Thick, heavy and to most probably intimidating. Civil War amongst the Greek Gods, War both with the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, robots bent on destruction, space cults, love, lust, retribution and the list goes on and on.
Olympos is the conclusion to the epic Dan Simmons Sci Fi opera Ilium. This volume offers many things to the reader, but the length can be daunting. Quite simply it is a book that you have to look at and tell yourself "it is time to go to war." You can fight the book and everything that is packed in it and win…or you can admit to yourself that it is going to be a long ride and just strap yourself in for the duration.
If this and Ilium are your first Simmons books then you are in for a treat. Reading the first book is a must before embarking on the ride that is Olympos.
One thing about Simmons for the newcomers to his catalogue. ANY Simmons book you read is going to be 100% unapologetic. Simmons is always going to give you his vision and extend the olive branch to the reader. But he is not going to hold it out for very long. You are either there or are going to be left behind. After reading Olympos it will be come clear that you are dealing with not only a writer but an artist, a seeker and a guide to a literary world in which few other authors can lay claim to.
Highly intelligent and leaving no stone unturned, Olympos is pure genius. Be warned though….the content of the book revolves around several interweaving groups of people. From Greek Gods, Demi-Gods, confused humans, inquisitive and quite capable sentient beings, (Moravecs). To put it mildly… anything you can imagine is in this story. Be prepared to ride along with Sonnet loving robots, and love smitten Greek Heroes. The pacing of Olympos can throw you for a loop, be warned. Once the wheels start turning it takes formidable fortitude to keep up with back and forth of the players involved. Fret not…once you see the pattern it is smooth sailing. ( )

Ilium and Olympos are hardly seperate books, so I have included my review for Ilium below since it applies just as much to Olympos as it did to Ilium.

You'd think, that after Ilium, the "magic" would be kind of gone. We have explored Ilium, Mars and Earth a bit, so Olympos should give us some answers. Except, Simmons doesn't seem to care for that at all and starts to throw all kinds of crazy at the reader in this one. If someone should tell me that they hated the book for doing this to them and then even at the end given them no real satisfaction, I would understand completely. However, it didn't bother me at all. I was content just being dragged through this ludicrous story and being left in just as much confusion as I was at the start. I don't really know why, but I feel that that's ok.

(Review for Ilium)

Clearly, Dan Simmons must be insane.

I read the back of the book, I read Simmons before, I should have been prepared.
Seriously though, I loved this book. I read the Iliad during my last year of high school, so a lot of it came back to me reading this, which was nice. I have no knowledge whatsoever about Shakespeare (or Proust) which made some of the more poetically inclined chapters a bit abstract to me. This is of course not Simmons fault, but it did make me feel that I missed out on a piece of the grander story. Also, it did genuinely make me want to know about the plays by Shakespeare, how about that.

There is something about Simmons writing that makes me lose any concept of "sensible". Simmons goes: "Trojan war on parralel universe earth and gods on Mars" and I go: "Okay, go on". Simmons goes: "Robots reflecting on Shakespeare and Proust on the moons of Jupiter" and I go: "Fine". Simmons goes: "Quantum Teleportation, Brane Holes, Little Green Men, Invisibility Hat" and I don't even blink an eye. Any other writer would have got me shouting at the book "Get it together man! This is just getting too much too fast, where in gods name are you going with this?", but for some reason Simmons makes me go: "Sure". This is some kind of magic I thourougly enjoy, and I will be reading much more of Dan Simmons from now on. ( )

This is the second and final installment of a very ambitious work, which encompasses multiple story threads, time frames, galaxies and life forms. We have the Trojan War, overseen by Greek Gods located on Mars, moraveks dispatched from Jovian moons, Shakespearean characters in real life (Prospero and Caliban) and a far future Earth, inhabited by the remnants of the human race, but controlled by post-human constructs.

This book cannot be read “stand alone”, and if you have read and enjoyed the first book, I would definitely finish the job. This book is actually just a straight-line continuation of Ilium. In effect, they act as a single enormous book, which, given the fact that Simmons wrote it, could have been several hundred pages shorter without losing anything.

As I said, it is very ambitious, and at times perhaps excessively so. Some of the action is irretrievably silly and absurd, but not to the extent of making the work unreadable. I’m not sure I would recommend starting the first book, but once you are 800 pages in, it is probably advisable to continue. ( )

REALLY liked this book, the sequel to Ilium. I liked how it had Proust's Remembrance of things past, and In search of lost time, Shakespeare, the Greek and Trojan war, Mars (my favorite planet after Earth), Machu Picchu, . . . Wow. Next is Hyperion. ( )

Rather weaker than its predecessor Ilium. ( )