"Olympos" by Dan Simmons

Much longer than the first part "Ilium" - "Olympos" is a difficult read, and less rewarding than "Ilium."  The stories start to intertwine and unify, but differently from the narratives spun in "Ilium."  Firstly, Thomas Hockenberry, PhD, barely appears in the 900+ pages of "Olympos" and when he does, it is mostly non-consequential, simply an observer speaking his thoughts aloud.  Mahmut and Orfu, the two most likeable characters in the entire saga, get a bit more screen time, but not that much either, besides saving the day by cutting the submarine "Sword of Allah" into pieces and removing the 768 black hole warheads, while at the same time saving Harmon and Ardas Hall's residents.

And what about Prospero?  Noman says towards the end that the entity known as Prospero is completely mad, but does that mean all its actions before were that of a mad entity?  And it just disappears after Sycorax/Circe sail away on fusion reactors built into their asteroid with Noman only to appear at the end of the book to play the Shakespearean character in an actual play?  Setebus just leaves when Caliban tells it that The Quiet is coming?  Just like that? Not even final words (except the ones scratched in the organic blue ice by Caliban)?  Why did Caliban not leave with his mother Sycorax and Noman? What was the purpose of the organic blue ice by Setebos? Why did The Quiet never come?

And the 'genius' creation effect is well overused and over-hyped.  The idea that the literary/fantasy characters are real and alive in some parallel universes is just as silly and simplistic as the idea of infinite number of "parallel" universes (whatever "parallel" means to you).  The logical conclusion of having infinite number of universes where infinite number of possibilities are being played out is chaos and madness.  Different 'dimensions' are sometimes substituted for 'parallel' universes, which lead to just about the same result of insanity.  For all practical purposes, there's only one universe, and it has 3+1 dimensions.... and that's it.   Please work with that material budding sci-fi writers - the quadrillion galaxies with 100 billion stars each is large enough playing field for any purpose.

This dilogy is of a lesser quality than the Hyperion/Endymion quintology, including the literary references used.  While Hyperion relied on parallels with Keat's Hyperion and Chaucer's Tales, which the author was apparently very intimately familiar with, and used them tastefully and appropriately, the Ilium/Olympos dilogy uses over a dozen different writers and literary works, often with very dubious connections and relevance, making the references feel weak, artificial and forced.  Simmons is very familiar with Shakespeare and Homer, but not as much with the other works and authors he uses.  The personification of The Tempest characters as monsters/gods/avatars does not work very well, especially mixed with Homeric characters and references, even though Simmons makes this one of the main pillars of the novel.

The following writers and works are referenced in Ilium/Olympos, divided in 3 groups, primary, secondary and tertiary (the primary ones being requisite to fully understand the dilogy, the secondary adding relatively large amount understanding, but not being essential, while the tertiary works will help the reader understand occasional tangential references):

Primary:
     The Iliad, Homer
     The Tempest, William Shakespeare
     The Time Machine, H. G. Wells
     Caliban Upon Setebos, Robert Browning
   
Secondary:
   In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
   Ada: or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
   Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson
   Ulysses, James Joyce
   Sonnets, Shakespeare 


Tertiary:
   A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
   Henry IV, William Shakespeare
   Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
   Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi
   Queen Mab, Percy Shelly.
   Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
   Works and Days, Hesiod.

The book ending with staging "The Tempest" at Ardas Town with Prospero playing himself was cheeky, very cheeky.