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Title: Escape from Olympus
Series: Falken Chronicles #2
Author: Piers Platt
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 278
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
Syrio Falken is now working as a tourguide. But not just a humdrum, run of the mill tourguide. He’s a tourguide to the planet Olympus. Only 2 companies have the rights to such a thing, for you see, Olympus is home to dragons. These dragons hunt by sound and are apparently immortal. They have been studied for years by scientists and the only facilities on the planet are the science facilities. Olympus is classified as a “off limits” world and has an array of orbital weapons to keep interlopers out.
The tour companies use “proxies” to give their clients a thrill of a lifetime. The clients climb into incubation wombs on the spaceship and wake up in a proxy body in a shuttle that is on its way to the surface. Falken guides his clients and basically lets them see how long they can survive on the surface.
During the current trip, something goes disastrously wrong. A bomb goes off on the actual spaceship and it crashes to the surface. With only one set of proxies available, and the other tour company out of action, and oxygen running low, Falken has to get his charges from the crashed ship to the science station. In their real bodies! Whooooo!
At the same time, the ships that should be rescuing them are either sabotaged or taken over by “pirates”. It is all at the behest of one speculating investor who wants to get his hands on a pair of dragons and all the research on them, so as to market an immortality drug which he can sell for trillions.
Falken and Co make it back to the science station, and Falken’s boss sacrifices himself right at the end so they all can make it. Of course, once at the station, they come under the control of the badguys and they are forced to go capture some dragons. All the proxies have been eaten, so it is For Real now. Lots of the badguys get eaten and the goodguys fix their ship and make a surprise rescue.
Falken takes care of all the badguys on Olympus and rescues a girl. Said girl turns out to be the daughter of the man who was falsely sent to Oz in the previous book and she reveals that he has never been released.
| My Thoughts: |
Thankfully, there was no “Fake out! It was all a simulation” like in the first book. If there had been, you would have heard some serious words coming out of my mouth.
Basically, Jurassic Planet. I loved it. Loads of people get eaten and torn apart and there is mayhem to fulfill all your needs. Between the proxies and real people, there was more than enough carnage to satisfy my need for violence. Not quite on the Neal Asher level, but way better than the first book.
The Investor Guy was written a bit over the top in being “Evil” but anyone with Money is now the Nobility of our Culture and as such has a target painted on their back. Felt kind of cheap but since I’d qualify this series as Pulp-SF, not unexpected or truly detrimental, just annoying. Kind of like those evil sorcerers from the Conan stories who did despicable things “just because”.
I’m not sure how I feel about the end where it is revealed that Weaver is real and still in prison. Considering that the next book is titled Return to Oz it’s pretty obvious what it will be about.
Overall, I had fun reading this book and enjoyed it more than the first one. Won’t ever re-read this though, as it doesn’t have that level of staying power.
★★★☆½
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
Jurassic Planet, but with dragons? Sounds awesome!
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It was pretty fun over all…
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Having fun while it lasts 🙂 I like it that you so clearly take into account the re-read factor in your reviews 🙂 A re-read factor is a key element of judging a book for me as well, I’m just not so open about it 😉
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The fun has already ended 😦 The Crippled God has crippled me, bleh…
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Wasn’t that bad 😉 I still have to do a re-read, though admittedly after reading Cook I somehow lost my taste for Erikson 😉
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Yeah, I am wicked glad I read the Malazan stuff before reading Cook, or it would have been pretty bad…
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For some reason dragons are not nearly as scary as dinosaurs for me, or even monsters …. like Grendel, for example. If you liked people getting eaten and torn apart, you’d probably like Beowulf …..
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My impression was that Beowulf was in verse only.
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Now available in interpretive dance.
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SOLD!!!
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I thought I was joking, but:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=beowulf+interpretive+dance
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Just when I thought human madness had reached its zenith, you show me how wrong I am.
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Startling …. I’m speechless ….
You can’t plead poetry-phobia over this one! Please! Beowulf is so worth it! It’s epic (literally) so it’s much more accessible than the poetry you’re thinking of. Come on! I dare you! 😉
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Not poetry-phobia, but verse hatred. I tried the Illiad and the Odyssey in verse form and I realized that I simply prefer prose. Give me Beowulf in prose and sure, I’d tackle it. But verse? I’m not fighting that battle again….
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I do like a high body count with a Jurassic style plot!
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If the first book wasn’t so directly SF I’d recommend this one to you based on monster and body count alone. But even here the SF element is pretty big.
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Good there was no fake-out and you had fun with it 🙂
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I kept waiting for that “Surprise, it’s a dream/simulation/druginducedacidnightmare/whatever” point but it never came. 😀
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I read the first book, but not the second, and I’m kind of lost now. If the first book was just a simulation (large part of why I didn’t go for book two), how is there a guy to be rescued back on the prison planet? Did they just lie to him about it being a sim? That would be kind of funny, but they’d have to be able to perfectly heal all his injuries, bring his weight back to pre-“sim”, etc.. Also, they’d have needed to mention this at the end of book one to make its ending not stink.
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Well, in the first book they told him that people in the sim were sims and other real prisoners but that he would never know which was which. But he investigated and found the guy was real and innocent.
As for “Oz”, we don’t know what the real prison planet is like, so I’m guessing we’ll be finding out in book 3.
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Ah, I missed or forgot about the part where there were other real people in the sim with him. Maybe I’ll pick the series up again some time. I did enjoy the author’s Rath series.
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Glad to hear you enjoyed Rath. I’ve got that next after the final Falken book.
One of the perks of reading a series relatively close together is it is much easier to remember little throwaway things like that Weaver is a real person. Of course, I guess I could read trilogies back to back to back, but that doesn’t sound very appealing nowadays.
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A villain just to be a villain huh… Not sure such a thing passes too well for a “great” villain nowadays hahah
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It was definitely an area that the author needs to work on.
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Dragons and spaceships! This sounds like fun, indeed…
(((taking notes for future use)))
😉
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This second book was much more enjoyable than the first. So if you can get past that, then you’re golden…
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