4.5 stars - I am truly at a loss for words when it comes to describing this remarkable book. It combines elements that seem almost impossible to blend together: Shakespeare, Mars, the Trojan War, ancient historians miraculously brought back to life, post-humans, and wormholes. Simmons is an absolute master of world building. He has an uncanny ability to create vivid and detailed universes that draw the reader in and keep them hooked from start to finish.

Every single detail in this book is meticulously crafted, as if Simmons has spent countless hours perfecting every aspect of his fictional world. If you have a passion for Greek mythology like I do, then this book is an absolute must-read. It seamlessly weaves together elements of science fiction, mythology, action, adventure, and dystopian fiction to create a unique and unforgettable reading experience.

Whether you're a die-hard sci-fi fan or simply someone who enjoys a good story, this book has something for everyone. So don't hesitate - pick up a copy and prepare to be transported to a world like no other.

Longtime readers of my reviews will recall that my relationship with Dan Simmons’ books has been tumultuous. I didn’t care for \\n  The Terror\\n or \\n  Drood\\n, but I came to appreciate Simmons through his epic Hyperion Cantos. In my review of the final book in that cycle, \\n  The Rise of Endymion\\n, I commented, “Even if you don’t like the series, it is hard to dispute the scope and style of it.” Simmons lives up to this assessment with Ilium, which does for the Iliad what Hyperion did for Keats and Romantic poetry (although I’d argue it goes even further).

I doubt I’ll ever consider Simmons one of my favorite authors, or even one of my favorite SF authors. However, I have no doubt that he is a great SF author, one of the greats of our age, even if he isn’t one of my personal favorites. Now, let’s delve into Ilium and see why.

Summarizing Ilium is no easy feat, but I’ll do my best. It’s a couple of thousand years in the future. Humanity has experienced a posthumanist singularity, including an event vaguely alluded to as “the rubicon,” and has mastered nanotechnology and quantum tunnelling/quantum teleportation. Now, beings claiming to be the Greek gods inhabit a terraformed Mars and have recreated the Iliad in the flesh. They’ve also recreated Thomas Hockenberry, a twenty-first-century scholar of the Iliad, essentially to provide commentary on them. But Hockenberry finds himself in a situation where he has to deviate from the script, and things quickly become revolutionary. Meanwhile, some moravecs (self-evolving AI robots descended from robots sent out by humans) from the moons of Jupiter have arrived on Mars to investigate all this unusual quantum activity. Meanwhile, on Earth, some slightly-not-baseline humans are living a peaceful yet empty existence devoid of culture or true learning/introspection, until of course, someone jolts them out of it. The result? By the end of the book, all hell has broken loose, of course!

Look, the actual plot of this book isn’t that important. Seriously, the plot is one of the least interesting aspects of the book, and I’m going to largely ignore it. I want to discuss what Simmons is doing regarding the intersection of classical literature and science fiction and why it’s so brilliantly executed, and then I’ll criticize him for some rather distasteful male gaze moments. Read on!

For the record, I did read the Iliad (Fagles), but I didn’t review it because it was a difficult book. It’s really not a great book for silent reading in translation. It’s meant to be declaimed in ancient Greek, but that’s a skill I don’t possess. Although debates over its historicity and the extent to which it is an oral tradition abound, one thing is clear: the Iliad, like many epic poems from antiquity, is a complex work that has been modified by each of the cultures that have translated it, studied it, and reinterpreted it through their own biased lenses. Also note that you don’t need to have read the Iliad to follow Ilium.

Ilium is, at its core, a story about literacy. Every relationship, every plot development, every conflict, is a facet of Simmons exploring the meaning of literacy in various human societies, the role of literacy and storytelling, and the ways in which our technology might influence those two things.

I’ve often criticized the posthumanist stories I’ve read lately because of the tendency for the technology to be so advanced that it’s basically magic. Simmons acknowledges this and effectively employs posthumanist SF by leaning into the whole magic angle. Yes, on the surface, the idea of recreating the Iliad in “real life” is absurd and impossible—but if you arrange the tech tree of our evolution just right, it becomes merely incredibly improbable (and as the book explores, probability is a key underlying element of the story—not that that’s crucial, as I said). The Greek gods in this story are incredibly powerful, yes—but they are also illiterate. In a society where technology has advanced to the point where you can change your form at will and communicate information through nanotechnology, what good is writing anymore?

