to a spectacular climax. This was all undone in the first few pages of Olympos. Given the amount of pages between this and the resolution and revelations of all the mysteries uncovered in Ilium Simmons was put before a true Herculean task. He solved this by leaving most of the plot dangling and shifting the focus to other characters, introducing a few new ones and leaving others on the perpetual brink of disaster only to get out and jump from the fire into the frying pan and just when you think somebody is going to solve a problem they leave off on a tangent which means more dangling in the face of disaster. Characters that are in need of straight answers are kept in the dark as the background is only very reluctantly revealed and instead of getting at least a halfway useful answer they are often treated condescendingly for being "ignorant" and the truth is being withheld from them, dangled as bait by a sadistic fisherman who prefers to see them squirm because they have committed the sin of ignorance ... As the story progresses the need to keep certain characters in perpetual danger to keep the reader's attention starts to wear thin. Especially because the expected payoff from Ilium's tense ending simply fades away. The characterisation becomes cartoonish, the clueless gods of olympus, unaware of their true nature turn out to be just as vindicative and nasty as their mythological counterparts, but no real motivation other than trying to kill each other is never given and the only deity who appears to know the truth succumbs to megalomania. Similarly the Moravec "Cavalry" who appear to be the only sensible faction still retaining sufficient knowledge and sanity are just taken for granted and mostly exist to provide either transportation or exposition.

Simmons' writing talent keeps Olympos eminently readable, but slowly the sense of disconnect grows stronger and the clever ideas can't make up for the lack of direction or good storytelling that would have made Olympos truly spectacular.

Just finished Olympos and agree with many of the previous review comments regarding the slowdown of pace from Ilium, the side excursions that tend to distract more than develop, and the abrupt conclusion.
But one comment I didn't see that perhaps bothered me the most... Ilium is told in first-person through the eyes of Thomas Hockenberry, which gives the reader a sense of truly 'being in' the story. His pain is your pain, and his fear is your fear. While surprisingly, when we get to the first scene in Olympos with our alter-ego, Hockenberry, and what!?? We're now watching him move through the scenes like every other character from Ilium. We are no longer IN the story, and I was immediately put off. Unfortunately, this set the tone for the next 850 pages.

"Illum" was a challenging novel. Simmons wove strands of Greek mythlogy, science fiction, classical literature in a way that commanded respect and clearly set the stage for a blockbuster sequel. Unfortunately, "Olympos" can't quite live up to the set up from Simmons' previous much better novel. In reality, they're both clearly part of the same much larger novel just cut in half. Like "Dune" and many other classics of the genre (not to mention Simmons' own "Hyperion" novels), the flaws could easily be overlooked if the conclusion wasn't a bit long winded and took detours that might lose lesser readers. Simmons combines elements of classic literature and pulp fiction in an inventive, startling way. In many respects, this is Simmons' "Odyssey" to the first books "Illiad" (hence the titles of both books).

At the conclusion of "Illum" (which, by the way, I recommend re-reading before tackling "Olympos" as Simmons just jumps right in with the story)The Greek army and Trojans on an alternate Earth were fighting the Greek Gods united finally against a common foe instead of fighting each other. Thomas Hockenberry the scholar who had been reporting "variations" from the Trojan War when compared to Homer's "The Illiad" no longer worked for the Gods; he has sided with humanity believing that these false gods need to be overthrown.

Meanwhile back on the real Earth, the Voynix have begun attacking human settlements after existing as servants for centuries. Setebos the many handed giant brain has landed on Earth and is devouring the planet by draining it of its negative energy. Caliban may have escaped from the space station he was stranded on and Prospero pulls Harman from his home telling him that he's the only hope for humanity but first he must be "educated".

With its continued mixture of great literature, mythology and a complex, vast canvas Simmons' "Olympos" promises much and initially delivers but about midway through this massive novel his story gets derailed as he tries to tie up all the loose ends of the first novel. While he doesn't do so as successfully as I had hoped, "Olympos" is still a worthwhile read. Simmons' commands a depth and breadth of knowledge and puts it on display as part of this novel so that, at times, it literally takes your breath away. If it doesn't quite live up to the lofty expectations of "Illum" perhaps that's because it's been nearly two years since that novel was released creating a large build up and expectation for the sequel.

