Olympos

Though I was two decades late with my review, I thought that Ilium was a great ride. Indeed, its endgame raised the stakes even higher, which in turn raised my expectations for Olympos. It looked as though the grand scale of the story would take on an even wider scope in the second volume. To all ends and pruposes, it seemed that Ilium was just the set-up for what would be an even more ambitious work of science fiction in the sequel and I couldn't wait to sink my teeth it!

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. Seldom has a sequel so failed to live up to the potential of its predecessor. In many ways, it feels as though Olympos is the middle book in a trilogy, only there will never be a third installment. Given how high the bar was raised in Ilium, this is a major disappointment.

Here's the blurb:

Beneath the gaze of the gods, the mighty armies of Greece and Troy met in fierce and glorious combat, scrupulously following the text set forth in Homer's timeless narrative. But that was before twenty-first-century scholar Thomas Hockenberry stirred the bloody brew, causing an enraged Achilles to join forces with his archenemy Hector and turn his murderous wrath on Zeus and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators; before the swift and terrible mechanical creatures that catered for centuries to the pitiful idle remnants of Earth's human race began massing in the millions, to exterminate rather than serve.

And now all bets are off.

One of the main reasons I've waited this long to read this duology is because Dan Simmons took a lot of heat back in 2005 when Olympos was released. He was accused of islamophobia and there was a shitstorm as the SJW scifi clique pissed on him and claimed he was a bigot, that he wasn't the same man/writer following the harrowing events of 9/11. Given the proportions of the mudslinging, I was expecting the author to shit on Muslims from start to finish. I was expecting Islam to be a major part of this novel. I mean, those people made Simmons sound like a complete nutjob back then. Imagine my surprise when Muslims are mentioned in only a few paragraphs. We learn that a fundamentalist Islamic Caliphate is responsible for the Rubicon and the long war associated with its aftermath, and that a bunch of Muslim fucktards tried to usher in the end of the world when they realized they couldn't ultimately win. I couldn't quite believe that a few paragraphs elaborating on the back story of the world could generate such a backlash. Twenty years down the line, it's even more mind-blowing.

In my review of Ilium, I said that the worldbuilding was quite impressive, the more so since we had to wait for the sequel for Simmons' universe to come fully realized. I said that the book was a convoluted tale that echoed with depth. And yet, for all the questions raised in the first volume, Olympos provides very little in terms of answers. So little, in fact, that the novel is often more frustrating and enlightening in that regard. Instead of revealing how everything came to be the way it is, you get a few tidbits of information that serve as answers and a whole lot of nothing regarding everything else. It's not just that Simmons is phoning it in, so to speak, but it's like he's not even trying to shine some light on key plot points on which the entire story hinges. Why did the post-humans turn themselves into Greek Gods, of all things, and why did they re-enact the Trojan War for their amusement? Who or what is Prospero. We know he's the avatar of the Earth's logosphere, but what was the whole point of having him in the story? Who or what is Sycorax? What is Setebos and exactly what happened with it? What is the Quiet and why is Setebos so afraid of it? How did Caliban end up on Earth? What were the Voynix and why did they act the way they did? The same can be asked of the calibani? Why was Harman taken on a world tour, only for readers to learn so little about the past? How did Odysseus end up on Earth? And the list goes on. With so many mysteries to solve, why did the author decide to provide so few answers?

It's never boring, mind you. Olympos is as well written as Ilium. It's just that the sequel keeps you wanting more and never really delivers on any of its storylines. The confusion and the frustration grow as you near the end when it becomes evident that Simmons elected not to provide the information that would allow readers to make sense of everything that has transpired over the course of more than 1500 pages.

Thankfully, Olympos does offer some resolution of sorts, but it all feels hollow because you can't really tell what the hell happened and why. Given the quality and originality of Ilium, this book is an unworthy sequel that failed to deliver on basically every front. Which is too bad, because it had the potential to be so much more.

The final verdict: 6.5/10

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