(Contains spoilers towards the end)This is my least favorite book.It's not the worst book I've ever read. "Manos: The Hands of Fate" is perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's not my least favorite. It takes more than simple technical ineptness to rise (or sink) to the rank of my least favorite. A least favorite work needs to commit some special crime. Olympos' crime is that it took the plot threads of Ilium, one of the top two or three most creative and ambitious science fiction books I've yet encountered, and bungled them to an astonishing, almost insulting degree.Ilium, as I've just said, is an incredible book. It's perhaps Simmons' most imaginative work so far, and that's saying something. In what other single book can you find posthumans posing as Greek gods on Mars, intelligent machines discussing literature on the moons of Jupiter, a legendary Greek hero hunting prehistoric mammals on the pampas of South America, and a society of pampered partiers to whom getting devoured by an Allosaurus causes scarcely more of an inconvenience than a bad hangover? And that's just the tip of that book's iceberg of wonderful and unlikely inventions. All of these unusual and fascinating things are packaged into three more or less distinct storylines, each of them exciting, purposeful, and compelling. I found the Caliban sequence towards the end to be a somewhat abrupt and strange change of pace, but I could live with it. When I put the book down, I could not wait to dive into the sequel.It was bad.Hockenberry's tale in Ilium was exhilarating. Hockenberry, a seemingly rather weak character, through deception, desperation, and pure ballsiness managed the manipulate the Greeks and Trojans into turning their war against the cruel posthuman Gods. He's not given anything nearly as interesting or compelling to do here. In fact, besides flying halfway to Earth with the Moravecs and then deciding to teleport back, I don't remember him doing much of anything notable. As I found his story in Ilium to be especially compelling, this was a real let down. Simmons instead chose to spend much of his time on the Greek side of things with Achilles and his campaign against the gods. Which is unfortunate, because Achilles really does not have the depth to carry such storyline weight. Olympos should have stuck with the continuing story arcs from Ilium rather than focusing so much time and energy on this.But, it turns out, that's what Olympos does. It sidetracks. It goes on tangents, abandoning the story arcs that made Ilium so compelling. Take Harman's storyline, for example. For the most part, it is rather interesting, and actually does contribute to the story and our knowledge of the mythos of this world. However, near the end of his journey his story arc veers wildly off course to focus on a wrecked submarine containing black hole bombs. Where did that come from? How did that contribute in any way to the plot? What mysteries did that solve? With so many interesting possibilities in this wonderful setting, why did Dan Simmons choose this non-sequiter as the climactic moment for one of his main characters? It makes me want to tear my hair out!That is another thing Olympos does: introduce things at the last minute. We finally meet Syxorax/Circe well towards the end of the book, after hearing so much about her. Her scenes do nothing to explain things, and in fact only serve to make it less clear exactly how the Odysseus of the Trojan war became the Odysseus that Harman and company encounter on Earth. Introducing an important character like that with only a small fraction of pages left makes things feel very cramped towards the end. In fact, the entire last section of the book felt very rushed and crampled; I was reading the half-hearted and generic epilogue almost before I even realized it.I'm just getting started with the laundry list of things that frustrate me to no end about Olympos, but by now I'm getting tired of typing and you may well be tired of reading, so I'll keep the rest brief. Major conflicts peter out to nothing. Setebos, who seems to be the ultimate evil of this story, flees and vanishes without a fight. In the final showdown between Caliban and Daemen, nothing more climactic happens than Caliban uttering a few more of his inscrutable verses. Even Zeus' demise felt meaningless and disappointing. Childishly gross as well, honestly. And finally, most of the major mysteries put forth by Ilium never get solved. I still don't know how or why the Posts of Earth became the Gods of Olympos. I still don't know how Odysseus ended up on Earth. An explanation is put forth as to where the alternate ancient Greek Earth came from, but I found it extremely weak and unsatisfying. An afterthought. Dan Simmons throwing up his hands and admitting that he doesn't know.So yeah, this is a rather long review. But, my frustration and contempt for this book has been stewing in me for years, and I needed the catharsis of getting it all out in a place where others could perhaps commiserate with me. Thanks for reading, and may all sequels you read be better than this one.