Savi makes a comment at one point about the pre-literate meeting the post-literate when Odysseus meets Harman and Daeman, and it’s a very revealing statement. Odysseus and the other Greeks represent humanity before the dominance of the written word. Simmons presents them as emphasizing action and embodiment over contemplation. In contrast, Mahnmut and Orphu, whose human-like intellectual existences within their very non-humanoid bodies revolve around the contemplation of Shakespeare and Proust, respectively. There’s an irony that the only literate beings in this story are an anachronistic professor and robots from Jupiter’s moons! However, the moravecs have more in common with Harman et al. than you might think—both lack lived experiences when it comes to the struggles of the human condition that we consider essential. The moravecs, due to their access to the sum total of human literature, are more aware of the human condition. But as Mahnmut discovers throughout this story, he has led a very sheltered life and has not paid attention to much beyond his narrow niche interests.

Everything in Ilium is intertwined with literary texts—not just subtext but actually part of the text. The antagonists, from the Greek gods to Prospero and Caliban and the mysterious Setebos, are all references to famous literary characters. Beyond that, the textual references—the dissected passages of Shakespeare, the interrogation of characters like Falstaff—create the impression of a conversation between these authors and the characters of Ilium. Even Hockenberry marvels at his own role as a kind of ersatz intervener in a drama that was conceived by Homer and is now being restaged by the enigmatic Zeus: he goes from observer to participant, driving events further away from the text of the Iliad. This makes him uncomfortable not only because of the personal risk he incurs as a result but also because it changes his perception of the people around him from characters in a farcical recreation of a tragedy to living, breathing humans whose autonomy and agency he must respect rather than ignore or co-opt. This is reinforced numerous times when he underestimates the guile or commitment of the Greeks and Trojans, particularly Helen.

As Mahnmut and Orphu debate the meanings of life explored by their literary idols and Savi opens the eyes of her new friends to the ideas they never knew they were missing, Simmons invites us all to consider the different possibilities regarding literacy. Those of you who can read this, like me, take our literacy for granted to some extent—I don’t mean to suggest that none of you struggled to achieve it. Some of you might have had to struggle to learn to read or to gain access to education in the first place. But we assume that our species, our societies, are literate. Literacy is a technology, not a biological certainty. As Simmons shows here, literacy is one way to add depth to a culture—but it’s not the only way, and it also introduces its own complications and dead-ends.

Whether or not our own technology takes us as far as the posthumans of Ilium do, it’s important for us to consider how that technology alters our relationship with literacy. It’s already happening right now. As a teacher, I often wonder how my students (some of whom, since I teach adults in high school, are older than me) view reading and writing differently because they have cell phones and the Internet. As a millennial, I grew up online. In some ways, I’m more comfortable reading and writing than I am speaking. My younger students, while even more attached to their devices than I am, aren’t necessarily more literate as a result—because the way we navigate the digital spaces we’ve created has changed. While that might sound like a curmudgeonly observation, it’s more of an observation than a complaint or criticism. It can’t really be either of those until we have a deeper, more extensive conversation about what’s happening—we need to stop saying “kids can’t read” or “kids don’t read” and instead question our assumptions about why we expect kids to read the same way we do. After all, we didn’t always read the way we do now.

Of course, the complex conversation happening within Ilium would be even better if it didn’t center on 2 dead white guys and a dead Greek poet to whom we attribute the Iliad. Simmons’ emphasis on the Western tradition of literature is an unfortunate limitation that overlooks the rich history of both literate and oral traditions in countless other cultures around the world.

On top of that, I wish I could praise this book wholeheartedly, but I almost put it down only a few pages in, when Simmons has Daeman meditate on the hot nude body of the woman he’s trying to seduce. Ew. And then there’s Hockenberry. It should have been a redeeming factor, this flabby middle-aged white guy from our time running around the Age of Heroes and basically being unremarkable…but as much as I admire Simmons for undermining Hockenberry’s brief heroic moments through the machinations of Helen, Andromache, and to a lesser extent Hector and Achilles, I can’t get past Hockenberry’s blatant male gaze and objectification of the goddesses and women he meets. The whole scene where he just goes and poses as Paris so he can have sex with Helen? Hello, rapey and gratuitous and ew.

