Certainly the most conflicted I’ve felt about a book in some time. On one hand, Simmons has created an epic, thoughtful, extremely creative and inventive story. However, I can’t help but feel jipped. The story was sold as a sci fi retelling of the Trojan War, with other elements thrown in; and I feel like the first book, Ilium, balanced them all wonderfully. The concluding epic, however, did not maintain that balance. Instead of focusing on Achilles, Hockenberry, and Orphu, Simmons spent an insane amount of time with the Ardis hall people, with little to no final pay off at the end for his labors. I found myself skimming the Harmon chapters, begging for another update on Achilles. The entire Ardis arc is only tenuously, at best, connected to the main story, so I question why it was even necessary to add it in.

Even so, I really enjoyed this series. The first book remains one of the top books I’ve read this year. I just wish that the Ardis arc had been cut. There was a lot of potential; but it just wasn’t realized. Caliban and Daeman never had their final show down. The origin of the voynix was skated over and was ridiculous. Just not as tight as the rest of the story.

I’m a little disappointed, I think. One of the best parts of the last book was the connection between Orphu and Troy, and I was hoping for a similar experience with the Ardis arc, and I was left wanting.

Still, very thoughtful and enjoyable to read, but not as good as the first.

Ilium was a mind blowing work on scale and on the grandiose measure of imagination. Olympos takes senses to overload with scenes and characters in situations beyond the literal wildest imaginations. The heroes from the Iliad, Sentient Machines, Greek Pantheon of Gods, Monstrous world devouring creatures and Humans all inhabit this book and all of them in a plot that literally brims with imagination.

Comparisons are but weak ways to judge a book, but for a sequel it is but pre ordained to look at its predecessor for a brief look up. Olympos compared to Ilium is more grand and more mind boggling than its predecessor. From the scene set in Ilium, the plot moves to more of a battle of survival for different characters against different enemies throughout the book. There are many a place wherein the details could have been cut down a bit, for they feel to be a tad too long.

The author is exceptionally good in the way he portrays the Trojan war sequences and of the way the last human settlements on the post-apocalyptic world defend themselves. There were specific parts of the book which detailed on the technical gizmos and quantum probability theory and they flew over my head...Odysseus still stands out as the most enigmatic character in the book and will be one which I adopt to my hall of fame from here.

The best part were the closing lines of the book where the robot Orphu tells the children of the Iliad :

"Rage - Sing, Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles"


Recommended for those who love a flight of fantasy....

8/10

Μετά το εκπληκτικό Ίλιον, που αν και έχει αρκετά τρελά πράγματα είναι πολύ δυνατό, έρχεται η συνέχεια με το Όλυμπος να είναι ένα περίεργο βιβλίο σε όλα τα σημεία.
Στο Όλυμπος ο Simmons λύνει όλες τις απορίες που υπάρχουν αλλά από την άλλη αφήνει τους χαρακτήρες πολλές φορές να κάνουν άσκοπα πράγματα και ειδικά ο Χόκενμπερι για μένα ήταν σαν να μην υπήρχε στο βιβλίο. Το μεγαλύτερο μειονέκτημα του βιβλίου είναι ότι είναι υπερβολικά μεγάλο, περίπλοκο και πολύπλοκο με συνέπεια να χάνει σε δυναμικότητα σε σχέση με το Ίλιον που είναι πιο καλά "δεμένο".

Το βιβλίο σίγουρα θέλει αρκετή υπομονή καθώς χάνει στην δυναμικότητα που έχει το πρώτο αλλά νομίζω ανταμείβει στην κοσμοπλασία, την πολυπλοκότητα και όλα τα τρελά του Simmons.

Welllll... I just can't get excited about this book now that it's over. After wading through 900 dense pages of literary influenced sci-fi, I feel a little cheated by where we ended up. Harman's journey into what was supposed to be the Earth's past (our future, I guess) was pretty dull considering the tantalizing hints Simmons drops. I love the idea, for example, that a Global Caliphate arose sometime in the 22nd Century, developed time travel and quantum spacetime science, and destroyed the bulk of civilization with a virus targeted at killing non-Muslims. That's comedy GOLD right there.

What's missing is the "so what?" Ultimately where our Earthen characters end up is so arbitrarily decided that it robs you of any real satisfaction for the closure. It seems that Simmons abandons his literary template for quick resolutions... and by page 800, you crave them anyway. It's ultimately unsatisfying if not for the allegorical comparisons between Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, and other classic epic poets and those poets' effects on a future full of quantum teleportation, moravecs, and black holes. But as fun as that can be, it doesn't help move a plot anywhere.

