Olympos
by Dan Simmons
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dan SimmonsEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-06-28
ISBN: 0380978946
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Book Reviews of Olympos
Book Review: 1950s Space Opera
Summary: 2 Stars
I really, really don't want to, but I still have to agree with some of the previous reviews. After the quite engaging and interesting "Illium" the sequel comes as a major disappointment. Whereas in Simmons's "Hyperion"/"The Fall of Hyperion" novels the second instalment really concluded the narrative - not just by coherently tying up loose ends, but also by offering stunning plot-twists and a deeper exploration of the world created in the fist novel - "Olympos" turns out to be a complete waste of potential. None of the mysteries generated in "Illium" are satisfyingly resolved, nor does this novel offer any new perspective on the world of "Illium" and its inhabitants. Besides some lame and positively colonialist intertextual references to Shakespeare and Homer (apparently the only authors next to some other white males who will survive the test of time) the novel does not have much to offer. The plot just goes nowhere, the characters, especially Hockenberry, are reduced to caricatures, and the complex context story hinted at in the first novel just disintegrates into nothingness. Simmons is too much of a classicist to grand him an experimental excurse into postmodern narrative techniques of controlled incoherence. The arbitrary, illogical, and sometimes nonsensical plot construction (what the hell was this whole submarine storyline all about?) is not an attempt at ironic self-deconstruction, it is just bad writing. Additionally the racist-undertones, anti-Islamic resentments, homophobic/sexist one-liners, and soft-porn sex scenes give the novel a reactionary 1950s SF touch. It's a shame to see the very author who revolutionized the space opera in the late 1980s return the genre to its male/white/conservative origins without offering any of its excitements.
Two points for some nice set-pieces. But that's all there is in the end.
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