While Simmons does manage to tie up most of the loose ends of the first novel, there's potential for a third book (and perhaps he's planning one). There's considerable backstory in this universe that hasn't been examined and potential in the post-human world as well. I'd like to see him tackle the material again to see what he can come up with. I had guessed much of the conclusion far before reading it (about 1/3 of the way through) and if the audience is too far ahead of the author they can get bored. There are clues throughout the novel hinting at the conclusion just keep your eyes peeled for them. If you want to be totally surprised (or disappointed) by the ending, don't try to draw any conclusions before you reach page 450 when one of the morvec machines lays out the conclusion to the vast mystery. "Olympos" is a challenging book and that's to Simmons' credit I just wish that he had cut the novel by about 150 pages and made it a leaner, meaner conclusion. He could have done so without sacrificing much of the literary content and still had a compelling more satisfying conclusion to his story.

Olympos is an example of an author juggling too many balls, losing track of which ones are going up and which ones coming down. The result is a story where the ball gets dropped as often as it is caught. Nevertheless, so-so Simmons is better than most of the writing out there. I just wish that the storytelling had been more coherent with a better resolution.

With "Olympos" Dan Simmons brings to a close the two book epic he began in 2003 with "Ilium". Simmons picks up the various plot threads that he weaved together in "Ilium" and once again pushes them apart in vastly different directions. At the start of the novel we know that the story takes place thousands of years in the future where evolved humans, or "post-humans", have left Earth and set themselves up as Greek Gods on Mars. Mars has been terra-formed to reflect the climate and topography of ancient Greece where the Trojan Wars have been taking place with, for a time, an almost perfect match of Homer's "Iliad". Back on Earth the "old style humans" were discovering who they are and a few have learned that they are about to begin a fight for their very survival. Meanwhile, there are moravecs (robots with a human core) traveling the galaxy to Mars to find out what is going on with the planet. This brings us to the start of "Olympos" where a Thomas Hockenberry, a scholar from the 20th Century has been recreated as an observer to the new Trojan Wars has managed to alter the course of history and the future. Now the gods war amongst themselves.

The story of Olympos is three-fold (at least), but when you boil the plot elements to their most basic form, each storyline is essentially the same. The moravecs are striving to stop the universe from unraveling because of all of the messing with quantum technology to terraform Mars and to make the post-humans into gods. The old-style humans are fighting for their own survival against a race of monsters which have awaken from their slumber. Hockenberry is trying to save the Greeks (the new, old greeks) and himself while helping the moravecs. Achilles is trying to save his love and return her to life. Essentially, everyone is trying to save something and even though the paths split once again in "Olympos", Dan Simmons manages to tie them all together again in the end.

If the brief description here of the plot is confusing, it should be. "Ilium" almost absolutely has to have been read first for "Olympos" to make any kind of sense. Even with "Ilium" read, "Olympos" is a fairly confusing novel. Simmons takes the story to very unexpected places and at times I think that Simmons might be reaching a little too far. He has very interesting ideas about alternative universes, history, and he has created very real characters to inhabit this world (or series of worlds). But there are some pretty wild jumps that Simmons makes here, and at times it is difficult to follow all of the jumps and accept them. My only actual complaint, however, is that the ending felt rushed. Imagine that, after 1200 pages and two books the ending felt rush. "Olympos" was build, build, build and then "oh yeah, we're done, wrap everything up!".

The complaint about the ending is very minor, however. What matters is the journey. What matters is that for nearly 700 pages of "Olympos" I was completely wrapped up in the story and Simmons did a masterful job describing the action and the history and how things connect. Granted, I feel Simmons did a better job of this with "Ilium", but there was no feeling at all of a let-down except for the ending and the rest of the book was so good that it overshadowed the ending.

Reading "Ilium" and "Olympos" is a serious time investment, but for a speculative fiction or fantasy reader, it is one well worth making. These books could use a prequel or a sequel, however, because there are a lot of questions that Simmons did not really explore.

-Joe Sherry

Dan Simmons, is in my opinion, the best writer that I have ever read. His Hyperion/Endymion Saga is the greatest science fiction story ever told. Therefore my expectations were extremely high for his latest science fiction adventure, the two book series Ilium and Olympos.

Ilium and Olympos are essentially one book, divided in 2 for publishing reasons, but the difference between the 2 books is startling. Ilium was a great read. Three major plotlines that converged into a stunning story, filled with mystery, sense of wonder and a fast paced plot. One seems poised for all sorts of exiting and interesting themes in Olympos. Can humans really fight against their gods? What happens if they win? Can a society destroy its gods and survive? What if the humans learn that their gods are imposters? These were some of the questions I pondered and thought would make for an interesting as well as exciting story.

