I was struck beforehand by the number of surprisingly negative reviews for Olympos. It seemed almost as though the general opinion was that this duology comes off the rails in its second half. I thought the previous book (Ilium) was fantastic, admiring its craftsmanship, so I stubbornly forged ahead. But I decided to outline in advance the questions I would use to decide for myself whether this really was a sequel worth pursuing. Now that I've finished reading it, I can answer those (while trying to remain spoiler-free):

Does Olympos maintain the same pacing and style as Ilium?
Yes, very similar to Ilium. Once it gets moving, the cliff-hanger style for chapter endings kicks in again. Some of the Greek and Trojan characters get to tell their point-of-view, which they didn't in Ilium, and it serves the story. Dan Simmons primarily writes horror novels and this was evident in Ilium. It's evident again here, so be ready for that. One cautionary note is that Olympos is arguably more fantasy-esque than the first book; everything still develops very logically and remains consistent (the series doesn't suddenly become Alice in Wonderland), but if you're big on sci-fi while not so much on fantasy then you might find this a turn-off. There's the occasional scene that's rather surreal, yet it's always explicable.

Does it answer the questions left by Ilium?
Yes. It was clear to me in the first volume that there were more great beings than the Greek Gods at work in this universe, and that these would have to be further explored. You may recall in Ilium we met Prospero briefly, and heard of Setebos. This novel reveals considerably more about them. Along the way we get several minor revelations that tie together the different elements and answer the mysteries set up in Ilium. Just as I'd hoped for, Olympos reveals "the strings behind the puppet show". You'll end this duology with an excellent grasp on how this universe came to be and how it operates, who all these players are, and what they want.

Are Ilium's storylines resolved, with satisfying conclusions?
Yes. I'm thinking here of the three stories from Ilium: the old-style humans on Earth, the moravecs from Jupiter, and Hockenberry. When I say satisfying conclusions, I mean adequate coverage and wrap-up for each of them. You're made to wait a while at first regarding what the old-style humans have been up to, but things pick up right where they left off with Hockenberry and the moravecs. Then Hockenberry takes a back seat for a while. But when it's all said and done, you're provided an ending that will satisfy for each thread.

Does Olympos model itself on Homer's Odyssey, like the first book did with the Iliad?
I asked this one as a matter of curiosity. The answer is, yes and no; arguably not as directly. That's nothing that should determine whether you read it or not, unless you were especially looking forward to a closer retelling. Odysseus does play a very key role in the story.

Were there any unusual indications of prejudice on the part of the author?
No. This question was triggered by some particularly curious reviews decrying the author's portrayal of Muslims. This must stem from instances in Olympos where, as facts about this future Earth's history emerge [warning: a very small spoiler here], much wrongdoing and prejudice is attributed to a defunct political entity identified as the Global Caliphate. No where does Simmons' narrative paint all Muslims with one brush or attribute folly to their religion in a general way. Rather, the theme is that humanity is destined to travel dangerous paths in repetition under one religion, ideology, etc. or another, and that it might as easily occur in a given instance via any other.

My opinion: you should read Olympos if Ilium was a great ride for you and you liked its mix of sci-fi with fantasy overtones, nothing especially rubbed you the wrong way, and you want to see how things turn out. Doesn't that go for every series? I think a comparison with Steven Erikson's handling of fantasy is apt: Ilium/Olympos isn't something you'd use to introduce someone to sci-fi, but after you're comfortable with the genre and open to trying something unusual that reads a bit like fantasy, this is it. This was as good a ride as the first book, if not better: one wild cliff-hanger after another, several moments of horror, and a liberal sprinkling of 'stand up and cheer' episodes. I honestly can't find what's lacking that everyone else seems to be complaining about, unless it's that sense of the story drifting increasingly far from hard sci-fi. Maybe you need a fantasy-fan streak?

Skip Olympos if Ilium was confusing or unsatisfying for you, or you're just plain tired of all the Greek/Trojan stuff, because this is more of the same. If the most compelling characters for you in Ilium were the old-style Earthlings, you may be frustrated with how long it takes to return to them here (although there's plenty enough about them, once returned to). If you were irritated by Ilium's cliff-hanger chapter endings that sent you off to pursue events in another storyline before returning to see how things turn out in this one, then beware because that same style is used here too. I guess you might also skip Olympos if you thought Ilium sufficiently 'resolved' the story (although I can't imagine why you would).

Bottom line: a consistent, logical, very satisfying 2nd half and conclusion to the story begun in Ilium.

PS: would love to read more about moravecs! ( )

One of the things I love about this series is the way that Simmons does metafiction in such an original way. Ostensibly, this novel is science fiction–there are robots, quantum technology, space travel, genetic manipulation, nanotechnology and so on. But a number of the characters are from The Iliad and from The Tempest. And the thing is, it makes sense once you get used to it.

Olympos is the sequel to Ilium, which set the stage for what’s happening in this book. In Olympos, we find the Achaeans, the Trojans, and the robots squaring off against people who theink they’re the Greek gods. We still don’t know why these gods are there, but it’s related to something that’s going on between Prospero, Ariel, Sycorax, Setebos and Caliban.

This series is an absolutely amazing read. And it’s so well done! If you’re interested in metafiction, I really recommend these books.

