Un librone, anche considerata la lunghezza. La storia è avvincente, come sa fare Simmons, anche se un pò più intricata di Ilium. Mi ha lasciato un pò perplesso la conclusione, che ho trovato un pò affrettata, considerando quanto si dilungato Simmons in certe discussioni su Shakespeare! In certi passaggi ho avuto qualche difficoltà a seguire lo sviluppo temporale: siamo nel presente, nel passato o nel futuro? Ma complessivamente è un libro da leggere. I personaggi sono molto belli e interessanti e sono calati in mondi affascinanti.

Величавото двутомие “Илион” и “Олимп” е фантастика от друго измерение!: http://www.knigolandia.info/2009/11/b...

В “Олимп” нещата продължават да се развиват ударно – марсианският Олимп е обсаден от гърци, троянци и моравеки, които пък изпращат и експедиция към Земята, там се завръща чудовището Сетебос, което се храни с ужаса, натрупан по места като Аушвиц и Хирошима, войниксите от слуги стават врагове на хората и започват методично да ги избива. По някое време боговете се изпоскарват помежду си и започват “гражданска” война, докато Зевс спи непробудно, измамен от Хера за пореден път…

A very satisfying conclusion to this Ilium duology. The duology as a whole has so impressed me: the level of complexity and story-weaving is astounding.

There are some subplots for which I'm still not sure of their purpose, although I can usually spin up my own imagination to come up with some explanations. Maybe that's why they don't bother me quite like they bother so many other reviewers....all in all, it sure was a page turner after getting past a slow start.

P.S.: I have to say that his portayal of the Amazons, especially Penthesilea, was highly disappointing. But that was such a minor part in the story, that I decided it shouldn't affect my star rating, which should reflect the book as a whole.

"Олимп" и "Илион" са играчка в ръцете на боговете , но кои богове?Хората дръзнали да станат такива или тези които играят с човешките съдби .
И тук както в "Хиперион" Симънс дръзва да посочи едно високо технологично бъдеще след хиляди години , но докато в тетралогията е много по -лиричен , тук е доста пиперлив в думите си .
Хора, Богове , технологии, светове които се размиват , сякаш си в една гигантска холограма .

Mind-blowing, adrenaline-pumping, world-expanding science fiction at its very best. Dan Simmons has big ideas and grand schemes, and he is never content to simply tell a story; no, he must weave it into our own reality in a seamless fashion, reaching backward and forward in time and literature. In this story (I’m grouping the previous book, Ilium, into the “story”), he brings together Shakespeare, Homer, Proust, quantum teleportation, terraforming, robots, and so much more. Each new bit that unfolds reveals new amazements, filled with both horror and wonder. I definitely recommend both Ilium and Olympos to any fan of science fiction. Or Greek/Trojan history. Or Shakespeare. Or ignore all of the connections and enjoy it for its own sake!

Wow, where to begin with this book? This book was a heaping pile of steaming poo, and at nearly 900 pages, you really have to commit to that poo if you're going to make it to the end.

I despised this book so much that it actively makes me angry to look back on. I should mention, I'm a huge fan of Simmons' book Hyperion, and I really like complex, epic novels. When someone compared Ilium and Olympos to the Hyperion series, I decided to give it a shot.

Let me just say- this book feels like a crappy knock off of both Hyperion and an Ayn Rand novel, and it just does not work well. It has elements of things that people like from those books, but they are used in such a clumsy way that it feels forced and uncomfortable.

It has all of the complexity that makes Hyperion so remarkable, but none of the payoff. I patiently followed the numerous subplots for all 900 pages, and when I got to the end, I was so surprised and disappointed at the number of them that got dropped or went nowhere at all. It’s just sloppy writing.

On top of that, Simmons seems to have no grasp of subtlety in this book. If he wants you to know that he means a character to be irritating, nearly every time he mentions them, he will describe them as shrill, whining, talking too much, etc. You get it after the first time or two, but no, Simmons REALLY wants to be sure you get it.

At the same time that the book is waaaay too overstated in much of the characterization and points it’s trying to make, it also manages to leave way too much to the imagination as far as actually making sure the plot can be followed. There were several moments towards the end where one of the many subplots would come to a climax, or a big reveal of a 300-page mystery, and I’d be on the edge of my seat, and suddenly I’d find myself rereading the scene. At first, I thought maybe I had smoked too much weed, but no, Simmons had just skipped over part of the explanation and left you to figure it out for yourself based on his scattered explanation. This meant that of the subplots that actually DID resolve, many of them were just disappointing and unsatisfying.