Unfortunately, this major setup in Ilium of the showdown between humans and gods reaches a big dead end in Olympos leaving these questions unexplored. Instead, the major thrust of Olympos shifts to the battle for survival by the old style humans against the evil entity Sebetos, and the odyssey of Harmon as he learns the secrets of Earth's past and gains the knowledge that will help the old styles survive. The Harmon storyline is definitely the highlight of Olympos, but it is just not enough to overcome the book's weaknesses. The plotline regarding the Greek gods does not have a satisfying resolution. The plotline with Sebetos does not have a satisfying resolution. A pivotal plotline involving Odysseus and Circe seems to appear out of nowhere, so the reader is both confused by events and has no particular emotional involvement, either. Hockenberry, the scholic, seems to serve no purpose in Olympos except to QT to different locations so that he can be the viewpoint character that reports events to the reader.

One of the major strengths of Simmons first dozen books, culminating with The Rise of Endymion, was his ability to create stories with deep meaning and which were ultimately spiritually uplifting. The books of the last 6 years have been lacking these ingredients, and unfortunately, Ilium and Olympos stay true to this form. The potential is there for the story to take on a deeper meaning as we find out that Sebetos actually feeds on death, and has come to visit Earth's deadliest battlefields. But any hint of this meaningful sub plot is essentially erased by the fact that nearly everyone in the book (including the author?) all admire those heroes of battle as represented by the Greeks and Trojans. The book seems to waver between the horrors of war and the glories of war. The themes contradict. The result is apathy and confusion.

It is hard to give a book only 2 stars when it is filled with great ideas and some wonderful characters. It is also a real page turner and impossible to put down. But in the end, there are no truly clever plot twists and many of the plot resolutions seem to come out of nowhere. After the promise of Ilium, Olympus should have been a classic. Unfortunately, it is a grand, magnificent disappointment.

Pretty much everything I said in my review for Ilium stands for this book as well... not much has changed in the writing style (versus Fall of Hyperion vs Hyperion where the perspective was completely different.) This book is pretty much just an extension of the first.

Which, there would be nothing wrong with, as the first book was brilliant.

This book has its own problems, though, that the first did not. It is much slower read.

The fact that there are really no likable characters becomes more important, as the mystery behind the technological magic and mythological characters is old news in this book. The moravecs are cool, but their chapters are written in a very dry, scientific language; appropriate, but not emotionally charged. (Although at the end, Orphu of Io was my favorite character.)

With only few (maybe one...) exeptions, every character in Troy/Ilium is a lying, backstabbing, foul mouthed and vulgar character. Again, appropriate, but no one to like here, either (again, though, Achillies ultimate fate is brilliant.)

The old style humans are left as the characters you should identify with, but I never really cared about their lives, either (and since, by this time, everyone is dying after the Fall... that's probably a good thing.)

A poorly included sex sceane involving a major character in an odd situtation also turned me off towards a major plot thread, and altered my opinion of a few characters. This was my biggest complaint with the novel, because it was such a disturbing event, and I couldn't see that it had ANY point in the overall storyline...

There were a few brilliant events in the novel, but mainly, there was nothing new to see here since Ilium. Events already laid out in the first book continue to unfold, but with no real new developments the pages dragged compared to the first novel.

Epic battles aren't as enjoyable when you don't care who wins or loses, either.

All in all, nothing was added to this book that wasn't really in the first... and that made for a less enjoyable read.

There were some very cool events and ideas presented at the very end, but unfortunately they weren't developed at all! Almost makes me wish for a third book dealing with the meshing of certain societies...

I really enjoyed this book and blasted through all 690 pages in just a couple of days, testimony to Dan Simmons' pacing and the clarity of his style. As others have mentioned, though, there are lots of unresolved plot lines, such as what exactly was going on behind the scenes most of the time. _Ilium_ really set up some expectations that any writer would feel hard-pressed to follow through on and I think Simmons did his best, though it's all rather disappointing and a bit unclear at the end. It's great fun to watch the Iliad unravel and the storyline go off in unexpected directions, with characters like Agamemnon and Menelaus getting their just deserts, not to mention Achilles' role as hen-pecked husband. You really should read _Ilium_ first, or you'll be completely lost, and while it helps to know something about the Iliad, you're probably going to get most of what you need to know from a quick viewing of the recent Brad Pitt film, _Troy_, to be able to follow things and appreciate how the Trojan war goes awry. It's great to see Hector, probably the only true hero by today's standards, alive and well and coming into his own as the successor to his father, King Priam. His death and the desecration of his body are a truly horrific moment in the Iliad, since he is the only character acting out of a sense of personal honor and trying to protect his family. Everyone else is out for personal glory and as many spoils as they can haul away. Anyway, loose ends and all, I would still strongly recommend this book to any fan of literate science fiction.

