[Skywalker]

I finally read Dan Simmons' Ilium/ Olympos duet and thought I'd post a review. I have read Simmons' before, but only the Hyperion quartet. When I came to Ilium/ Olympos about a year ago, I was looking for a great, sweeping, mind-boggling, erudite read along the lines of Hyperion (which got me hooked onto the poetry of Keats).

While the duet delivered a little bit, I am on the whole, unimpressed and angry.

I must say here that I have a passing familiarity with Shakespeare and with the Iliad/ Odyssey so I was never lost when character names were thrown about like so much chaff... but I can imagine an SFF reader who hasn't read them in some way shape or form and will end up bewildered. To anyone brave enough to attempt a reading - at the very least, watch Wolfgang Peterson's Troy.

Now Ilium to me was a quick read... reminded me a lot of Hyperion or Endymion in that it had fast paced action in multiple outwardly unrelated POVs, but not everything made sense. Olympos wasn't. It was laborious. I started it right after Ilium a year ago... then quit. Then last week I reread Ilium and went through Olympos with an iron will (you'll need it too) to finish... by the end I was skipping pages in the hope of answers... and I never - NEVER - skip pages. Not even in R Scott Bakker's worst philosophical rants (or in John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged!).

In the end, I was angry. Angry because it could all have been so much better... the set up was all there... and then the mediocrity/ plain ridiculousness set in. So this is a vent... and since the books are a couple of years old I figure I wont avoid spoilers.


Ilium

Four stars on five for this one. So long as you think its going somewhere.

Of the three parallel storylines, I found the vision of post-Apocalyptic Earth with the Eloi-like 'old style humans' amusing. I was really into the other two stories... I totally got into the moravec storyline... Mahnmut and Orphu's discussions on Shakespeare and Proust were riveting and I actually looked up such things as Shakespeare's sonnets and Proust's monologues on wikipedia and resolved to read Proust. I liked the character of Hockenberry... I loved the way the siege of Ilium (Troy) progressed and the idea of scholics being resurrected.

By the end of the book, I was hooked... OF COURSE I was going to read Olympos. I had my niggling doubts... Simmons seemed to be going way out on a limb with the whole Olympian omnipotent gods staging the Iliad thing... but then the Shrike and the Time Tombs had been as much of a stretch in Hyperion, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Olympos

Alas! Alack! Sing O muse of the dejected reader that readeth through thine doorstopper only to shake his head in sorrow!

Two stars on five for this pipe dream.

I mean... I get it. SFF is all about imagination... not all SFF need be hard. But there is sublime, and there is ridiculous. And to this book, that line is so far on the wrong side, it is a dot.

I have too many problems with the way things got written in this volume, but here are the highlights:

My problems with the books

1) The pseudo secret in the book on which the plot credibility hinges - Post humans became Olympians, used the Trojan War to sate/ imprison Setebos is plain dumb. I can see post-humans wanting god-like powers... but I do NOT see them wanting the exact god features of an extinct religion which would be at least 5000 years in the past for them.

2) So much stuff happens off stage. Where to begin with this... sigh. best not to. But the whole unexplained paradox of Odysseus shooting Odysseus was irritating.

3) Achilles' plot arc is just plain Simmons on pot. It is tangential, its end careless, and overall just a waste. I was going WTF? when the last mention of Achilles in the book was in an Iskaral Pust and Mogora type conversation! Similarly ridiculous was Circe coming in from nowhere and Odysseus running away with her to park and make out. WTF? Lots of WTF moments.

4) Halfway through the book I was confused. I had initially thought Ilium and Olympos were on Mars. Then at one point through Ilium and Ardis hall are on Earth. Then turns out Ilium was on a parallel Earth. Sheesh... after a time I stopped caring. I consider myself a reasonably coherent reader who can get even SE's foreshadowing hints at plot developments... but this one beat my comprehension.

5) I did not like the resolution of the Earth story either... the faxed Jews storyline was unnecessary (I thought)... the whole Khan Ho Tep's bride twist was like midichlorians in The Phantom Menace... and the climax underwhelming.

6) Most of all I guess I was disappointed that Simmons just doesn't say anything meaningful about his primary obsessions - a technological singularity, post-humanity and radical evolution, and their moral outcomes - that he hasn't already said in the Hyperion Quartet.

Sigh... enough of a rant. I guess I'll rant again if anyone shows up defending these books.

And now I shall go hunting for a copy of Proust and a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets at the bookstore.

Out.

[caladanbrood]

The second book didn't make a whole lot of sense, sure, but I really enjoyed both, personally.

To each one's own, eh

[polishgenius]

I so want to read those, but so don't want to put money in a raving Islamophobe's pocket. It's a dilemma. Except not really, I'm not buying them.

[caladanbrood]

I'm sure he'll suffer from the £5 you're denying him.

[polishgenius]

Ooooh yeah. Financially crippling for him.

I'm under no illusions that he cares. But I do, and I'd feel bad about giving money to a man I disagree with that strongly.

[Binder of Demons]

I'd say yeah, save your money. I also thought the first book was pretty good, laid out an interesting storyline, and then went completely haywire in the second book.
There were some interesting pieces, but overall it felt pretty incoherent. The robots were the best bit of the books, but the actual explanation of the whole story, and it's conclusions were a mess.

I really loved Hyperion, but I got the impression in this series, that the story was an excuse for some pseudo philosophical musings. Some worked, most didn't.

They're not books I'd bother to recommend to anyone other than hardcore Dan Simmons fans. Pity really, cos there was definitely potential there for a cracking story.

[Aptorian]

Really people, an immortal Achilles kicking so much ass, stuck in tartaros and killing gods on Olympos...

I was happy just reading those parts.

So much awesome.

[lfex]

polishgenius;214269 said:

I so want to read those, but so don't want to put money in a raving Islamophobe's pocket. It's a dilemma. Except not really, I'm not buying them.

That is what second hand stores are for. And, yes, I liked the books, even if the ending was rather incoherent.

[drinksinbars]

yeah i read these books and loved them, recommended them to a few friends, and one loved them two hated them. strangely it was those people who care about philisophical crap that were bothere dby the books. i tend to zone out all that crap( getting increasingly harder in modern books given its prevailance in literature at the moment) and just enjoyed the shear scale and excitment of the setting, which was awesome.

The achilles storyline ruled as well:D

[Riot]

Dan Simmons is one of my favourite writers. Illuim & Olympos are very good books. No where as good as the Hyperion Cantos, but than very little is.

Have read both books twice, after a gap of about a year, and i have to say that i enjoyed it far more the second time than the first.

Sure, some of his ideas are weird, and out there, but than that's what sci-fi is all about. In this case he's created a world around Homer's epic and gone on to mind fu*k us all with links to Shakesphere, and other weird sh*t.

BTW. The Terror is one of the outstanding books of the year. simply superb