Olympos by Dan Simmons Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Olympos
Book Review: Complex Story + One Dimensional Characters = Epic Failure
Summary: 1 Stars
I have not finished this book, and I'm not sure that I will. I enjoyed Ilium, this book has been a disappointment.
The characters appear to have no will of their own. They're complete slaves to the plot and are, for all intents and purposes, empty vessels. Perhaps this isn't entirely fair, but let me give you a couple of examples: Helen's rational for attempting to murder Hockenberry is that she wants her fate to be inextricably linked to Troy. Hockenberry finds this confusing: he's not the only one. The rational used to explain away the otherwise incomprehensible behavior of the characters more or less has that effect. The author seems to imply that these classic figures are incomprehensible because their character is alien to us. I have always found that particular argument stupid. Yes; classical people had different values. Nevertheless, they are not incomprehensible. The fact that Homer's epic is still read, studied, and appreciated requires that we are able to identify with, and understand, the classic psyche. The Prospero / Setebos encounter makes little sense, either, and the presence of the Voynix with Prospero is just plain confusing. Why did Prospero go to Mars, anyway? What was the purpose of that meeting? What did Prospero hope to accomplish? It seems that the entire encounter was merely a heavy handed way to introduce Setebos as an oppositional player to Prospero. No attempt to explain the encounter was made.
For the most part, this is the way the book proceeds. Characters are inexplicably thrown into different scenes where their behavior makes little to no sense. The gods, who you would expect to become more faceted, remain one dimensional, The greeks are predicably inconsistent, and the moravecs - do what exactly? It appears that the moravecs real role in this book is to play driver while Simmons moves his character from one plot point (Mars) to the next (Earth).
I suspect that some might find the fact that women are potrayed as essentially sexual objects for male lust as objectionable. Then again, the men aren't much better considering the fact that both Zeus and Achilles are portrayed as both being complete dopes whenever sex is involved. Ideally, the greek gods should be interesting because they share human flaws - they should be complex, not violent, glorified bodying building sex fiends.
In fact, this is probably the most succinct critique of this novel; there is no "Why". It's a frustrating read. I get the sense that the author didn't actually know what he wanted to happen, and that the story got to big for him to resolve. Hashing through page after page of self-indulgent, pseudo-intellectual ramblings gets old.
Get the book if you have to, but be prepared to be disappointed. Unfortunately, I feel the Olympos was so poorly written that it actually pulls Ilium, as a much better effort, down. It fails to successfully resolve the issues presented in the first book, and the characters actually devolve into one dimnesional stereo types one would expect in a High School Sci-Fi writing project. All in all, a frustrating and unrewarding experience. The book is so bad, in fact, that I'm tempted to completely avoid Simmon's work, despite hearing how good the Hyperion series is suppose to be.
If you want a good book Sci Fi book to read, forget this one and get Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
Book Review: Dan Simmons Olympos
Summary: 5 Stars
Dan Simmons completes the Illium with a great story and a character driven conclusion. Those familiar with his work have much to look forward to as Hockenberry, Achilles, Harmon, Moravecs and more finally find out what happens on Mars and Earth and who is behind it. Highly recommended and hopefully a movie will develop out of these two books.Book Review: Dan Simmons is my hero...
Summary: 5 Stars
All I know is, most people wouldn't even attempt to weave together classical literature, fantasy, sci-fi, and contemporary fiction. But Dan Simmons does that in the morning before you wake up, and THEN goes and develops a story that hooks you and won't let you go. With keen imagination, anything is possible- and in this series, this is true more than most.
I cannot write enough "highly"'s to describe how highly I recommend that you read Dan Simmons, so suffice to say that if you enjoy breathing air (ok, if you like breathing air while reading science fiction or fantasy), you'll probably love this series as well as Simmons' Hyperion series. Trust me.
In terms of other reviewers, I can see their point of view. Some of the plots threads are totally out of nowhere, and one could definitely find some form of racism in a lot of the situations in the book. But to focus on them is to lose the point, which seems to me that we are our own worst enemy, yet we usually end up "figuring it out" just in the nick of time. Would you call it an interesting book if it turned out another group wanted to end the world? Pretty much the only safe, politically correct "bad guys" out there these days are sociopaths, white supremecists, and the north koreans. If the book had caucasian bad guys, would that make the book interesting instead of racist? How about a multicultural united nations with token people of every ethnicity and creed fighting a global horror of sociopathic white supremecists allied with the north koreans? That seems like the only safe route, and not a terribly imaginative one. The story focuses on the difference between power and wisdom, and uses a thousands of years old conflict to explain a cataclysm. They "why" of the conflict doesn't really seem to matter except as a point of reference so that us "old style" humans can understand the scale to which this conflict raged.
Don't let the minor details stop you from reading a great, great book (Although I would stop you if you haven't read Ilium first).
Book Review: Dan Simmons' Triumphant Return
Summary: 5 Stars
The good news: the long-awaited sequel to Ilium rocks. The better news: this summer offers not one but two phenomenal sci-fi reads. The other is John Twelve Hawks' relentlessly thrilling debut, The Traveler. Between the two books, sci-fi fans have a wealth of outstanding reading fare to dig into this summer.Book Review: Definitely worth a read.
Summary: 4 Stars
Just finished Olympus up (having read Ilium last year) They are both pretty powerful books, setting up a massive stage, and executing the story across the galaxy. The books themselves, while complete, however, ended somewhat abruptly, leaving several hanging plot threads, and hinting at either another story, or just that the author got tired. Can't really say for sure.
Definitely worth a read, but just be prepared for a bit of head-scratching when you're done.