Spoilers used below. Be warned.

Illium had so much promise and such a movie theater ending that one would think Olympos was going to be an awesome adventure. Wrong!

Apparently using the book to give voice to neoconservative political ideas, Simmons uses Olympos to inform us that:

1) Failure in the War on Terror will doom humanity to thousands of years of Islamic terrorism that will eventually wipe out most of the human race.
2) Feminism will result in all-female post-humans who will abuse what's left of humanity, eventually develop male envy and run off to become buff Greek gods as a result.
3) Europeans, especially the French, are inherently stupid and will eventually cause their own destruction by pandering to Muslims.
4) Homosexuality is contemptible in any time period.
5) The ideal future destiny of the human race is Norman Rockwell's America.

Putting aside the almost mind-numbing number of prejudices that Simmons puts to the page in this book, the structure is an absolute mess. Simmons was already overloaded trying to handle his own characters, everything he brought in from Greek mythology and The Tempest. He makes it worse by spending chapters venting his political views and the result is a novel that literally has no ending. Most of the plot threads that Simmons spent time building up are either left dangling or magically resolved by the multiple deus ex machina's he brings in to close the action out before he runs out of page space.

He also jumps the shark pretty blatantly. Not only is the evil Islamic Global Caliphate willing to destroy the world, they're also incompetent. Just as a hint to Simmons: assuming you could gather enough mass to create stable black holes the size of bowling balls, you wouldn't need to put them into missiles and load them onto a submarine (named "The Sword of Allah" just remind us that these are evil Islamist fanatics) with intent to launch them to destroy the world. You could just create them in whatever lab and let them drop into the Earth's interior. They would shred it without any further help. The whole submarine storyline seemed like just a pointless attempt to highlight to the characters in-story the evil and insanity of Muslims in Simmons mind.

The characters storylines are never really closed out. The whole thing just falls flat as an arbitrary end point is reached and Simmons decides that the show's over and everything needs to finish. They only thing one can really glean from this is Simmon's apparent views that:

1) Women are dangerous and need to restrained before they morph into dangerous godlike beings that will make men suffer.
2) Muslims are all evil, insane and out to destroy the world as soon as they acquire the means to do so.
3) Never resist the urge to randomly deride homosexuality.

Only bother reading this if you're looking for something pretentious that looks intellectual but which really is just a mish-mash of modern right-wing politics, assorted literary references and treknobabble.

All good authors must face the challenge of "the next book" after they produce a master work. In the wake of the superb Hyperion Cantos, the thoughtful and talented Dan Simmons now, by producing his Illium /Olympos series, confronts that old problem. While readers may find that these books fail to measure up to the Cantos, any author would be proud to produce these excellent novels.

Rare among science fiction authors, Dan Simmons holds a keen interest in literature and philosophy over technology and hackneyed plot twists. Cantos readers will recognize some of the terrain of these works, such as how technology shapes culture, the roots of religion, and the direction of history. Even more than the Cantos, Simmons here delves deep into some of the West's finest literature, ranging from Shakespeare to Proust to Homer, but Cantos fans need not fear, Keats does make an appearance.

Far from retreating after the magisterial Hyperion, with Illium/Olympos Simmons if anything reaches to embrace a story of an even more epic scope. Building a world 500 years in the future would challenge any author. Here the author ranges over thousands of year, from the battle for Troy to the very far future. Indeed the plots many strings can be daunting to follow for even the most dedicated reader. Several of the reviews demonstrate the challenge, as they claim as unanswered questions that the novel clearly answers, albeit buried within the novel's almost 700 pages. After reading I found only one such dangling thread, and considered a minor annoyance at best. My complaint in contrast is that he often glosses over subjects that would surely fascinate any reader, but every writer must make choices. That Simmons resists the temptation to stop the action for greater detail is probably to his credit, as it would surely detract from his efforts to keep the complex plot moving apace.

Fans of Hyperion should not be scared off by some of those who complain about this series. Simmons continues to offer more food for thought and discussion then almost any fiction writer working today. If here he failed to reach the very peak of Olympos, the summit was surely well within his sight.

