wilderthan | Review - Ilium and Olympos

I read these books -- Ilium and Olympos, by Dan Simmons -- very bittily, because I couldn't get into them very well. I thought they were okay. The story was absorbing enough once I forced myself to concentrate on it. Retelling the Iliad in a sci-fi environment is something I've considered for myself, and it's interesting to see how it's done and changed here. The technology, to my mind, made things a bit too easy, though. And if some things had been cut out, it would've made it more readable and made it make more sense. For example: why, if your only motivation so far has been to get back to your pregnant wife, and you have important information to deliver, would you go into a radioactive wreck where you know you'll receive a fatal dose of radiation, just out of curiosity? You wouldn't. That threw me out of the story quite a bit.

The fact that there are a lot of literal dei ex machinis doesn't really help. The "everybody is okay, and everything is better than before!" ending really doesn't work for me, either.

(Also, inaccuracies don't endear it to me. Calypso and Circe were not the same person. Odysseus stayed with Circe for a year on Aeaea, and she willingly let him go. Odysseus stayed with Calypso for seven years on Ogygia, and she had to be forced to let him go. If nothing else, look at the two different personalities and relationships there!)