So…yeah. Ilium as a work of literature has vast chasms of thought-provoking ideas as deep as Olympus Mons is tall. I was charmed by the way Simmons teases out the various contradictions surrounding literacy. Simmons is a huge literary nerd and a talented SF author, and I love that combination. But I can’t praise this book without highlighting the extremely uncomfortable male gaze moments that are, unfortunately, all too common in books written by otherwise intelligent white guys. Seriously, do better.

Is this book for you? I don’t know! It’s big, convoluted, and sprawling, but oddly satisfying if you’re willing to endure the lengthy digressions, the problematic stuff I noted, and the frustrating tendency to digress at length (as mentioned) but never actually reveal the really interesting stuff (what are the voynix? Who is Setebos?). I guess that’s what sequels are for.

\\n  \\n

This is an absolute marvel.

Its ingenuity is second to none genre-wise. I totally enjoyed this.

However, for the life of me, I anticipate explaining why it has taken me more than six months to read this beautiful book.

On and off, of course. It wasn't as straightforward as most other Dan Simmons I've read.

And yes, I did struggle just a bit at the beginning.

But once I got the plot mechanism, everything flowed like a charm.

The story is beautifully crafted.

The characters are amazing and the warping of the events in the Iliad came off beautifully.

It's truly a masterpiece that keeps you engaged from start to finish.

The author's ability to blend different elements and create a unique and captivating world is truly remarkable.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story and is looking for something different.

It's a book that you won't soon forget.

**Title: A Review of [Article Name]**

The original article presented some interesting points, but it could be enhanced by further expansion and clarification.

For instance, the author briefly mentioned a particular topic, but did not delve deeply enough into its implications. By adding more details and examples, the reader would have a better understanding of the significance of this point.

Moreover, the article could benefit from a more comprehensive analysis of the counterarguments. Presenting different perspectives and addressing them objectively would strengthen the overall argument and make the article more engaging.

In addition, the writing style could be improved by using more vivid language and a more varied sentence structure. This would make the text more interesting to read and easier to follow.

Overall, with these improvements, the article could be transformed into a more informative and engaging piece that would be of greater value to the readers.

Rating: 2.75⭐️

Ilium is a remarkable yet imperfect work. I truly wish I could rate it as three-and-three-quarters stars. If you haven't delved into Homer's works recently, it would be advisable to do so before embarking on this book. I initially began reading Ilium but soon put it aside. I then read Homer's Iliad. After that, I returned to Dan Simmons' Ilium and completed it. I'm extremely glad I did. When Homer's epic is still vivid in your mind, you'll extract much more from Dan Simmons' book.

For my comprehensive thoughts on both Ilium and Olympos, which form a set, please refer to my review of Olympos.

There are a plethora of highly polarizing views regarding this book. People either passionately love it or vehemently hate it. In my opinion, I find myself right in the middle ground. Generally speaking, I am entertained by Dan Simmons' writing.

And the concept of a story centered on the Iliad, written as a science fiction epic, is at the very least, an intriguing one. However, it takes a significant portion of the book, nearly half, before one even begins to have a glimmer of what is actually going on. And it takes even longer to truly understand how the various worlds are interconnected.

What I mean by this is that the Iliad is set on Earth in the BC era, while the post-humans who are playing the roles of gods are centered on the peaks of Olympos Mons on Mars. We follow the journey of a scholar who has been set up by the gods to observe the story as it unfolds in real time.

Then there are four rather idiotic humans who reside on Earth in a technological paradise but lack any real education. They are in search of a way to escape to wherever the post-humans have gone. Finally, there are four highly sentient robots who are seeking out the quantum disturbances on Mars.

I have a great fondness for the robots, but unfortunately, many of the other characters are poorly established and developed. A large part of the book seems as if Simmons is simply attempting to impress the reader with his in-depth knowledge of Homer and Shakespeare rather than focusing on telling a truly compelling story.

Hey,

I have a booktube channel (youtube for book reviews, etc.), and I include Ilium in my top 10 fantasy books list here. Please subscribe if I've earned it!

If someone were to describe this book to me (if they even could), I don't know if I would believe how much I absolutely enjoyed it. Dan Simmons is truly a mad genius.

Shakespeare-quoting humanoid robots, Greek Gods, post-humans, and old-style humans come together to create the craziest and most awesome story imaginable.