Sadly, there was a ton of potential in this story. The fates of so many characters could have been much better handled to much more satisfying ends (WTF was up with that shit between Odysseus and Sycorax???). Oh well.

Не знам откъде да започна...А толкова ми се иска да напиша ревю за "Олимп", особено такова, което би било полезно за бъдещите читатели.

"Олимп" е шеметното продължение и епичен финал на историята, която Дан Симънс започва с "Илион". "История"...е слабо казано. Защото повествованието в двата романа е от титанични пропорции. Казвам двата романа, защото е абсурдно да правя някакво разделение между тях. Също така ще ви дам един съвет ( по скоро ще ви "препратя" един съвет, който срещнах за поредицата ) - прочетете двете книги без да правите голяма пауза между тях.

Защото всичко което се случва е мащабно и епично. Няколко сюжетни линии, разхвърляни през времето и пространството и предизвикващи няколко стотици страници объркване, преди всичко да се разкрие във финала. И като казвам "всичко", пак не съм точен.

Доста неща всъщност остават необяснени в "Олимп", което може би е единствената ми критика към романа. Няколко от сюжетните линии завършват малко..."насилствено". А на места ми се стори, че дори на толкова голям писател и разказвач като Дан Симънс му е било трудно да напише правдоподобен финал.

Въпреки това, "Илион" и "Олимп" са две разкошни произведение на научната фантастика, които не бива да пропуснете, ако сте фен на жанра. Подписвам се с двете си ръце под тази препоръка, О, Музо !

The conclusion to the Iliad duology was pretty good. It was darker than the first book, but still drives the reader forward with more or less non-stop action cover to cover. I liked the narrative pace and the various perspectives taken as the various threads from the previous book came together in this one. As per usual, the concepts are often mind-blowing with Simmons and there is a loose tie-in to the Hyperion Canto. I am not sure though that it comes all that close to the excellence of that first book, but nonetheless is important to read once you have finished Ilium.

Like Ilium, Olympos is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it is a truly impressive collection of literary references and obviously the result of a ton of research. Simmons brings together Shakespeare, Proust, Robert Browning, Nabokov, Joyce, Homer, Virgil, and other major literary figures to frame his world. On the other hand, I have the same complaint that I had with Ilium: the characters aren't that riveting. There is more character development in this second book, especially when the old-style humans leave behind their life of leisure and start struggling for survival. Ada, Daeman, and Harman all become more interesting as their lives become harder. In other words, conflict is more interesting than no conflict.

My other complaint has to do with the treatment of women in the novel. The thing about all those literary giants who literally shaped the various worlds (and there are multiple universes involved here) in Ilium and Olympos? They are all dudes. Specifically of the very traditional dead white dude canon. Emily Dickinson is name-dropped once, and an unnamed female poet of the twenty-first century is referenced once.* Simmons also thanks Harold Bloom in his acknowledgments. I have nothing against Harold Bloom, but he is a very traditional literary theorist who tends to defend the very traditional dead white dude canon. I found this reliance on conservative literary values a strange juxtaposition to the truly mind-blowing sci-fi ideas in the novel. At one point, a character dying of radiation poisoning weeps because he will never see a Shakespearean play performed. Commence eye-rolling.

Female characters don't make out much better. Women are ranked as more beautiful than one but less than another. Ada sees a fair amount of development in the second novel, but most of the female characters are opaque, sexually monstrous, or tagging along after the men like puppy dogs. In short, the sexism in the book took me out of the experience of the rather brilliant science fiction ideas.


*Simmons names this poet in his afterword, but not in the main text.

Dalších 900 stran trojské války, vzpour proti bohům, robotů, kyborgů a cestování časem i prostorem. A i přes ten (možná trochu přehnaný) počet stran to byla celou dobu dobrá zábava. Vazba na Homéra je už o hodně volnější a řečtí hrdinové tak mají víc prostoru se projevit - a taky to udělají. Takže pokud se chcete dozvědět, jak by to v Tróji dopadlo, kdyby se do toho vložili kyborgové z Jupitera a malí zelení mužíčci, jen do toho, nebudete litovat :)

30.3.2025: po druhém čtení doplním hvězdičky na plný počet

I’ve read enough of Dan Simmons to tell his style by now. Both Iliym and Hyperion suffer from the exact same problem, being way too preoccupied with stuffing as many cool sci-fi ideas as possible, and not caring much about resolutions.

