Olympos (2005)

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

(Also, inaccuracies don't endear it to me. Calypso and Circe were not the same person. Odysseus stayed with Circe for a year on Aeaea, and she willingly let him go. Odysseus stayed with Calypso for seven years on Ogygia, and she had to be forced to let him go. If nothing else, look at the two different personalities there!) ( )

great concept-but somehow misses; resurrected 20th century scholar observes aliens reenacting Trojan War, while other related aliens try to exterminate remains of humanity

Illium was a brilliant book, catering to every kind of reader on many different levels, in ways most of us could never even dream of. A book that manages to successfully combine science fiction, Greek mythology and Proust into its narrative just has to be a gem. And that was Illium, despite its flaws. A gem.

Olympos had a lot to live up to. Did it manage it?

Well, yes and no, depending on how you look at it. If you want more science fiction, more mythology, more epic battle scenes and more Proust, you will certainly find it here. But as a narrative, as a story as a whole, it is disappointing. Granted, Illium left many threads dangling, and these needed to be tied up. In Olympos, the result is a rambling, often incoherent, and sometimes just plain monotonous plot. By the last third of the book, I found myself skipping huge chunks that just seemed irrelevant and over-wrought. Much of the mystery of Illium is well... de-mystified in Olympos. And not in a necessarily good way. Some things are best left unsaid. The Star Wars prequels are an example of this. Olympos is of the same ilk. The mysteries of Illium were so mind-boggling and intriguing, that when you find them answered in Olympos, you end up wishing you had not discovered such inane and frankly implausible answers.

But I could have forgiven all of this if not for the fact that much of Olympos' content plain insulted and offended me. Simmons seems to have a frankly juvenile and adolescent obsession with sex. Some of his scenes verge on the pornographic, and his attitude towards the female characters is sometimes disturbing. For example, the one deed that the main character must perform in order to save the world is to have sex with an unconscious woman; this scene is described in minute, grandiose and unnecessary detail. Such scenes left me with the sense that Simmons clearly had something to get off his chest - and whatever it was was something also best left unsaid.

Those impressed with Illium will want to read this just to find some closure if nothing else. I suspect many of them will be disappointed. Fans of Simmons will probably like it despite all its deep and glaring flaws. As a fan of Illium but not of Simmons, I found this book disappointing, disturbing and offensive. It had its high points, and its intricacies of conception are to be admired. But as a novel as a whole, I would give only one piece of advice for the 'uninitiated' - tread with caution. ( )

I thought Dan Simmons had written himself into a corner with "Ilium," his mind-bending, classic literature sampling, time hopping saga of future Earth and Mars, genetically improved humans, post-humans, cyborgs, and alternative universes.
Luckily, it turns out that Mr. Simmons is a nimble author, and he knew what he was doing when he spun himself a narrative web this complicated.
While "Olympos" was in itself an engaging read, with plenty of action, emotion, and tragedy, I was especially pleased to find that the story went beyond these surface pleasures, and the author had a deeper point to make about the power of human creativity and history and consciousness.
I will probably add these two books to my permanent collection. ( )

Like Ilium, this is a book that forcibly pulls me through the story. My will is not my own as I turn page after page. Just another 10 minutes I think, and then an hour has gone by... http://icantstopreading.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/olympos-by-dan-simmons/