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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
I just couldn't get into this in Kindle version. Will try Audiobook before giving up. It's really strange for a Simmons book to not reel me in, and I'm not ready to accept defeat.
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Second read of this mixture of Greek Mythology and science fiction.
Hard to review this until I've read the next in the series (Olympos) but as with all Dan Simmons the writing is tight, imaginative and keeps you intrigued from the start.
Hard to review this until I've read the next in the series (Olympos) but as with all Dan Simmons the writing is tight, imaginative and keeps you intrigued from the start.
This was my first Dan Simmons book. I'd deliberately chosen to read Ilium & Olympos before Hyperion Cantos because I wanted something a little smaller and as a history buff couldn't resist "Greek Gods in Space". I overall enjoyed the book - potentially a little bit cookie cutter in its character interaction, but very unique in tying together Greek mythology with Sci-Fi. I grew to like most of the main characters, and enjoyed how the main story lines converged in on each-other as the plot went on. I will say there was a very large over-saturation of made-up technical language, like, we get it, it's waaaay in the future, but it became annoying after a while. I think what keeps this as a 4 star over a 3 is the way it incorporated the Trojan War and Greek Pantheon element. I was hooked on this and how it all tied back to the greater world. Looking forward to finishing this tale in Olympos.
Need an assload of things - from the Iliad to teleportation - poorly mansplained to you? Need the mansplainer to just occasionally stop explaining and say "but we'll never really know" when he gets in over his head but can't admit it? My goodness, have I got the book for you.
Dan Simmons is the master of the literary sci-fi epic. He can somehow make nearly-extinct, lazy humans, half-robot, half-organic Jovian aliens, and Greek gods on Mars all mesh together in a way that is not only fantastically complex and interwoven in the best possible way, but it actually makes sense!
I'll admit I was skeptical when I started reading. I'm pretty picky about my sci-fi (though I've loved all of the other Dan Simmons that I've read) and the first few chapters felt a little slow and bogged down in detail. Once things start moving though, they don't stop. Simmons does a phenomenal job with capturing the different voices and personalities of not only the different characters, but the different races in the book. Each is distinct, but there are similarities between, say, Mahnmut and Orphu, that differentiate them from Hockenberry and the scholics, or the gods. There are tons, and I mean TONS, of literary references, not just to the Greek classics, but to Shakespeare and Proust and H.G. Wells, and each one somehow fits perfectly and makes total sense. Every aspect of this novel is so complex, but so well and completely executed.
The whole wormhole/different time periods aspect confused me a little (I'm told that gets explained a little more in the next book) but not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the novel. Simmons is pretty good for getting complicated element like those into the story in a way that doesn't feel dumbed-down, but is accessible enough that you can grasp the gist of how it impacts the story.
It does end on a pretty major cliffhanger though, so I guess I'll be reading [b:Olympos|3972|Olympos (Ilium, #2)|Dan Simmons|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388216654s/3972.jpg|1537178] sooner than I'd planned!
I'll admit I was skeptical when I started reading. I'm pretty picky about my sci-fi (though I've loved all of the other Dan Simmons that I've read) and the first few chapters felt a little slow and bogged down in detail. Once things start moving though, they don't stop. Simmons does a phenomenal job with capturing the different voices and personalities of not only the different characters, but the different races in the book. Each is distinct, but there are similarities between, say, Mahnmut and Orphu, that differentiate them from Hockenberry and the scholics, or the gods. There are tons, and I mean TONS, of literary references, not just to the Greek classics, but to Shakespeare and Proust and H.G. Wells, and each one somehow fits perfectly and makes total sense. Every aspect of this novel is so complex, but so well and completely executed.
The whole wormhole/different time periods aspect confused me a little (I'm told that gets explained a little more in the next book) but not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the novel. Simmons is pretty good for getting complicated element like those into the story in a way that doesn't feel dumbed-down, but is accessible enough that you can grasp the gist of how it impacts the story.
It does end on a pretty major cliffhanger though, so I guess I'll be reading [b:Olympos|3972|Olympos (Ilium, #2)|Dan Simmons|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388216654s/3972.jpg|1537178] sooner than I'd planned!
