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Ilium Dan Simmons 9780380817924 Books

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Ilium Dan Simmons 9780380817924 Books

After two pages of Ilium, I literally could not stop reading. The three separate plotlines were each intriguing on their own. let's see. a crazily advanced society that roleplays Greek gods, Zeus included, resurrects dead 20th century scholars and gives them the necessary gear to play eye witnesses to the great battle of Troy? check. A similarly advanced society of sentient robots who discuss Shakespeare and Proust while they do their own Curiosity Rover roleplaying out on the distant reaches of the galaxy? check. a nihilistic breed of humans that discover their zero effort lives hide a sinister truth? check. I mean, what can you ask more from a book? Dan Simmons' imagination knows no bounds and the ride he offers in Ilium is not something one can refuse. And with the credit he got from me with Hyperion and The Rise of Hyperion, I felt like this could only get better.

And indeed, it did get better.
Until it started to not get better.
and then it got worse.

By the end of the book, I was skimming the pages and just wanted to get it over with, losing any hope of even a semblance of resolution, because I already knew that I'd need to read through the sequel, Olympos, to get it. And the more I read, the more it became like Endymion and its sequel, and less like Hyperion. While Hyperion introduced us to the amazing world of farcasters, cruciforms and the legendary shrike, with brilliant storytelling and captivating character building, Endymion devolved the whole lot into an incoherent soup of new age bulls***, super killer androids, and two main characters that I just kept wishing would either die or shut the hell up. similarly, by the end of Ilium, I cared little if any of the characters (except the little moravec Mahnmut) live or die and was angry enough with the way Simmons kept pulling new plot threads into and from nothingness, that I knew I wouldn't go on to read Olympos. I just wanted to put Ilium behind me. I think **spoiler** I finally lost my patience when Daeman, Harman and Savi took the elevator ride to space.**end spoiler** it was too dumb a plot device to ignore.

So why 3 stars? well, because the first 2/3s of the book are worth it. Much like TV's Lost, Ilium draws so compelling a tale from the get go that even the faux-conclusions and glaring plot holes later on should not keep you from taking the ride. as long as you're aware that you will probably want to jump off it at some point.


Tags : Ilium [Dan Simmons] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Trojan War rages at the foot of Olympos Mons on Mars -- observed and influenced from on high by Zeus and his immortal family -- and twenty-first-century professor Thomas Hockenberry is there to play a role in the insidious private wars of vengeful gods and goddesses. On Earth,Dan Simmons,Ilium,HarperTorch,0380817926,Science Fiction - General,Fantasy fiction,Gods, Greek,Imaginary wars and battles,Mars (Planet),Mythology, Greek,AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY,FICTION General,FICTION Science Fiction General,Fiction,Fiction - Science Fiction,Fiction-Science Fiction,General Adult,MASS MARKET,Science Fiction

Ilium Dan Simmons 9780380817924 Books Reviews

This was my first Dan Simmons experience, and I was completely impressed! A marvelous combination of settings, characters, and themes, this big book kept me fully engaged (if sometimes confused). From the simple genius of Mahnmut and Orphu of Io, to the gradual development of awesomeness in Hockenberry and Daemon, the characters in ILIUM are believable, entertaining, and likeable. The mystery of this post-apocalyptic world kept me guessing throughout, and the what-is-going-on factor was maintained through the end. You may not get all the answers by the end of the book (hopefully those will come with the sequel, Olympos), but the bizarrely puzzling Greek gods and their cruel games with seemingly real humans will surely keep you entertained and turning pages.

One word of caution, this book will try to lose you right at the start, as Simmons jumps right in with techno jargon and impossible characters that will have you re-reading sections to make sure you weren't missing something. Try not to let the voynix-controlled proxnet under the e-ring where post-humans experiment with sub-atomic quantum wormholes confuse you to the point of giving up. Just stick with it, and everything becomes as clear as it needs to for you to feel comfortable with the lingo. And when it does, this remarkable creation of Simmons's will blow you away.

Fans of classical literature will find this novel particularly entertaining, with sentient robots debating the merits of Shakespeare and Proust, Greek gods (and characters from the Iliad) behaving like spoiled teens, and powerful entities right out of The Tempest controlling Earth. Also, Simmons does an excellent job of re-invigorating Homer's epic, providing enough detail of the original through the scholic's thoughts and dialogue to actually be educational. For someone like me, who isn't about to dedicate the time or attention required to read the entirely-too-dense Iliad, this book was a fun refresher about these powerful names in literature and culture.

All in all, this is a hugely imaginative and very smart piece of work that should please almost any reader. Highly recommended!
I enjoyed this book's playful approach to blending sci-fi and the Illiad. The mystery of what had happened to humanity, and what was really going on, was given out on a very slow pace throughout the book. I enjoyed most of the things about the book. I'm a fan of the Illiad, so I was excited to see how that tied in. I thought it was neat that the book felt like two different story lines that wound up merging together.

That said, I did feel that pacing and the slow release of information did make the first half of the book a bit of a slog. This wasn't helped by the fact that when I finally put all the pieces together and the story kicked into high gear it suddenly ended. The climax for this novel is likely in the sequel. All the threads finally came together and I was just left hanging, without any idea of how things would turn out.

It made me not want to read the sequel, if I'm honest. I imagine it was intended to do the opposite and make me hungry for it.
After two pages of Ilium, I literally could not stop reading. The three separate plotlines were each intriguing on their own. let's see. a crazily advanced society that roleplays Greek gods, Zeus included, resurrects dead 20th century scholars and gives them the necessary gear to play eye witnesses to the great battle of Troy? check. A similarly advanced society of sentient robots who discuss Shakespeare and Proust while they do their own Curiosity Rover roleplaying out on the distant reaches of the galaxy? check. a nihilistic breed of humans that discover their zero effort lives hide a sinister truth? check. I mean, what can you ask more from a book? Dan Simmons' imagination knows no bounds and the ride he offers in Ilium is not something one can refuse. And with the credit he got from me with Hyperion and The Rise of Hyperion, I felt like this could only get better.

And indeed, it did get better.
Until it started to not get better.
and then it got worse.

By the end of the book, I was skimming the pages and just wanted to get it over with, losing any hope of even a semblance of resolution, because I already knew that I'd need to read through the sequel, Olympos, to get it. And the more I read, the more it became like Endymion and its sequel, and less like Hyperion. While Hyperion introduced us to the amazing world of farcasters, cruciforms and the legendary shrike, with brilliant storytelling and captivating character building, Endymion devolved the whole lot into an incoherent soup of new age bulls***, super killer androids, and two main characters that I just kept wishing would either die or shut the hell up. similarly, by the end of Ilium, I cared little if any of the characters (except the little moravec Mahnmut) live or die and was angry enough with the way Simmons kept pulling new plot threads into and from nothingness, that I knew I wouldn't go on to read Olympos. I just wanted to put Ilium behind me. I think **spoiler** I finally lost my patience when Daeman, Harman and Savi took the elevator ride to space.**end spoiler** it was too dumb a plot device to ignore.

So why 3 stars? well, because the first 2/3s of the book are worth it. Much like TV's Lost, Ilium draws so compelling a tale from the get go that even the faux-conclusions and glaring plot holes later on should not keep you from taking the ride. as long as you're aware that you will probably want to jump off it at some point.