The build-up is magnificent, as you are presented with multiple factions with close to no resemblance with each other. Ancient Greek gods, alien robots, oblivious humans living in a Utopia, historical figures, all presented through amazing concepts, such as terraforming, immortality, and reality bending.

Then you see how all these seemingly isolated societies begin to interact with each other. The alien robots investigate a terraformed Mars, which is now ruled by ancient Greek gods, who are repeating the Trojan war, who turns out they are actually on a transported Earth, and that the actual Earth is by now a natural resort for illiterate humans living in bliss.

Then a whole other stuff happen to make things even more complicating. Little green men made of goo, a huge brain with eyes and hands that feeds on the misery of humanity’s past, the avatar of a futuristic internet, religiously driven robotic servants, a wilderness filled with dinosaurs, and the awoken copy of a Jewish woman.

And then… logic ceases to make much sense, as Simmons is too preoccupied with stuffing as many references from famous movies and books, and literally copy-pasting segments from the Iliad and Shakespeare’s plays that he doesn’t give a damn about proper continuity. Why did the scholar save the moraveks from the Olympians? Why did the old-style human steal the Setebos egg? Why did this other guy had to ejaculate inside a comatose woman? And the answer is simple; because it’s what the author wanted to do so even more absurd things can follow these events.

As much as I loved the sci-fi ideas, the plot was moving in a completely chaotic manner with the characters doing stuff just for the sake of the story moving forward and not because it would be what they would logically do based on their personality. This is why you end up reading for the cool ideas and the insane plot threads rather than to see how all this mess would be resolved in the end.

Speaking of the end, just like with Hyperion, everything was wrapped up in a hurry with what is essentially a deus ex machina, while not really giving you a clear picture of what happens in the aftermath. It’s like you need to suffer through 1500 pages of a hundred stories and three hundred characters, only for Simmons to kick you in the balls, before slapping THE END on your forehead and running away laughing. I mean, holy crap, it’s like 90% of everything didn’t matter at all, and the rest just resolves with a lazy cop-out.

Essentially, Simmons is a product of post-modern B-grade literature. As long as he keeps throwing one-liners, famous quotes, and passages of classic books at the casual audience, he can keep selling his shit without having to be original. His works are essentially elaborate fan fiction, mixing ideas of past authors and then teasing you with juvenile fictional versus battles of the sort “what if this happened or what if that didn’t happen”. He otherwise doesn’t care about continuity as he cares about mixing them for the sake of spectacle, thus ending up creating a mess of concepts that don’t feel part of a plausible, living world. Fun to read for the build up, a chore to finish, and not satisfactory at all once you complete the final page.

The sequel to Dan Simmons' epic sci-fi space opera "Ilium", "Olympos" continues the story of 21st-century Professor Thomas Hockenberry, who has inexplicably been resurrected on Mars to be an observer of the Trojan War.

Confused? So is he, and so is the reader for a considerable amount of time. Thankfully, in the deft hands of consummate storyteller Simmons, we begin to piece together what is happening in the universe.

It's the distant future, and the Greek Gods have all returned to set up their new Mt. Olympos on Mars. Or are they really gods? And what about the humans on Earth? What is the creature calling itself Calaban? Who is this super-powerful being calling itself Prospero? There is a lot of crazy, wonderful stuff going on in this book, and Simmons does satisfy the reader's curiosity by answering some of the questions, but he also fuels the reader's desire for more by leaving a select few unanswered.

Possible sequel? We can always hope...

A very ambitious science fiction duology (Olympos being the direct sequel to Ilium). (MILD SPOILERS AHEAD:) This is a multi-universe far-future epic involving Greek gods and Homeric heroes, Artificial Intelligences obsessed with Proust, nanotech-enhanced posthumans, a resurrected Professor of Classics from the 20th century that attempts to seduce Helen of Troy, anti-semitic killer robots, characters from Shakespeare that have come to life due to Quantum-wave parallel universe framistatwhatsits (apparently Quantum=Magic), bloody battles, and evil telepathic brain-monsters.