Ilium is told through three essentially unrelated viewpoints. First, there's Hockenberry, a "Scholic" from the 20th century who is reborn in a future where Homer's Trojan War is being fought. His job is to report on the war to the Greek Gods. At first, this is completely confusing, but it gradually makes sense as the story unfolds. The research that went into this book is also quite impressive.

The second viewpoint is that of the humans, mainly Daemon. He's a self-involved fool who has everything handed to him by robots called servitors. Pleasure is their life, and knowledge is lacking.

The third viewpoint is that of a sonnet-loving humanoid robot named Mahnmut. His work involves exploring the moon of Jupiter called Europa. He's called in on a mission with a group of moravecs to explore some occurrences on Mars.

At first, I was highly entertained, though confused, by the events of the Trojan War, and the other parts were a bit boring. But slowly, the story took hold and had me completely hooked. Listening to the audiobook, I looked forward to my morning and evening drives and didn't mind doing errands on my lunch hour either. Somehow, it all makes sense, even though it sounds like the oddest collection of classics.

Kevin Pariseau is the narrator of this audiobook. At first, I thought he over-acted the part of Hockenberry, but I later realized that it was just the character he was playing. He did an impressive job considering how many Greek words and names he had to pronounce.

The only problem is that Ilium is only half the story. It stops at a huge cliffhanger, and I'm already eager to read Olympos to see how this ends.

5 out of 5 Stars (Mind... blown)

Although I have a profound admiration for the extensive scope, remarkable scholarship, and lofty ambition that were invested into this book, I must admit that as a unified narrative, it failed to truly gel for me.

There were certain moments when I derived great pleasure from aspects of the storytelling. Most notably, the three distinct stories that were presented were quite engaging, and I thought the author employed them from a pacing perspective in a superb manner. However, there were far too many instances where unknown plot elements or characters seized control of the narrative, leaving the reader completely in the dark.

I am well-acquainted with the unknown-to-known style of storytelling, and from a broader perspective, I felt that Simmons did an excellent job of utilizing this technique. Nevertheless, in the final 100 pages of the book, he persisted in introducing new elements, which further increased this reader's consternation regarding the overall point of it all. I earnestly hope that the sequel will shed light on many of these elements because just as things were beginning to get interesting and clear, the author seemed to deliberately introduce elements to confuse the reader.

Nonetheless, I did appreciate a great deal of this book, as well as the foundation he has laid for the conclusion. So, I hope that when I look back at this review, I will simply think that I was impatient for the entire story. But overall, this book felt very much like the penultimate installment of a series, more focused on setting the stage for the final book rather than telling its own self-contained tale. That being said, I still found a great deal to enjoy. 3.5/5

Dan Simmons' imagination and story-crafting skills are truly remarkable.

In "Ilium", he weaves a fascinating science fiction tale. Although the specific timeframe is never clearly defined, the story seems to begin in a distant future similar to what one might find in Warhammer 40K fiction. A time so far removed that the past is almost a forgotten legend. What makes this story unique is the juxtaposition of this far-off future with the Trojan War.

Welcome to Ilium. Post-humanity has evolved into beings very different from humans. They have recreated themselves as the Ancient Greek Gods and are reenacting the Trojan War. The story is told through the eyes of several individuals. There's Dr. Hockenberry, a classical scholar from the 20th Century, resurrected by the gods to document the events of the Trojan War and compare it to the Iliad. However, he is subverted by one god to assassinate another, setting off a chain of events with severe consequences.

There's also a group of "old-style" humans including Daemon (whom I didn't like at all), Harman (the last man on Earth who can actually read), Ada, and others. They must search for an ancient myth in the Wandering Jew to uncover what happened to the Earth and humanity. What they discover will shock them and change their perspective on everything.

Finally, there are the robot moravecs Manmhut and Orphu. These two are very cool characters. As they attempt to figure out what the posthumans are up to and their plans for Mars, their interesting banter about Shakespeare and Proust adds an extra layer of interest.

I know it sounds confusing, but I didn't want to spoil this crazy story. It's a highly entertaining and novel concept. Dan Simmons' writing style is always engaging, and it's clear that his interests are wide and diverse.

It's an interesting take on the Trojan War, and the idea of a historian being able to witness great battles and compare them to written histories is a wonderful concept. Where can one sign up for this?

Update: After spending three weeks thinking about the book and comparing it with other books I've read and ratings given this month, I've decided to upgrade the rating to a full five stars. Despite my initial misgivings about the beginning and not really being fond of the parts about the Greeks, the scope of this book is truly remarkable and it truly deserves the highest rating.

