Olympos by dan simmons - Ease Reading

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This book, and its predecessor Illium, are the weirdest books I have ever read. They tell the story of a post apocalyptic world, Homer's Illiad and some giant robots from Jupiter. They are so nerdy, but truly so delightful.

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toxicfly

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I didn't really enjoy this second book in the series. I listened to it as well as read. I can't imagine having to read the entire thing. While the book had promise, I found myself (after 400 pages) simply thinking "Let's get to the end." This book is a sequel, and I'm not sure that you could follow it without having read the first one.

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AlextheKid

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

(abandoned halfway through)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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WhoisLaszlo

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Olympos (and by extension Ilium) is a testament to good worldbuilding. It is absolutely drenched in history, meaning, and depth. There is always more to discover, and Simmons keeps that tension going expertly. In all the complexity there is an unresolved plothole or two, but that's easily forgiven. The contrast between Ilium's historical depth, Ardis' total lack of a past, and how the two slowly come together is just amazing. I will say that the Iliad loses part of the foreground position it had in Ilium to make space for more scifi, but it's so expertly interwoven that it just adds to the book's depth. And unlike Ilium, Olympos actually has a proper ending!

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N1colle97

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Watch in awe while the last, currently, written science fantasy epos of one of the most fascinating authors of our time comes to an end.

In the second part of the series, the world is more and more escalating, fractions getting mad, gods being sad, Mars getting hot, poor protagonists stumbling around between mighty entities, and the big aha moment towards the end gives a satisfying conclusion.

In contrast to the Hyperion series, the a bit stronger focus on mythology and magic makes if more fantasy than science, although whenever the two clash, the old saying that advanced enough technology is indistinguishable from magic is true. There would be even a third way, the often underrepresented biopunk option, that could see much more use in hybrid works, because already simple seemingly fantasy magic vs technology, especially nano, makes incredible plot goals, characters´ motivations, suspense potential, possible, and biotechnological fueled Gaia fraction would be great extra to see.

I wish Simmons would have continued writing big science fantasy series, maybe even with a bit of horror, instead of starting to just keep writing standalone novels, often with close to no real fantastic elements as far as I see from the reviews and descriptions, just some magic and stuff. The real irony is that most of his newer novels seem to be even that bad that I won´t ever read them and that readers first confronted with whatever happened to one of the greatest authors will never touch his groundbreaking Hyperion and Ilium series, which is a true shame.

Nobody knows what might have happened here, I don´t know examples of authors who downed their rating in such a way, especially not in that order and timeline and never when they´ve once been so good. Bad first works are ok, everybody has to learn, but getting weaker and seemingly even below average?! Maybe the lonely writing in the cabin in the woods in the mountains concept has had some substantial change or something, I really can´t grasp it.

And that´s such a sad development, so please, go with the classic and forget the rest of his work, do as if it doesn´t exist.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

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maiduong28

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This is an excellent follow up the the superb Locus Award winning novel, Ilium. While it is a sequel, it is perhaps more accurate to say it is a continuation of the story which began with Ilium. The story of Ilium/Olympos is truly epic in scope and mind bending. I will most definitely be reading up online about parts of the narrative during the days ahead. I'm going to miss reading this novel, now that I've finished it. I'm not going to give any spoilers away about the book, I do feel that Simmons held it all together extremely well. Olympos isn't a book that could be read enjoyed without reading Ilium first, Olympos wouldn't work as effectively as it does, without reading Ilium first. Actually, I'd also say that reading a short story by Simmons, called, The Nineth Of Av, before reading Ilium, would be useful too but it isn't essential. All in all, Ilium and Olympos contain much to admire and appeal to my tastes of scifi, fantasy, mystery, adventure and even horror. I do hope that Simmons will write another book that links to the Ilium duology. He apparently once contemplated a third book, called, 'Odyssiad'. I for one would buy that book on day one of its publication. For those who have read Simmons's Hyperion Cantos novels and really enjoyed them (like I did), but have yet to read Ilium and Olympos, I recommend that you don't compare the two different stories as you work through the Ilium duology. They contain perhaps a few similar themes but they really are very different books. It was a pleasure to read Olympos, it receives my highest recommendation.

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East

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

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

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ElBombo23

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Impossibly, Olympos is even more ambitious than its prequel - Ilium. I loved the mind-boggling sci-fi and fantasy concepts. Unfortunately, everything felt contrived.

Several characters acted in very strange ways, and the motivations behind their actions were almost always opaque. I cannot think of worse ways to cover up plot holes than characters refusing to answer the protagonist's questions. Storytelling was lost in the quest to expose mind-bending quantum theory explanations and complex intertwining between Greek myth and Shakespearean dramas.

However, I admit, the book was paced well via tense hold-your-breath moments and adrenaline packed action sequences. The plot twists, even though they felt contrived, were exciting! This book must have done something extremely well to keep me hooked for 900 pages.
I am glad I read it, but I will hesitate to recommend it.

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Olympos

dan simmons

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