Olympos is the sequel to Ilium, Dan Simmons's tale of a far-future Earth, where powerful gods live on Mars and re-create the Iliad, and a few hundred thousand "old-style" humans are left living in a pseudo-paradise on Earth. [info]professormortis reviewed it a while ago, and while his thoughts don't entirely parallel mine, you can certainly check them out.As a book, Olympos is MUCH more active than Ilium. Ilium is a setup piece. It establishes the various characters, from Dr. Thomas Hockenberry, PhD, a resurrected twenty-first century scholar, to Orpho of Io and Mahamut of Europa, a pair of cybernetic organisms called Moravecs who live on the outer planets of the solar system, and are interested in various aspects of old Earth human culture (Orpho likes Proust, Mahamut likes Shakespeare). Some old-style humans, a couple of Homeric heroes, a number of gods, and a couple of sentient computer programs round out the cast. Oh, and an evil entity that feeds on human suffering and terror.One of the things I enjoy most about Simmons is that he thinks BIG. I have no idea how scientifically feasible his concepts are, but it's hard not to be awed by ideas like the Breach, an enormous, force-field created tunnel that runs through the middle of the Atlantic ocean, or nano-technology that warps quantum probability to ensure that a man can only be killed in a single way. It's like Star Trek tech (which is, in itself, pretty crazy) jacked up to 11. It's great.His characters vary somewhat in quality. I really liked Orpho and Mahamut, and Simmons versions of Achilles and Odysseus seem pretty spot on to me. Achilles, in particular, is a lot of fun. He's a whole lot of attitude, but he can back it up, and the attitude is done well. Simmons gets the various Greek gods pretty dead on too.The humans, strangely, I'm less impressed with. Hockenberry is interesting, and in some ways, is the most accessible character (being a twentieth century scholar thrust into a crazy world), but for some reason, I have a hard time empathizing with him. He seems almost TOO aware of how out of place he is in the events that are taking place around him, and it's a bit wearing after a while. The various old-style humans, I found less engaging than the rest of the cast. They have some interesting struggles, and one of them finds out some incredibly crucial information, but I just didn't emotionally connect with them. Likewise, Prospero and Ariel didn't do much for me, but they're really side characters in the end. Important side characters, but side characters nonetheless.It's very hard to talk about the plot, since it hinges on events that happened in a previous book, and discussing it too much would spoil the mystery. Suffice it to say, it's appropriately huge and epic, and overall, pretty enjoyable. There are enormous quantities of literary references, but Simmons manages to explain most of them in the text. There's some religious references that don't get explained as well, unfortunately, and I know there's some things I'm not quite getting, mostly because I know very little about Christianity. Still, there's enough explained that I never felt totally lost (except when I was supposed to), and the book wraps up enough questions that I'm fairly well satisfied.Overall, it's a good book. Better than Ilium, which contained a number of authorial rants about how people interpret Shakespeare that not only wrecked the flow of the story, but felt totally out of place. The pace is quicker, stuff happens, and there's some genuine tension about the ending. I won't speak of the ending itself, except to say that it was somewhat disappointing. For all of the interesting stuff that's created in this story, there's a few too many loose ends. Worse, the ending is...well...let's just say it didn't have the emotional tone or weight I hoped it would. It's not quite a JMS ending (the worst kind), but it's not wonderful either. Though it does contain the opening lines of the Iliad, and that's never bad. If you enjoy ultra-tech style sci-fi, epic struggles, and occasional ponderings about literature, it's worth the read.
What do You think about Olympos (2006)?
WARNING: Not a spoiler, but the ending is talked about in extremely general terms.I loved the world, the characters, the premise, and the story. So why only three stars? Simmons really wanted to end the series in two books, but there was just too much there to really do so. The result was that Olympos lacked the strong sense of climax that Illium had, while also having a drawn out resolution that left Simmons running through time and space and alternate realities tying up all the loose ends. I understand why only two books was conceptually important, but something had to give. Also, like the Hyperion Cantos, I noticed how the first book of each series has a strong horror/suspense element that is largely lost in the subsequent books.
