Olympos
2005
- gods, greek
- greek mythology
- greek gods
- fiction
- science fiction
- imaginary wars and battles
- mythology, greek
- time travel
- roman américain
- science-fiction américaine
The story
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 one observer -- Twenty-first Century scholar Thomas Hockenberry -- stirred the bloody brew; before an enraged Achilles joined forces with his archenemy Hector; and before the fleet-footed mankiller turned his murderous wrath on Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo, and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators.Now, all bets are off. Dan Simmons, the multiple-award-winning author of The Hyperion Cantos, returns with the eagerly anticipated conclusion to his critically acclaimed, Hugo Award-nominated sf epic Ilium. A novel breathtaking in its scope and conception, Olympos ingeniously imagines a catastrophic future where immortal "post-humans" high atop the real Olympos Mons on Mars restage the Trojan War for their own amusement even while the sad remnants of mortal humankind are forced to confront their ultimate annihilation.For untold centuries, those few old-style humans remaining on Earth have never known strife, toil, or responsibility, each content to live his or her allocated hundred years of life in unquestioning leisure. But virtually overnight and for reasons beyond their comprehension, the world around them has changed forever. The voynix -- terrible and swift creatures that once catered to their every need -- are now massing in the millions with but one terrifying purpose: the total extermination of the human race.Having traveled farther and learned more of the wondrous and terrible truth of their world than any others of their kind, Ada and Daeman -- with the aid of the crafty and mysterious warrior once called Odysseus, now called Noman -- must marshal the pathetic defenses of Ardis Hall in anticipation of the onslaught of the murderous voynix. And they must do so without Harman, Ada's lover and the father of her unborn child, who wanders the Earth on a great od
What it’s like
Dense, grandiose and dusty with classical erudition, its pages alternate between sun-scorched Trojan plains where bronze armour clangs and blood sprays, and the cold, airless red of Mars, where machines and gods talk in long, ornate speeches. The prose is baroque and confident, thick with Homeric epithets, quotations and rhythmic catalogues of ships, wounds and weapons, so the reading feels like wading through a tapestry rather than skimming a thriller. Chapters are long and rhythms shift sharply between sprawling battle set-pieces and quiet, melancholy scenes of a shrinking human world on Earth, where gentle pastoral leisure is gradually swallowed by menace. Its violence is frequent and graphic: slaughter, dismemberment and gory combat recur throughout, and there is sexual content and divine cruelty, with a steady undercurrent of dread about extinction. Vibe: epic, cerebral, grimly awed, a slow-burning sense of doom. It suits a long, uninterrupted stretch of attention, such as a quiet week reading in a cold season or a long flight, not a gentle bedtime story. It is for readers who love Homer and classical allusion, enjoy big ideas about time and posthumanity, and can tolerate heavy, unsparing brutality in exchange for scale and ambition.
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