Originally published on my blog here in August 2004.
To science fiction fans, Dan Simmons is best known for his award winning novel [b:Hyperion|77566|Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)|Dan Simmons|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1332885131s/77566.jpg|1383900], which uses the poetry of [a:John Keats|11978|John Keats|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1198548090p2/11978.jpg] as its inspiration. In Ilium, his most recent novel and a return to the genre (in which he writes occasionally), the literary references are there again. Here, though, they are made more central (being far more frequently referred to directly), and are more varied. [a:Homer|903|Homer|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1192834024p2/903.jpg] is naturally the most obvious, but there are also direct references to [a:William Shakespeare|947|William Shakespeare|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1360741702p2/947.jpg] (the Sonnets and the Tempest), H.G. Wells [b:The Time Machine|2493|The Time Machine|H.G. Wells|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327942880s/2493.jpg|3234863], and [a:Marcel Proust|233619|Marcel Proust|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1189444962p2/233619.jpg] as well as indirect ones to other sources.
In [b:The Rolling Stones|50848|The Rolling Stones (Economy)|Robert A. Heinlein|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1290564157s/50848.jpg|2095434], Robert Heinlein satirises the flagrant plagiarism of some pulp science fiction authors, a character who is a writer blatantly reuses plots from the Odyssey, Hamlet and The Comedy of Errors. Here, Dan Simmons has done something which is even more clearly reuse, but he does this in a much more interesting way; his retelling of Greek myth is a springboard for a fascinating piece of science fiction.
There are three storylines in Ilium: one a retelling of Homer's Iliad, in which the Greek gods influencing the action are beings from the future; a story from the other end of history, where pampered humans have lost a great deal of knowledge but live in a world run for them by robot "servitors"; and a mission by a group of artificial beings engineered to live on the satellites of Jupiter to discover what is behind some strange quantum effects observed on Mars.
One thing that is interesting to me about Ilium is how Simmons places each story in a different part of the science fiction genre. The Iliad bits are part fantasy, part something like [b:Lord of Light|13821|Lord of Light|Roger Zelazny|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330127327s/13821.jpg|1011388]; the last humans on a depleted Earth are like a number of far future scenarios originally derived from the Eloi in The Time Machine; the outer solar system artificial beings hard science fiction rather like Kim Stanley Robinson. Even with all this complexity, Ilium does not come across as having a split personality; Simmons holds it together magnificently for over six hundred pages - which means that each strand is long enough to form a novel in its own right.
The reader of Ilium will get a lot more out of it if they have read the various literary sources it alludes to, and an acquaintance with the Iliad is even more useful. Neither is absolutely essential, as the important points are explained as the story develops. (The device of having the point of view character in the Iliad sections a Greek scholar re-animated at the scene to provide the "gods" with a commentary on how well what happens matches Homer's poem is useful in this respect.) Even without the clever folding of the literary themes, the little references to delight the knowledgeable, Ilium is an extremely well written, if slightly over long, novel. Entertaining and intelligent, definitely one of the best books I have read this year.
To science fiction fans, Dan Simmons is best known for his award winning novel [b:Hyperion|77566|Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)|Dan Simmons|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1332885131s/77566.jpg|1383900], which uses the poetry of [a:John Keats|11978|John Keats|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1198548090p2/11978.jpg] as its inspiration. In Ilium, his most recent novel and a return to the genre (in which he writes occasionally), the literary references are there again. Here, though, they are made more central (being far more frequently referred to directly), and are more varied. [a:Homer|903|Homer|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1192834024p2/903.jpg] is naturally the most obvious, but there are also direct references to [a:William Shakespeare|947|William Shakespeare|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1360741702p2/947.jpg] (the Sonnets and the Tempest), H.G. Wells [b:The Time Machine|2493|The Time Machine|H.G. Wells|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327942880s/2493.jpg|3234863], and [a:Marcel Proust|233619|Marcel Proust|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1189444962p2/233619.jpg] as well as indirect ones to other sources.