—Ben
Oh, frack it. I’ve started and deleted and restarted this review too many times already. Dan Simmons’ Ilium and Olympos have left me speechless. (If you ask my wife, you’ll discover that’s a rare occurrence indeed.) I don’t think I can put together an entirely coherent review, much less something with any significant insight on the author’s ideas. So I’ll just share what I’m able to get out in a little solitary brainstorming session.First of all, you have to realize that Olympos isn’t merely the sequel to Ilium; neither book is complete without the other and I must review them together. That bugs me insofar as I like the idea of a book standing on its own. Prequels and sequels and subsequesequels (that should be a word, yes?) are fine and dandy—indeed I encourage them so long as the author doesn’t screw it all up with some lazy cop-out—but each book, or at least the first book, should be able to stand on its own. Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds is a good example of a book that clearly leaves the door open to be part of a larger series but stands on its own as a satisfying story. I can see how Dan Simmons wanted Ilium to stand on its own, how he left the story at a good place to pause, but that’s all it was: a good place to pause. Ilium by itself simply is not a satisfying read. And it’s too bad, really, because Ilium is fucking brilliant—I was stunned by the breadth of imagination and creativity expressed while maintaining depth and quality of character—you’ll read nothing like it, I guarantee. But I give it four stars because it doesn’t stand on its own. Olympos gets three stars because it also doesn’t stand on its own and because it’s just not as good as Ilium, which seems to be the near-universal consensus if GR reviews are to be trusted.(Admittedly, I gave five stars to Dan Simmons’ other epic work, Hyperion, despite the fact that it doesn’t stand on its own. Hyperion, however, is different, and someday when I review Hyperion properly I’ll explain why.)Second thing you have to realize is that Ilium and Olympos are long, grueling, complex, at times tedious ... oh, did I mention they’re long? Put together they are 1,664 pages in paperback or 1,296 in hardback. I read both books on the iPhone Kindle app and, let me tell you, it was A LOT of page turning. Still, I don’t have a problem with length if it’s needed and if the story is worth it. In this case, the main story arc is complex enough to justify a great deal of length by itself, but the author threw in sub-plots and side-plots that, although interesting, when all was said and done, served to lengthen the books without adding significantly adding to the books.Now, having said all that, Ilium and Olympos were fascinating, original, creative, challenging, and, in the end, rewarding. I put a lot of time, and expended a good deal of mental energy, into reading and understanding these books and I’m glad I did. The author’s central idea around which he crafted the Ilium Universe is intriguing, to say the least, and presents some awesome opportunities for original world-building.(view spoiler)[Okay, I'm trying out the new embeded spoiler function here. Dan Simmons' idea is that, when the mental energy of some super-genius writer, like Homer or Shakespeare, is focused sufficiently, that energy pops off into a new universe where the writer's imagined story comes true. So, when Homer wrote the Iliad, a universe popped into existence full of Greeks and Trojans fighting and killing each other. When Shakespeare wrote The Tempsest, that also came true in its own universe. The characters from Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's Tempest play central roles in Dan Simmons' story. (hide spoiler)]
—Ian
A scifi/fantasy with only two in the series is a welcome change, and since I had this one already (bought second hand), I was able to pick up quickly from where Ilium left off. As with Simmons other books, there is a rich literary tapestry that is drawn on to embellish a fast moving and complex alternative future. I'm sure literature students would enjoy his spin on some of Shakespeare, homer and others, but most of it was probably lost on me. One of the ideas he utilizes is one I've seen CSLewis write about, namely that anything we imagine must be a reality in some parallel universe (by moving andwards and eckwards in time, rather than forwards or backwards). Interestingly, Lewis also used a Greek theme to write his story (the Minotaur). Simmons doesn't restrict himself time wise, and happily allows backward movement in time, although if this is to a parallel universe it need not be backwards, I guess.There are so many threads to the story, I don't think I fully kept up. Some of the segments could have been trimmed back without losing much of the plot, but it is part of his style and generally enriches the story. I liked the way eastern nations are given their turn at being the dominant world power, although we only get a hindsight view of this. Also running through the book is the interconnectness of time and space via a quantum 'ether'. While it can be overdone in the story, the idea may have interesting links to the way ancient Christians and Jews (and perhaps other religions) conceived the cosmos as a unity rather than the separated celestial/terrestrial realms that became common more recently. Up there with the best of modern scifi I reckon.
—Angus Mcfarlane