The other day I came across a very interesting scene in Olympos. Hockenberry goes to talk to Odysseus, to apologize for tricking him and basically kidnapping him. Odysseus, though, is rather drunk and is in the mood to talk and get maudlin. Among the things they talk about that I found really interesting, if only for the contrast, was the way they talk about war.

These two characters have such different experiences of war. Odysseus is from a culture that invented aristeia, the glory gained in single-combat with an enemy. Hockenberry is ostensibly from the twentieth century and had a father who fought on Okinawa during the middle of World War II–for him, war is mechanized, dehumanized, soul-killing, horrifying. For him, there is no glory in war, just killing.

So I wonder, what made that change happen? Was it the technology that made it possible to kill thousands in minutes? Was it the culture that started to realize that jingoism is horseshit, that it’s never over by Christmas, and that war is not glorious? Did these two things effect change in each other?

Given what I’ve read about World War I, the war were old tactics and strategies faced new technology, I tend to think that it’s the technology. Guns and bombs can turn anyone into a warrior, whether they are suited to it or not. No one had fought that way before, so no one was prepared for it. I don’t WWI was the first war where there was shell shock–but it was the first time we started hearing about large numbers of cases. And this certainly wasn’t the first time men were forced to march into artillery (remember Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” about the “battle” of Balakava in the Crimea?), but during WWI, it was almost a weekly occurance. Look at what people started writing after WWI–people like Sigfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and other poets wrote about the war.

There is a subtitle on First World War.com: the war to end all wars. It didn’t do that certainly, but it did change the way that people go to war now.

Interesting how a not-so-light conversation between to men drinking Medean wine can send you into such dark thoughts.

(Holy crap, has it really taken me three weeks to get this far? Gah!)

I am a little more than halfway through this book and questions I’ve had since the beginning are starting to be answered. Well, sort of, one of the characters has literally come up with a “Theory of Everything” that sounds plausible–at least in the universe of this novel. I finally have a pretty good idea why Prospero, Caliban, Setebos, the Greek Gods and heroes, and now Miranda are running around. I know what the bad guy is up to (though I don’t have a clue how they’re going to stop him).

Interesting reading this last week. The language got a little hairy though when it started talking about nano-enhanced DNA and quantum teleportation and multiple universes. I could follow the physics in Timeline* all right, but I had to reread some of this stuff just to figure out what they were talking about.

I’ve decided that there are two kinds of characters in this book, the ones who have a clue and ones who exist to have stuff done to them by the ones who have a clue and to be explained to. It gets a little irritating after a while, but this book is still so damn intriguing.

*P.S. They didn’t use fire arrows in the Middle Ages. That’s a Hollywood anachronism. Looks good on camera, though.

That took much longer than I thought it would. Usually the longest it ever takes me to read a novel of any size is two weeks–three if it was written before 1900 or so. The reason it probably took this long was because I had so much other stuff going on, particularly my NaNo project. I’ve been writing during the time I normally read. It’s thrown me all out of whack.

But, at last, I am done!

So, I’ve already mentioned that this book is pretty wild, plot wise. It incorporates Shakespeare, Homer, science fiction, and so on. I was hooked all the way through (as much as I could be given my time constraints). I enjoyed the sheer originality of it all.

The only problem I have, and I notice this the closer I got to the end as all the plot threads started to wind up, was with how convenient things got. People showed up just when they were needed. People got saved right in the nick of time mostly through luck or a really convenient set of circumstances. The closer I got to the end, the more frequently I found my self thinking, “Wow, these people have amazing luck.”

But for all the coincidences, I really enjoyed this duology and would recommend it to anyone who likes metafiction or science fiction.

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... ( )

Nice theme and characters, poor setup, poor development, and no explanation.
Random anti-muslim crap (I'm not muslim, but wtf?) ( )

By the end of Ilium, the first part of this book (as Simmons put it, imagine if they published War first and then waited a year or two for Peace), the Trojan War had gone completely off course, as the Greeks and the Trojans had formed an alliance in a war against the gods. The moravec expedition from the moons of Jupiter had joined forces with the Greeks/Trojans, and meanwhile the postliterate Eden of human Earth had fallen, with the robotic servants that had protected the humans turning against them and the technology that had guaranteed them exactly a century of life (for a price) destroyed.

In Olympos, the Mars/Ilium plot and the Earth plot come together, although the characters from the two halves do not interact until the last hundred pages. There is an odd development involving a submarine near the end of the book as well- a strange threat that does not seem to relate to any of the others, and which is introduced a comparatively short time before it is solved, given that we are talking about at least sixteen hundred pages for the entire story. Its function seems to be only to put one of the humans at risk of death, and to remove a moravec ship, and surely there would be a way to accomplish those things that would be more related to the rest of the book?

We knew from the first book that Hockenberry was severely opposed to the idea of homosexuality in the Iliad, saying that those who see it are looking from a modern perspective. That may be true, however it is as impossible to know that it was *not* there as it is to know for a fact that it was. I mention this again because at the end of Olympos, Hockenberry is just as hostile in emphasizing that he and a fellow scholic friend are partners in the business sense- not that anybody would expect Hockenberry to mean anything else, as he has shown no sign of being anything besides straight, but the passage suggests that the entire concept of male partners in the sexual sense is bizarre. A character being rather homophobic would be less unsettling if he weren't the only first-person narrator in the book.

Those things said, this is an epic work, about the great potential of humanity for good and evil, and the fact that it has flaws should not stop anybody from reading it. ( )