Simmons enjoys a great deal of popularity as well as a great deal of respect. Based upon his prior publications of Ilium and Hyperion Cantos, there are many, many people eagerly awaiting this book. Ilium delivered in Olympos a heritage for a book/series of remarkable potential and it's hard to judge how its failure to offer any sort of conclusion or purpose to the overall story will affect its future popularity. We feel that for the classical elements involved (Shakespeare, Proust, and Homer along with smatterings of Tennyson and other authors) these books could open up an avenue in speculative fiction that is largely unexplored and underutilized. Where Pressfield examines mythology in Last of the the stores and the legends of King Arthur provide constant fodder for authors to chew on and spew forth endless reiterations and interpretations, classical mythology itself is an untapped market and we still relish the idea of authors searching out the limits of that potential. As Olympos enjoys brisk sales, it may inspire more authors to follow similar lines and affect the genre in that way but this book itself can not and will not be a definitive work in this budding sub-genre.

WHO SHOULD READ:

It's hard to predict how many readers will feel similarly disappointed about this book. Those readers entranced primarily with the anachronisms of classical figures may be more forgiving of the plot defects as they revel in the antics of Odysseus, Achilles, Helen, and that champion of all liberal arts majors: Hockenberry. Philosophers who love to debate about the effects of parallel universes and the material consequences of good and evil may ultimately be charmed by the arguments of Setebos and Prospero. Certainly there is plenty of blood, war, nudity, and sex to sate the appetites of almost any reader anywhere. Yet, at the end of the day (thank you business consultants everywhere), readers still want a story. Fiction is about the telling of the tale that can have a material effect on the lives of its readers. Olympos has degenerated into parlor room tricks and idle speculation. This is not the thing upon which to found a great book and we don't feel many readers will appreciate it.

WHO SHOULD PASS:

It will be difficult to keep adherents of Ilium away from reading a copy... but they probably should avoid. People concerned with the sex and violence of the prior book will find that quotient increased dramatically and also should avoid. There is no reason whatsoever to read this book without having first read Ilium. Nothing will make sense and the prior work is much better anyway. We believe the vast majority of readers who have read Ilium first will find Olympos tremendously disappointing for its lack of relevancy in story elements and failure to follow through on its own purposes. We have a lot of respect for what Simmons dared and attempted but we would be falsely praising it if we thought he achieved his ambitions.

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM

The Greeks and Trojans have stopped fighting each other and started fighting the gods of Mt.Olympus, the pampered "child like" remnants of our future earth have just bitten the hand of their master and are now surviving day by day...fighting off the very robots that once served them, a fictional monster has taken over Paris and is preparing to eat the world, and robots from the outer ice planets are making their way to earth to stop the universe from imploding. Take a breath and welcome to the sequel of Ilium, a multi-storied arch that juggles so many concepts and so many plot lines that some kind of a Cliff note bundle should be included.

Dan Simmons uses his formula from Hyperion, of combining classical literature with contemporary science fiction. The result is a sort of Homer/Shakespeare/Asimov hybrid. Simmons dives into the Illid, the Odyssey, and the Tempest, twisting those tales in a way that makes them come alive, quite literally. The reader doesn't have to know those works well, but it helps since we deal with nearly all of the characters from these classic tales. How do these books come to life? The answer to that one sort of makes sense, it's how they ended up threatening existence that had me constantly retracting my thoughts as I read the book.

There are a few other problems as well, not only does Simmons get a little self-indulgent with the classical lit. origins, it also gets a little long. For me the book dragged in the middle and had moments, even during the end, where I found myself skimming. I could have done with about 100 less pages. The ending does wrap most things up, but I was left to make some leaps of faith when it came to certain characters and situations. Much like other Dan Simmons Sci-Fi I felt that I only got about 95% of what happened. Still I don't mind that missing 5%. In the end, this is a very good book. A book that I plan to re-read and hopefully gain an even deeper understanding of these truly inventive stories. I'd rather scratch my head a little than to have a book that tries to be everything to every body.

If your looking for an easy read, pass on Simmons. If your looking for an exciting read that may take a little work...take a week off, sit back and enjoy Ilium and Olympos.

Olympos concludes the story begun in Illium (it is not a sequel, as is sometimes mistakenly stated).

The pace of this second installment is quicker than in the first book, and I was surprised to see how fast the 900 pages of the paperback edition went by. Simmons manages to use the Homeric source material to great effect and to capture its grand epic quality without indulging in mere name-dropping. It was very satisfying to see immortal heroes like Achilles, Odysseus and Hector face new and unexpected challenges, especially since they remain in character.