And finally, we gotta talk about the elephant(s) in the room, which are the pervasive sexism, homophobia, body shaming, and Islamophobia in this book. As a woman, I’ve accepted by now that I need to take the dude-dominated world of sci fi with a grain of salt, because there’s just a ton of subtle sexism in many books, especially those written before 1980. Even so, this book shocked and disturbed me with its treatment of the female characters. There was a pretty vile rape scene in Ilium, and much to my surprise, this book got so much worse. I won’t go into too much detail, since this review is already too long, but Simmons reveals some pretty major hangups with very large groups of people in Olympos, and THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 2005. He can’t even to be a product of old-timey societal norms, it’s just inappropriate.

And while I’m on the topic of what’s inappropriate, my jaw almost hit the floor when I encountered an awkwardly thorough description of an adolescent girl’s breasts towards the end. I mean, come on Dan Simmons, what the hell was that?

In conclusion, a team of very qualified editors maybe could have saved this book, but as it stands...I just don’t know what happened here. There are a lot of things you can do with the time it would take to read this massive book, my recommendation would be to do pretty much anything else and save yourself the effort.

This book was bonkers. Definitely wish I had read Ilium and Olympos back-to-back because there was a lot that I couldn’t remember from Ilium which bit me in the ass a bit. Still a solid conclusion though it took a bit to get there.

While I enjoyed many parts of Illium (Book 1), by the time I got to Olympos, the story was just getting a bit much, even by the standards of Dan Simmons. I really liked his science fiction take on the Greek gods and the Trojan War, but adding to it characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest (Prospero, Ariel, Caliban - as well as Setebos and Sycorax, mentioned but not appearing in the play), self-aware robots from Jupiter and the Asteroid Belt, and Eloi-type humans coping with a fall of their (in a manner of speaking) civilization, alternated between distracting and contrived, especially at the end, when the author ties everything up in a neat bow. I'm normally a big fan of Simmons' work, but I could barely finish this one. I give it a high 2 stars - parts I liked but I am unlikely to re-read this particular novel.

That is to say, if you want a book that's entertaining and well crafted up until the last 50 pages or so, then this is the book for you. Much like "The Return of the King," it would have been better if it had ended 45 minutes earlier.

Olympos started off better than its predecessor, Ilium, mostly because I was already invested in the story, having a novel's worth of exposition out of the way. Other than a bit of clunky exposition that reminds us what happened in the previous novel, and one immensely clunky section where one character figures out what's been going on and spends a couple of pages explaining it, it was well written and really kept me interested. About 250 pages from the end it got ridiculously, page-turning, couldn't-put-it-down good. I was riveted and was on my way to giving this novel a rave review. But the climax came a bit abruptly, and the following 50 pages drug on with not terribly good resolution. Some of the chapters at the end were down-right awful, employing story-telling tricks that I remember using in my 8th grade creative writing assignments.

Overall, the book was really good. I would've given it 3.5 if I could have. But the last part of the book soured the whole experience for me and I'm a little bitter. Worth reading, but read Ilium first.

Very disappointing. None of the various plot lines set up in the first book get a satisfactory ending. Plus a ton of post 9/11 era islamaphobic rhetoric out of nowhere with a healthy sprinkling of the worst sort of neoliberal brain rot.

I really wanted to like this book !

I almost couldn't believe this book was written by the same author as Hyperion and Ilium. The various plots meandered while none of the big mysteries were answered. And where did all the misogynism come from? Simmons has always written such strong female characters. Suddenly Helen of Troy is calling herself a cunt and the formerly powerful/strong modern-day human female characters are suddenly crying and moody all of the time, while the men take front-seat on the adventures. And the Goddesses all become slutty, contemptible temptresses. The term "bitch" gets thrown around way too often by Achilles and the gods. Oh, and worst of all, there's a male character that is forced by a wizard to rape a sleeping female character in chryo-sleep because his ejaculate is the only way to wake her. And it's critical to the survival of the Earth for her to be awakened. So the dude wretches and forces himself to do the horrible deed. And hundreds of pages later at the end of the book the awakened female character has literally made no contribution to the plot. She pops into the picture and just walks around with an invisibility cloak on occasionally. What happened to her being the most important piece to human survival?

Then there are anti-Islam and anti-gay slurs in the last 1/3 of the book. Not to mention his absurd over-use of the term "interdict." I didn't count, but I bet it was in the hundreds. This book really disappointed me on a number of levels. I'll be very cautious before picking up anything new he writes.

meh. What started off as an interesting series about the trojan war in the future on mars degenerated into some serious sci-fi wankery. Plot holes, loose threads and a lack of resolution plague Olympos. Characters become flat and annoying. You might as well just call this deus ex machina because there are about a half dozen times in the novel when "all seems lost" but then one race or another of futuristic saviors shows up with impossible technology to save the day. It gets very tedious and very obvious, taking away any real sense of danger for the protagonists. Simmons seems to have gotten in completely over his head with plot and sci fi ideas, and then just tried to weasel out of it as quickly as possible.