Simmons is closer to Larry Niven, whose obsession with “rishathra” torpedoed any enjoyment I could get from the Ringworld series.

What is it with cis white male science-fiction authors and an obsession with sexytimes? Asimov was conservative enough at least to merely be sexist in his descriptions of women. Oh, and then of course, there’s all the sex stuff. Olympos largely jettisons these themes in favour of action the themes mostly seem to trend towards “lots of tech good, but play nice with other branches of humanity” without much clarity there either. My praise for the first book centred on how Simmons explores the nature of literacy and the benefits and drawbacks it has bequeathed on humanity. It’s just that most of them aren’t great. I’ll give this to Dan Simmons: Olympos offers a lot of explanations for the mysteries broached in Ilium. In the background lurks Setebos, some kind of alien incorporated as a brain with a terrifying number of hands for limbs. This includes Ada, now preggo with Harman’s baby, and Harman himself, who quickly becomes embroiled further with the mysterious beings known as Prospero and Ariel. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the “old style” humans need to rediscover a lot of technology and skills fast, because their former servitor robots the voynix are really keen on killing all the humans. Into this fray come the moravecs, part-human and part-machine, descendants of machines sent out to Jupiter prior to humanity’s leap into posthumanity. He has had a part in convincing the Trojans and Greeks to unite against the Olympian Gods, who are actually posthumans. First we have Thomas Hockenberry, a “scholic” rebuilt from the writings and DNA of a 21st-century scholar to bear witness to the ersatz Trojan War playing out on a terraformed Mars.

Picking up where Ilium left off, Olympos has a lot of plot threads/characters to summarize, so bear with me. As with Ilium, I almost gave up on it-but I soldiered on, and honestly? Not worth it. This is what clinched my dislike of Olympos. Not only would it have refreshed me on the plot, but I actually mentioned the uncomfortable, rapey, male-gazeyness of Simmons’ writing in that review. I really should have read my review of Ilium before diving into Olympos. Sometimes, Kara, you need to listen to yourself more.

Olympos simmons