The plot of the novel revolves around four main axes. First, some humans in the future have attained technologically-induced godlike powers and, having assumed the various roles of the Greek Pantheon, settled on Olympos Mons on a terraformed Mars. Second, they have the means to open doors to other dimensions made real by the creative genius of certain people in our world (in this case a dimension where Homer's Illiad is actually occuring, and where they meddle with the Trojan war just as their models did in the original poem). Third, the rest of humanity has been (a) destroyed in various terrible historical events, and (b) re-introduced by the superhumans as a low-number hedonistic and blissfully ignorant society. Four, the "logosphere" (which sounds like an evolved internet) and a sentient "ecosphere" (which sounds like Gaia given form by some interaction of nature and nanotechnology) contend with a superhuman and her creations.

Thrown in the mix as the protagonists are well-meaning sentient robots that humanity sent out to the outer planets centuries before, and who decide to take an interest in their creators' future; a synthetic human rebuilt from the ancient DNA of a Classic Literature professor, and who is charged to chronicle the new Trojan war; and a close-knit group of humans who emerge from their indolent dolce vita to discover how their world actually functions. For the poor few hapless "normal" humans face dire odds in this book: thanks to the clash between the many factions of superhumans, all the infrastructure on which their society functioned has collapsed, and Earth is now roamed by legions of murdering robots and cloned versions of Shakespeare's monstrous Caliban.

This admittedly complex recipe combines in a hair-raising adventure where literary citations go hand in hand with hard SF toys, with a surprisingly successful result. Many characters are engaging (especially the robots!) and the ending could hardly be more climactic, with the final clash between Achilles and Zeus, between the last humans and armies of killer robots, and the potential destruction of Earth by a black hole.

It may n ot be quite as good as Hyperion (what is?) but Olympos is one of Simmons' best books.

In Olympos, Simmons continues the multiple storylines started in the first novel Ilium: The wars between mortals and gods, the Eloi-ish humans on future Earth, and the Shakespeare- and Proust-reading moravecs. It's "literary science fiction" in Simmons' tradition, and the sequel gets off to a solid start with some extremely violent action scenes and appears as though it will be a good continuation of the previous novel. However, for me it started to drag in the middle, with some drawn-out journeys of a few characters, and then we suddenly get to an incredibly brief ending. There is too much left unexplained.

I also didn't like the way Simmmons de-emphasized certain characters in the second novel in favor of what I found to be less interesting ones. For example, Helen was a far more interesting character than Achilles, who gets most of the on-screen time (among the Greeks and Trojans) in Olympos. I also didn't like the references to contemporary events in either book.

Overall, the two books in this series comprise a solid but not superlative offering from Simmons (or maybe I should say not up to the incredibly high standard of Hyperion, and Fall of Hyperion). The first (Ilium) is better. They are related to a short story called the Ninth of Av in Simmons' recent short story collection, Worlds Enough and Time.

On my recent marathon-like trip back to Guangzhou from Vancouver, I had an opportunity to read and finish Dan Simmons' Olympos, the sequel to Ilium. It made for a fitting pair of book-ends to the year.

The novel picks up roughly 8 months after the events that concluded the previous novel. Our key characters have not made much progress in gaining an understanding of their situation. On Earth, the remaining humans have made some headway in terms of learning to fend for themselves, but they are beset, literally, by dangers...and are aided, mysteriously, by an ancient Greek hero. On Mars-as-Earth, the war against the Olympian Gods does not progress as well as it should. The literate cyborgs from Jupiter have gained some intelligence about the technical situation, but it has left them with more questions than answers, so they have decided to move on from Mars, to Earth itself. And, our Cthulhu-like beings are clearly in conflict with each other, in some mysterious fashion.

I continue to find Simmons' writing style highly enjoyable. It's easily readable, and the mysteries keep me reading. I'm a quick reader (I read the whole 891 page novel in one--albeit long--trip), so the drawn-out nature of the mysteries keeps me reading, rather than turning me away. The story doesn't tie everything up in a neat little package...we're left wondering what exactly Achilles is going to do now...but for me that's an attraction, because it feels more real and true-to-life.

Simmons' best work remains with Hyperion, but this is certainly highly enjoyable. If literate space opera is your cup of tea, then you should enjoy this read.

Just where do you start with what surely deserves the title of this summer's biggest book for sci-fi and adventure fans? I thought my imagination was pretty supple until I entered, once again, the intensely symphonic prose of Dan Simmons in his latest epic, OLYMPOS. And I found myself returning more than once to that first thought after putting down his gargantuan prequel, ILIUM --- how could this saga about old humans, post humans, future humans, and all their various nemeses possibly get any bigger, more complex, more richly veined, more compelling?

