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Here's a review from someone who knows their Greek gods, but has never read the Iliad: I found the sci-fi parts of this often hand-wavy, and the Iliad parts mostly boring.
Dan Simmons knows how to write big stories with lots of interesting ideas, and for this I loved the Hyperion series, but here it doesn't fully mesh for me. I was right to be worried that I wouldn't enjoy the parts retelling the Iliad — this person stabbed that person; this person, son of some guy, threw his spear, wounding son of some other guy — descriptions of battles just don't do it for me. Fortunately this is only one of three plot lines, and fortunately for this plot line, it's not all warring. The bits without were generally fun and more interesting.
Daeman's plot line back on Earth was interesting and I liked him as a character, because it's novel to have someone stupid and vapid as a protagonist. I also enjoyed Mahnmut and Orphu's friendship, although again their Shakespeare and Proust discussions didn't do it for me.
But overall, this felt like a dare, or a thought experiment vainly struggling to be a whole book. Rather than an internally consistent world, this seems like a world full of deus ex machina where things exist and happen in certain ways for convoluted reasons that don't hold up to scrutiny. I enjoyed it most of the time but I was frustrated by it too.
I guess I'll finish the duology but I don't have high hopes.
Dan Simmons knows how to write big stories with lots of interesting ideas, and for this I loved the Hyperion series, but here it doesn't fully mesh for me. I was right to be worried that I wouldn't enjoy the parts retelling the Iliad — this person stabbed that person; this person, son of some guy, threw his spear, wounding son of some other guy — descriptions of battles just don't do it for me. Fortunately this is only one of three plot lines, and fortunately for this plot line, it's not all warring. The bits without were generally fun and more interesting.
Daeman's plot line back on Earth was interesting and I liked him as a character, because it's novel to have someone stupid and vapid as a protagonist. I also enjoyed Mahnmut and Orphu's friendship, although again their Shakespeare and Proust discussions didn't do it for me.
But overall, this felt like a dare, or a thought experiment vainly struggling to be a whole book. Rather than an internally consistent world, this seems like a world full of deus ex machina where things exist and happen in certain ways for convoluted reasons that don't hold up to scrutiny. I enjoyed it most of the time but I was frustrated by it too.
I guess I'll finish the duology but I don't have high hopes.