While fascinating and stimulating as a whole, the ending of this novel seems very hurried, with some rather anti-climactic climaxes, and is lacking in some promised explanations of certain phenomena, and has several characters act oddly with only some vague explanation.

I also want to repeat here an observation made by another reviewer whose name I cannot remember: almost all the female characters in the book are described primarily through the size, shape, and consistency of their breasts. Simmons has written books with excellent, strong female characters. But he's rather gotten into the spirit of the Heroic Age of Achilles , though there are a couple of female characters in the story that are three-dimensional, including, in my opinion, Helen of Troy.

I honestly wonder if Simmons went a bit mad during the writing of this book, as plot threads were incoherently unresolved, characters suddenly leave the story, foreshadowed entities never appear, and his politics enter the story out of nowhere, seemingly only so he can point out that Islamic Jihadists are evil. What does this have to do with posthumans, quantum gods, and Shakespeare? Nothing really. A disappointing mess. Perhaps it could be rescued if Simmons were to write a third book, but that doesn't seem likely.

I love Dan Simmons, the Hyperion Cantos is probably my all-time favorite sci-fi series, and The Terror is one of my absolute favorite novels of the 21st century. I'm only stating this so that you understand how much it pains me to say that this book is an absolutely trainwreck, shitshow, clusterfuck, and whatever derogatory adjectives you can think of that mean an organized mess.

Jesus Christ, where do I even start with this book? I read Ilium and thought "Okay, that was a bit too busy of a novel with too many subplots and too many characters that didn't seem to go anywhere and a lot of flourishes that Simmons seemed to add just because he wanted to show off how much literary knowledge he had, BUT that was fun and the right kind of crazy and I'm sure he'll tie everything up in the next book because it's almost 900 pages long. Right?" FUCKING WRONG. Simmons just started writing without a clear end in mind and no editor to tell him when to stop, so this book is just a continuous (it feels like infinite) slog of "and thens": and then Zeus grew big and killed people, and then the robots left Mars, and then Achilles did something cool, and then... God, I wanted to go back in time so I could grab Simmons by his ears and shake him and yell "WRAP UP ONE FUCKING STORY AND MAKE IT COHERENT, STOP JUST MAKING SHIT HAPPEN BECAUSE YOU WANT IT TO. And hey, while you're at it, how about you finish a character arc once in a while, instead of just wrapping them all up in the last twenty pages in a very unsatisfying way?" Holy god, this is one of the most frustrating books I have read in a long time but me being the sadomasochist I am I had to finish it and now I can put it on the shelf, forget about it, and change my score of Ilium to two stars.

Also, the white elephants in the room that everyone who's read this is either going to fixate on or try to ignore: Simmons views of Islam and his treatment of all the women and Greek men in this book. First, Islam: this book was clearly influenced by 9/11 and the anti-Muslim paranoia that followed, because guess who the primary villain in this book is? Not a Muslim, not someone who happens to be a Muslim, not an evil Muslim to stand as an example of Islamic radicalism. Nope, the villain is Islam itself, in its entirety. All of Islam is the reason everything is fucked up in the world and every time a character talks about Islam it's to mention how evil it is. One character says something to the effect of "The only good thing the Muslims have invented is [some bullshit plot point invention that I can't even remember because I'm trying to scrub my brain of this book]." Okay, fine dude, you hate Muslims, whatever. At least pretend you're talking about Islam in a fair way and maybe make a passing mention to the contributions to math and science Muslims have made throughout history. But nope, instead just use the laziest arguments and plot devices to illustrate the fact that you think "MUSLIM BAD".

And also, let's get to the depiction of female bodies and Greek male bodies. Every woman in this book is described using the following terms: "puffy nipples", "large breasts", "full hips", "bouncing breasts", "dark areolas", or some combination of those terms. Every man (only the Greek characters) is described as having massive, rippling muscles, a full, well-endowed penis, and very tall. I know sci-fi isn't known for its non-creepy ways of discussing the human form, but this is bad even by those standards. But hey, at least I know now that Dan Simmons wants to be seven feet tall and be as jacked as the Rock and have a penis the size of a horse and he wants to fuck a young, nubile, puffy-nippled nymph.

So yeah. Overlong, insane, lazy, chaotic, xenophobic, sexist. Don't even bother giving this a read. Read Ilium and then write your own sequel in your head, you'll do a better job than this huge stinking turd Dan Simmons dropped on the literary world. Or just go read the Hyperion Cantos because that series is awesome as shit.