It's not simply about literal size, temporal dimension, character multiplication games, word counts, body counts, special effects, plot variations, imagery, or other semantic virtuosities. I've read b-i-g books before in this genre and so many of them start with lofty concepts, only to implode into a mass of descriptive goo and plotlines that are positively Wagnerian in their refusal to harmoniously resolve.

In fact, to stretch the musical analogy a little further, Simmons orchestrates the movement and meaning in his immense multi-dimensioned future universe much more along the lines of a Mahler symphony. The result is huge, but never flabby; vast, yet tightly and purposefully integrated.

So, although I was often lost in a sea of imaginative and visceral depth, I was never abandoned there. Amid its core dependence on the fantastical creations of classical myth and literature, OLYMPOS never lets us forget about the precious fragility we all share as "old style humans." As limited as we are in both story and history, humans repeatedly invent ideas, objects and machines that seem stronger and more clever than their makers. Simmons's ancient and modern mythic sources are full of such potent irony and he has brilliantly mined that lode for all it's worth.

The creations and characters met in ILIUM --- a must-read prerequisite --- grow, develop, live, love, strive or die, along with the added rank, file and super-beings of the monumental OLYMPOS. It's no surprise then that every page teems with forces of good and love contending with a Pandora's box of bizarre and grotesque evils. But along the way (along myriad ways, in fact) Simmons immerses this epic of struggle, defeat and triumph in layers of authentic emotion that, without warning, can leave one deeply touched.

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch [...]

Dan Simmons' remarkable duology, Ilium and its sequel, Olympos, tell the story of the Trojan War that will happen on Mars two thousand years in the future. In Ilium we were introduced to two story lines: what is happening in the Trojan War of the future, and what is happening on Earth in the future. The only nexus between the two seems to be the presence of a man named Odysseus.

Led by Ada of Ardis Hall, the few surviving "old-style" humans on Earth are being ruthlessly slaughtered by voynix, hybrid animal-machines that used to serve the humans, as well as by diabolical monsters from the imaginations of Shakespeare and other great literary masters. Crafty Odysseus, the only old-style human with the skills necessary to mount a defense, is fatally injured in a voynix attack, the fax-nodes that allow humans to travel between cities have malfunctioned, and Mahnmut and Orpheus of Io, our plucky robot-like heroes, have kidnapped (another?) Odysseus from the battlefield at Troy. Professor Hockenberry finds out the hard way that just because Helen of Troy has sex with a man does not ensure her loyalty to him. And what odyssey would be complete without Circe?

The plot thickens in this brilliant sequel to Ilium. As it thickens, it is fleshed out as nicely as Savi is in her new manifestation of Moira/Miranda. Setebos, that nasty brain-monster, is spawning, and the calibani are as ravenous and evil as their progenitor. Heroic acts of defiance and survival define the old-style humans, even as Achilles, hoplessly smitten with a dead Penthesilea, Queen of the the stores, climbs Olympos Mons to challenge Zeus himself.

Dan Simmons has once again created worlds worthy of book awards. Like his Hyperion and Endymion books, Ilium and Olympos are certain to be science fiction classics.

Hyperion: Fabulous. Ilium: Great
This one: terrible. To me, one of the worst books I've read. No closure is brought. It's almost like a different author takes over part way through. Don't waste your time with this series.

I disliked Olympos so much that I actually destroyed my copy rather than donating it!

I only stayed with the overlong book because I had read the first one (Ilium), which was much better. You must give Simmons props for holding together such a complex tale but after a while I got where I just did not care. Sadly, in the end, rather than rewarding the patient reader who has slogged through this, the book just seemed to go quietly into the night. Was it worth the read? Not at all!

Set in a somewhat distant future some so-called posthumans are doing a Greek Gods role-play. That little game includes trying to revive Homer's Iliad on a parallel universe Earth, and consequently threatens to destroy the solar system both here and there. And a motley crew of cyborgs are trying to prevent the disaster.

Meanwhile on a post-apocalyptic (?) Earth the few surviving humans are doing their best to fight off mean robots with lo-tech weapons.

It could have been really good but it seems like the writer loses interest in his story somewhere in the middle and then spends the second half trying - and failing - to finish all the plots, shipping his main characters all over the solar system in the process.