In [b:The Rolling Stones|50848|The Rolling Stones (Economy)|Robert A. Heinlein|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1290564157s/50848.jpg|2095434], Robert Heinlein satirises the flagrant plagiarism of some pulp science fiction authors, a character who is a writer blatantly reuses plots from the Odyssey, Hamlet and The Comedy of Errors. Here, Dan Simmons has done something which is even more clearly reuse, but he does this in a much more interesting way; his retelling of Greek myth is a springboard for a fascinating piece of science fiction.
There are three storylines in Ilium: one a retelling of Homer's Iliad, in which the Greek gods influencing the action are beings from the future; a story from the other end of history, where pampered humans have lost a great deal of knowledge but live in a world run for them by robot "servitors"; and a mission by a group of artificial beings engineered to live on the satellites of Jupiter to discover what is behind some strange quantum effects observed on Mars.
One thing that is interesting to me about Ilium is how Simmons places each story in a different part of the science fiction genre. The Iliad bits are part fantasy, part something like [b:Lord of Light|13821|Lord of Light|Roger Zelazny|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330127327s/13821.jpg|1011388]; the last humans on a depleted Earth are like a number of far future scenarios originally derived from the Eloi in The Time Machine; the outer solar system artificial beings hard science fiction rather like Kim Stanley Robinson. Even with all this complexity, Ilium does not come across as having a split personality; Simmons holds it together magnificently for over six hundred pages - which means that each strand is long enough to form a novel in its own right.
The reader of Ilium will get a lot more out of it if they have read the various literary sources it alludes to, and an acquaintance with the Iliad is even more useful. Neither is absolutely essential, as the important points are explained as the story develops. (The device of having the point of view character in the Iliad sections a Greek scholar re-animated at the scene to provide the "gods" with a commentary on how well what happens matches Homer's poem is useful in this respect.) Even without the clever folding of the literary themes, the little references to delight the knowledgeable, Ilium is an extremely well written, if slightly over long, novel. Entertaining and intelligent, definitely one of the best books I have read this year.
This book is a twist from the typical sci-fi book. It combines elements of ancient stories from Homer with newer post-human characters. This romp takes you through the Trojan war with the Greeks, integrates the Greek gods, and postulates new and interesting ideas about how they could be related (fictionally). Along the way, Simmons shows his mastery of other writers from Shakespeare, to Proust.
It's a super interesting book to read, because it is a fun way to dabble in those old stories in a contemporary way. It is also well written, consistent with Simmons' style and competency.
I only give it a four star review though because, like the Homerian epic, it is long. Simmons mimics Homer's style of naming every participant in every conflict, describing what they wore and who they were in combat with. This gets tedious.
There are also three parallel storylines here. Each chapter takes another step along each storyline. This mostly works, though the rhythm starts to get tiring after a little while.
I have purchased the second book in the series, but I am daunted by the 900 page lift. I have already started skimming some of the long detailed descriptions of characters, conflicts, and color. Kindle tells me the average read time is 18 hours. I guarantee you I am going to skim parts of this, and cut that down to 12.
It's a super interesting book to read, because it is a fun way to dabble in those old stories in a contemporary way. It is also well written, consistent with Simmons' style and competency.
I only give it a four star review though because, like the Homerian epic, it is long. Simmons mimics Homer's style of naming every participant in every conflict, describing what they wore and who they were in combat with. This gets tedious.
There are also three parallel storylines here. Each chapter takes another step along each storyline. This mostly works, though the rhythm starts to get tiring after a little while.
I have purchased the second book in the series, but I am daunted by the 900 page lift. I have already started skimming some of the long detailed descriptions of characters, conflicts, and color. Kindle tells me the average read time is 18 hours. I guarantee you I am going to skim parts of this, and cut that down to 12.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Great sci-fi read. I was expecting a futuristic retelling of the Trojan War, but it exceeded that. You'll especially like this if you appreciate embedded literary references to the Greeks, Shakespeare and Proust. As a bonus, you'll find out how Odysseus learned about the "No man" trick.