Review - Dan Simmons' "Olympos"

Just finished reading Olympos, the second half of the massive Illium-Olympos epic tome by Dan Simmons.

For starters, if you haven't read Illium within, say, a couple months, don't bother with Olympos. I was about a quarter to a third of the way through the book before I remembered who was who and what was going on.

Although I enjoyed Olympos, if you don't have at least a passing familiarity with The Illiad, The Aenid, The Odyssey , the Tempest, and Robert Browning's Caliban Upon Setebos, Or Natural Theology in the Island, well, at least read the Cliff Notes versions first.

I won't recount the story - I don't have all week. But the Trojan War aspect of the story serves no purpose here (or such minimal purpose that it could be relegated to 10 pages needed to get Achilles to Olympos and move on).

The story was too long - the ending to short. It reminded me of any countless episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the writers got to the 45th minute and then said "Oops, we better wrap this up. Find a use for tachyons." Who is Moira, Propero, Sycorax? What happened to Setebos? What happened to Zeus? Why'd the post-humans choose to act like Greek Gods?

Just too many questions. There's fodder here for short stories set within the Illium-Olympos universe - the rise and change of the post-humans, the evacuation of the Jews, the rubicon, etc. Frankly, I find those backstories more likely to hold my interest.

So, if you enjoyed Illium, read Olympos. If you have no idea what I'm talking about - go read Hyperion. Even my wife, no huge sci-fi fan, loved that book/series.