I did not enjoy the first 50 pages or so. I was confused and kept wondering what was going on. I even thought I would DNF (Did Not Finish) this book before reaching a hundred pages. However, the mention of "Mars" by the Moravecs caught my attention. They passed Mars's orbit and there was nothing to see as Mars was on the opposite side of the sun. A day later, they passed Earth's orbit and again, there was nothing to see as Earth was far around the curve of its orbit on the plane of the ecliptic far below.

The humans in the story eventually grew on me as well. But a third of the way into the novel, I still did not like the parts taking place during the Trojan War. They felt unnecessary, overly detailed, and rather boring. Greek mythology has never been my favorite. Nevertheless, even in this aspect, Hockenberry finally managed to win me over.

This book features great world building and excellent ideas. It is very dense and not suitable for a casual read. Overall, it is a good book. I might read the next book, Olympos, eventually, although I'm a little scared it might not be as good.

**Ilium by Dan Simmons: A Literary and Sci-Fi Masterpiece**

Originally published on my blog here in August 2004.

For science fiction enthusiasts, Dan Simmons is renowned for his award-winning novel Hyperion, which draws inspiration from the poetry of John Keats. In Ilium, his latest novel and a return to the genre (where he writes intermittently), literary references abound once more. However, in this work, they are more central and directly referred to, and also more diverse. Homer is the most evident, but there are direct allusions to William Shakespeare (the Sonnets and The Tempest), H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and Marcel Proust, as well as indirect references to other sources.

In The Rolling Stones, Robert Heinlein satirizes the blatant plagiarism of some pulp science fiction authors. Here, Dan Simmons has done something that is even more clearly a reuse, but in a far more interesting way. His retelling of Greek myth serves as a springboard for a captivating piece of science fiction.

Ilium features three storylines. One is a retelling of Homer's Iliad, where the Greek gods influencing the action are beings from the future. Another is set at the other end of history, where pampered humans have lost much knowledge but live in a world run for them by robot "servitors". The third involves a mission by a group of artificial beings engineered to live on the satellites of Jupiter to uncover the mystery behind strange quantum effects observed on Mars.

What intrigues me about Ilium is how Simmons positions each story within a different aspect of the science fiction genre. The Iliad segments are part fantasy, part similar to Lord of Light. The last humans on a depleted Earth resemble many far future scenarios originally derived from the Eloi in The Time Machine. The outer solar system artificial beings are hard science fiction, rather like Kim Stanley Robinson's works. Despite all this complexity, Ilium does not seem fragmented. Simmons weaves it together magnificently over more than six hundred pages, meaning each strand is long enough to form a novel on its own.

The reader of Ilium will gain more from it if they have read the various literary sources it alludes to, and familiarity with the Iliad is even more beneficial. However, neither is absolutely necessary, as the important points are explained as the story progresses. (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 regard.) Even without the clever integration of literary themes and the little references to delight the knowledgeable, Ilium is an extremely well-written, albeit slightly long, novel. It is entertaining and intelligent, definitely one of the best books I have read this year.

About 30 years ago, I stepped into the fascinating world of Greek mythology. But not in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but in two little books called The Legends of Olympus - The Gods and The Heroes, adapted by Alexandru Mitru from the works of Homer. I was then deeply impressed by all the characters in that fairytale world, who were superheroes in the eyes of my child.

So it was a great pleasure to discover, much later, Dan Simmons' novel, Ilion. A novel that I lived, not read, on both readings. For where else does it happen that Zeus, Achilles, Hector, Aphrodite and Odysseus from the Iliad/Odyssey sit, shoulder to shoulder, next to Prospero and Caliban from The Tempest by the most famous English author? Where has it ever been mentioned that two robots with consciousness debate the writings of Shakespeare and Proust? A novel in which the Trojan War takes new and unexpected directions, in which the Mycenaean and Trojan warriors from the Bronze Age meet the technology of quantum physics. Where the Greek gods are not exactly what I knew. And at the same time, the few inhabitants of a future Earth lead an idyllic and carefree life, impoverished of literature, art or music, and with a forgotten past.

All these narrative threads, which slowly approach a point where they will meet, prove the incredible imagination of Dan Simmons. Ilion is a superb and surprising novel.