And as a reader I lose interest too, especially in the Earth side storyline. The 'Iliad' is a bit more entertaining but in the end it falls apart like a card house too and turns into a discarded Xena-plot. I mean Achilles murdering Zeus - puh-leeeze!

Over all it's a haste work with a lot of lose ends, pseudo scientific mumbo-jumbo and paper-doll characters. Sad on such a good idea!

Dan Simmons, I'm exceptionally disappointed in this pile of dog poop that you call "Olympos."

My list of complaints has already been addressed by other reviewers, so I won't bother re-hashing them. I give the book a 2-star review because I enjoyed the window into some of the high points of your imagination. I can't imagine why anyone would rate the book higher, though. Did those 5-star reviewers read the same book as I?

Unlike some of the pretentious reviewers who complained about incorrect usage of string theory or greek/latin (mis-)translations, I'm just steamed because you left so many threads dangling in the breeze. I don't expect Sci-Fi to get everything right to satisfy all the pedants. I do, however, expect a novel to finish things up properly and not leave me frustrated and irritated at the end. Odysseus got his rocks off -- what about the rest of us?

Sigh. Oh, one more thing... Enough with the crazy jingoism and blatant homophobia. Seriously. For someone who dabbles in visions of the distant future and advanced civilizations, you sure seem awfully small-minded in some ways.

An excellent conclusion to Ilium. With as many parallel plotlines as are introduced throughout these two books, it does a great job of tying it all together. Definitely worth reading to see the conclusion through!

Now, this book is like a pizza with everything on. And I mean everything on. Even if you like both steak and vanilla sause it doesn't go too well together.

That's the problem with Olympos too, it tries to be space opera, robot-mutant SF, post disaster dystopia, horror novella, fantasy and a flirt with the fans of classic litterature. And that's just too much. Too much of everything.

There's for instance a handful of plots running on parallell tracks and which fail to be really merged in the end. There's about two dosen main characters and out of all those only four seem to engage: Achilles, Hockenberry, Helen and Hera. And their stories take up about ¼ of the book. The oldstyle-humans on Earth are rather sketchy drawn and their faith is like a generic "robots gone bad" story with some Jules Werne thrown in. And the moravecs talks too much and don't really aquire anything.

And in the end the writer needs about 100 pages to knit it all up, and he tries and tries without succeeding.

I had expected little Mahmoud to solve the problems of Earth by some Shakespeare knowledge, but since it doesn't happen all this Shakespeare-lore seems totally unnessecary!

There are too many questions unanswered, too many characters left in the blue. What happened to Athena's grand plot for instance? She just dissapears out of the story. Why did the voynix suddenly start attack the humans? And who was this Ariel creature really and what was it's purpose? And Circe and Sycorax, where did they fit in with the rest of the story? And what happened when Hector found out that his son was still alive?

Then the submarin plot was totally out of the blue and so was the reason for the weird Titanic-esque spaceship.

But the main problem is - there's no "BANG" in the end. No grand conclusion. It just fizzles away.

Many are the delights one experience while reading Dan Simmons novels such as Illium or Olympos: great writing style, wonderful battles, an infinite imagination, beautiful prose, interesting characters, great humor. Simmons keeps his readers going setting wonderful scenes and launching great mysteries. We wonder what the heck is going on. So we keep reading and reading, because we want to find out. Ultimately however, we don't get the answers and are left with too many questions. Very unfortunate.

Still, Illium and Olympus make for a wonderful read. Just don't expect that everything will be clear in the end.

I really, really loved the Hyperion books, so I was very excited to find Illium and Olympos.
I kind of liked Illium... and Then!
I do not like the Mahnmut of Olympos. Really, really got tired of all the pop culture references. Also did not like him turning into such a cutesy character. (What is this: Disney?)
I agree with all the reviews who felt that this was a terrible ending: "Zoom! Here come the aliens to save the day! Yay!"
Why all the build-up with Harman? What happened to Ariel? WTF is this Moira thing?

But all of this I could accept as a story teller being a not-so-great writer. What really upsets me is the free faxing. In the Hyperion series, free casting was a deep, spiritual experience that was extremely cathartic and really finished the series up with a bang. The farcasters were evil, freecasting was the beautiful new human ability, purchased at a horrible price.
In Olympos, "freefaxing" is basically the same thing, but reduced to a function, accessible at the click of a button, basically. I was very upset by this, and really didn't want to finish the book.
I could accept the derivative thermskins, the faxnodes, all the zero-g time, the bubbles, etc (all derived from Hyperion) But free-faxing went too far.
I want to know if this is even really Dan Simmons.