What the hell happened? Dan Simmons's Ilium was a tremendously fun book. It had its weaknesses, but it also had an infectious narrative and a very interesting universe. Olympos, the sequel (and conclusion) to Ilium, shares none of its predecessor's strengths and grossly exaggerates its weaknesses.

Where should I begin?

1. Olympos is undisciplined. The first book sprawled, but managed to tie its narratives together into a few concrete mysteries. This book, by contrast, is inexcusably long-winded, rambling, and confusing. (How many Earths? How many Mars?) An early and egregious offender is Chapter 11, which is devoted entirely to explaining how robots are named. Why do I care?

2. Olympos is appallingly obsessed with juvenile, gratuitous sex. Take, for instance, a scene between Hera and Zeus (which, come to think of it, fills up yet another entire chapter) that I can only describe as Greek god porn. Or take the most awful example of all: a scene near the end where the fate of the world rests on a protagonist's need to have sex with a comatose woman. I am not exaggerating. As best as I can remember, the character agrees to perform his priapic duty after some random guy says, "There is only one way to save the world." Pause. "You must have sex with her." That line made me lose my faith in humanity.

3. Olympos contains highly implausible explanations. One of the best parts of Ilium was the mystery surrounding so much of the story: the origins of the voynich, the purpose of the resurrected humans, etc. Olympos clears up many of these mysteries. Unfortunately, it does so with ham-fisted, wholly incredible explanations. The explanation for the voynich is the best (meaning worst): Simmons manages to be anti-Muslim, anti-French, and anti-European at the same time as being nearly incomprehensible. Even worse, Simmons deals with this implausibility in two ludicrous ways. First, he employs long passages of clunky exposition that grind the book's narrative to a halt. Second, he literally has characters say, "Wow, this is implausible. But I guess it must be true." Again, I'm not exaggerating. You can actually identify the exact spots where Simmons (the good writer) noticed that Simmons (the bad writer) had just written some crap, because the characters engage in little meta-dialogues about how ridiculous the book has become.

4. Olympos is totally random. Approximately 500 pages into the book, a nuclear submarine appears. (Seriously.) Nobody has ever mentioned this submarine before. Nobody has ever mentioned nuclear warheads. And yet this submarine and its payload of doom becomes a crucial part of this two-part series' climax. Why? Why? I mean, my God, these submarines threaten the universe (again, no exaggeration) and you don't mention them until the last 200 pages? That's not even the most egregiously random element to the book--although it will be the one that makes you realize that this book is digging itself ever deeper.

5. Olympos kills all the best characters in Ilium. Well, not literally. (At least not all of them.) But the characters who were so much fun in Ilium--Hockenberry, the moravecs, Ada--start shuffling around aimlessly in Olympos. This becomes most obvious near the end of the book, where Simmons clearly teleports characters around just so he can have a viewpoint character at the place where he wants the story to continue its crash and burn.

6. Olympos has a craptacular ending. I am a firm believer in the resurrectionary power of good endings. No such beast lives here. Let me put it this way. You know the scene in the SNES game Chrono Trigger where Lavos rises from underground? Yeah, well, the ending of Olympos reminded me a little of that, except that that 10-second SNES cutscene had more heart, coherence, and emotional power.

I would still recommend that people read Ilium, which is an excellent trashy science fiction novel. But for God's sake, don't read the sequel. Just imagine how you would like Ilium to continue. I assure you that your thoughts--however nebulous and ill-formed--are superior to this book.

Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu