I'm still not quite sure what's going on. The story seems to be unfolding in a rather mysterious way, and I find myself a bit confused. However, that's part of the charm, isn't it? It makes me eager to find out more. So, I'll read the next book. I'm looking forward to seeing how the plot develops and what new revelations will come to light. Maybe the next installment will clear up some of my confusion and provide a deeper understanding of the overall narrative. I can't wait to dive back into this world and continue my journey of discovery.

The indomitable hero Pafeu stands before the challenge of a great battle against the army of Birba. He is well aware that it will be a difficult task alone, but nanococonut technology and the thermo-melon bomb may help him. Armed with his micro-gofer shell, he sets off for the battle...

Under the recommendation of David, I reached for the book "Ilion" and I am very satisfied with this decision. The combination of the Trojan War with elements of futurism and science fiction is a true masterpiece. When I read the fragment where Zeus uses nanomachines or travels through spacetime tunnels, I knew that this book was for me.

The book presents the story from three different perspectives: the group of "new people" left on the desolate and devastated Earth, Thomas Hockenberry, the resurrected history teacher from the 20th century who, on the orders of the Greek gods, has to examine the Trojan War in terms of its compliance with Homer's "Iliad", and the sentient machines of the Moravecs, which set off from Jupiter to examine the increased quantum activity on the terraformed Mars.

Each of these storylines is superbly written, and the characters have distinct personalities, which makes their adventures very interesting to read. Mr. Simmons has presented the characters known from the "Iliad" with dignity, such as Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector or Helen. Each of these characters has a unique character and fits perfectly into this book.

This is really a great book that I highly recommend.

Rating: ★★★★★

I thought that the best I was ever going to read from Simmons was his Hyperion series. That thought was seriously challenged with Ilium, and it's sequel, Olympos.

The way that Simmons weaves the tale of Troy into a science fiction masterpiece is truly astounding. For high school and college students who have struggled mightily through Homer's epic poems, these two books should be required reading before delving into Homer's actual work. Simmons's in-depth knowledge of the stories, its characters, and the remarkable way he brings them to life puts everything I have ever known or read about the Iliad to absolute shame!

I could have given Troy not another thought in my life, along with all of the gods and their convoluted family. Through Homer's account, and unless one is an enthusiastic scholar of Greek history, it can be rather boring and hard to follow, especially considering the modern day and age we live in. It is almost impossible to put the lives and interactions of the gods with mortals into a modern context using today's vernacular. Yet, Simmons not only succeeds in this, but he makes the story vastly more interesting and intriguing than the original.

There is only one qualification I can put on this book, and that is THE SEQUEL IS EVEN BETTER!!! I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I haven't lost as much sleep this past week reading both books as I have with any other book in a very long time. This book and its sequel are going to be wonderful gifts for many people in the future. READ IT!!!!

Encouraged by Runalong Womble, this read is part of an effort to clear some of the longest-shelved books from my TBR. I've been postponing this one for years. Mostly, I believe, because I actually thought myself beneath it. Hyperion was astonishing, and despite Simmons' later decline into reactionary conservatism, I'll still recommend it as a genre classic. Ilium, when I first placed it on the shelf, seemed like it should be even better than that. Homer, Shakespeare, hints of Huxley, I am probably not worthy, and so on.

Well, as it turns out, it's not all that. The first page, which strongly references the Iliad, is perhaps as good as it gets. I would be hesitant to say it's all downhill from there - but while Hyperion had a definite literary point and knew when to stop (having said that, I've not read the later Fall of Hyperion and have no intention to), Ilium sprawls, hem and haws, and really enjoys the sound of its own voice.

That voice being, for the most part, that of Simmons himself. Narrator Hockenberry, in my opinion, is a shallow self-insert, full of knowing asides about effete liberals, and by the time he inserts himself into Helen of Troy, you can be truly bored of him. The intellectual moravecs are more interesting characters, despite their cumbersome plodding through literary criticism. By the time they start summarizing Proust, I wanted to go watch Monty Python instead.

And the Huxley-esque "babes in the wood" strand? At times it's boring, at times just plain irritating, until the appearance of the gibberish-spouting Caliban. And still, nothing gets explained. The reader finishes the book just as much in the dark as Daeman and Harman themselves.

Moreover, there are cracks in the veneer too: several times, Simmons has to use terms that Daeman wouldn't know, just to bring the reader back into the story, even breaking the fourth wall to admit that fact. And several times throughout the book, the tense shifts from past to present or from present to past for a few sentences, indicating that this was by no means a polished draft.

The second book is even thicker. Yikes.

ZApravo, it is really much worse than I expected. Once again, Simmons writes in a way that no one else can. He is precise and singsongy; rhythmical and rich. However, the story, just as a story, has rather (a little, quite a bit) tired me out, that's it.

Perhaps it's the lack of a truly engaging plot or the overabundance of certain details that have made it less captivating than I had hoped. While Simmons' writing style is undoubtedly unique and has its charm, it seems that in this case, it couldn't fully compensate for the shortcomings of the narrative.

Nonetheless, I still appreciate the effort that went into creating this work. Maybe upon a second reading, I will be able to discover more of its hidden gems and gain a better understanding of its true value.

Ilium by Dan Simmons is a complex and somewhat flawed novel that attempts to blend multiple storylines and literary references.

The book begins with a scathing critique of the author's thought process in creating the story. Simmons imagines himself coming up with ideas like setting Homer's Iliad on a terraformed Mars with post-human Greek gods and a 20th-century scholar as the protagonist.

The main character, Thomas Hockenberry, is a rather bland scholar tasked with monitoring the recreated Iliad events. He is given special powers by Aphrodite to kill Athena, but his actions and decisions often feel unconvincing and even inappropriate.

The "Ada in the Future" storyline features Daeman, a womanizing character whose incestuous desires quickly become uninteresting. The group he travels with, including Harman, Hannah, Savi, and Odysseus, have dull conversations and encounter various technologies that are explained in a convoluted and often unconvincing way.

The third storyline follows Mahnmut and Orphu, moravecs on a mission to Mars. Their conversations about literature are interesting, but the "Trying To Get To Shore" section is overly long and lacks tension.

Overall, Ilium has its moments of entertainment, but it is marred by a slow start, unconvincing characters, and convoluted explanations. The final 200 pages are more action-packed and almost make the book worth reading, but it ultimately falls short of its potential.

Ilium is a flawed but somewhat entertaining novel that could have been much better with a more focused and edited approach.

ČITATELJSKI IZAZOV - NASLOVI PREMA SLOVIMA MOGA IMENA (17 - I)
Whenever I read such complex books, I am left speechless and don't know how to quickly give a relevant review. But here I am writing, let's see what comes out.
There are three stories running through the book. The first follows Ada, Harman, Daeman, and Hannu who live on Earth in the future. Life is easy, they just have fun, robots work for them and take care of them. If they get sick or die, they go to the hospital (which no one has ever seen) and there they are cured (or revived if necessary). They don't ask anything, they don't know much, they don't know how to read, write, or what the world looks like outside the area where they live and move. They are always young, and when they turn 100 years old, they go to live in the cities on the orbital rings that rotate around the Earth. There are the posthumans, people who have evolved and made an easy life possible on Earth for them. But is everything really as they think it is?
The second story follows two very sympathetic robots (moravecs) Mahnmut and Orphua, who travel from Jupiter's moons to Mars to discover strange and dangerous things that are happening there. One quotes Shakespeare, and the other Proust, and I must admit that their discussions about the works of those writers bored me a little. But the two of them were very sympathetic to me, they exhibit many human qualities, they think like humans and feel like humans. They are my two favorite characters. I was really rooting for them to succeed in their mission.
The third story was very difficult for me, detailed and it bored me. We follow the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. That's the old story from the Iliad. Paris stole Helen, then the Greeks came for her and attacked Troy. The war is followed by the Greek gods (Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Ares, Athena...). But there is one catch. The gods are actually not real Greek gods but highly technologically advanced people who have invented all kinds of things. They "revive" professors and scientists from the 20th and 21st centuries who studied the Iliad in their time. One of them is Thomas Hockenberry who spoiled their plans.
Honestly, I still don't know what the point of that Greek story was. It was difficult for me to read it because for a hundred pages it describes who was whose son and what the armor of all the Trojans and Greeks looked like. But literally all of them!!! Simmons got a bit too carried away with the Iliad.
None of the characters (except the robots) really impressed me, I didn't like any of them, I didn't root for anyone. There were even several characters who really annoyed me. The first is Savi who reveals a little bit of their past and the true past of the Earth to Ada and the others, but she does it with so much contempt for them, as if they are guilty because they don't know anything. Instead of teaching them everything and showing and explaining it to them. The second is Daeman, who at the beginning of the book is ready, artificial, a know-it-all. However, he really pleasantly surprised me until the end of the book. The other characters are completely characterless to me and have not developed at all yet. The robots are the only ones who are really sympathetic to me and I can't wait to read what will happen to them next.
As for the world-building, Simmons does not disappoint. I have already briefly described the future Earth, people have spread to Jupiter's moons, or rather, for some reason that is still unknown to us, they left conscious robots there to develop, and on Mars they built... the Olympus. The worlds that Simmons imagined are really phenomenal. He describes life on future Earth in such detail, he thought out all the events that led to the moment when the reader meets the characters. Old-new cities, old and new animals (dinosaurs, terror birds....), new concepts for the characters and objects in the book (moravec, voynix, firmary, faxnode...) and a million other details that charmed me. All in all, it wasn't bad to read Ilium. Definitely not on the level of Hyperion (the part with the Greeks and Trojans bored me a bit), but I still enjoyed it.

**Title: 3.5/5 - A Decent Rating**

A rating of 3.5/5 is not too shabby. It indicates that something has a good amount of positive aspects.

Perhaps it doesn't quite reach the level of perfection, but it still has plenty to offer.

It could mean that the product or service has met most of the expectations, with only a few areas that could use some improvement.

Maybe the quality is solid, but there are a few minor flaws.

Or perhaps the performance is good, but there are some aspects that could be enhanced for a more outstanding experience.

Overall, a 3.5/5 rating shows that there is value and potential, and it's definitely worth considering.

It gives an indication that with a little more effort or refinement, it could easily reach an even higher level of excellence.

So, when you see a 3.5/5 rating, don't dismiss it too quickly.

Take a closer look and see if it might be the right fit for you.

This book is truly one of a kind, standing in stark contrast to everything else I have ever perused. Dan Simmons' mind is an absolute wonder, a veritable treasure trove of fascinating ideas. The seamless blend of Greek mythology and science fiction within these pages was nothing short of captivating to me. Somehow, he manages to make this unlikely combination work to absolute perfection. From the very first page, he had me completely hooked, unable to put the book down.

The only minor quibble I had was the pacing. At times, it felt a bit on the slow side, and the length combined with the sluggish tempo wasn't exactly my ideal reading experience. However, I'm incredibly glad that I persevered and continued reading, because as the story progressed towards its conclusion, it became exponentially more exciting. It was as if a switch had been flipped, and suddenly I was on the edge of my seat, eagerly devouring every word.

Overall, I have to say that I'm thoroughly impressed with Dan Simmons' writing. His ability to create such a unique and engaging world is truly remarkable. I will most definitely be seeking out more of his works in the future, eager to see what other imaginative concepts he has in store for his readers.

Simmons, who is titled in English and was also a professor of Literature and Writing before devoting himself full-time to writing.

I mention this because perhaps this work fails me in some way.

The idea of the novel is to mix the Trojan War, quantum-nano-technological Greek gods, robots with biological parts spread throughout the solar system, a post-apocalyptic, playful-lotus-eating civilization on Earth, and something else that I won't tell you. And, of course, make all that converge or relate in some way.

It is very, very, very, very good.

But, oh dear! Mr. Simmons gives "erudite" details about hundreds of names of Achaeans (Greeks) and Trojans, "erudite" details about Shakespeare and Proust, snippets of poetry, and even digressions with surreal speeches from a certain Caliban. In short, a very good idea but a development that at times makes you lose interest and wish the pages would pass quickly. And the creation of characters is not Simmons' great strength either, it's hard to see them.

I have hesitated a lot between three and four stars. For the idea, five. But if a book is so hard for me to read, it can't go beyond three... and that's where it will stay. And besides, one would have to obligatorily continue with the second part, Olympo. Yes, decided, it stays at three.

~ 15/02/17
I've only read one chapter so far, but I can already tell that the writing is simply unbelievably brilliant. It's an instant love for me. The author's words seem to dance on the page, captivating my attention and drawing me into the story.

~ 18/03/17
•I'm a little past page 100, and while the writing remains brilliant, everything else isn't quite doing it for me. In fact, I've only managed to read 100 pages in 30 days. I have no doubt that the world-building is complex and well thought-out. However, nothing is explicitly explained, and the reader is expected to glean all the information from the story as it unfolds. Normally, I would love this, but in this case, at page 100, I still have no idea what's going on. This really disturbs me because I feel that I can't fully enjoy the story if I don't understand what's happening and who these characters are.

•Briefly, I needed the world-building to be revealed more quickly and clearly. This turned out to be a big problem for me because since the book is set in a world completely different from and alien to ours, the world-building becomes fundamental and should act as the glue holding all the events of the plot together. Without that glue, everything starts to crumble. And that's exactly what happened as I was reading: the plot seemed to fall apart right before my eyes, and in the end, I found that I had no more patience for it.

➽ \\n  But\\n I'm not ruling out the possibility of giving Ilium another try in the future. As I mentioned earlier, the writing won me over in an instant, and I believe that as the story progresses, things should improve. Therefore, I could potentially enjoy it more. But for now, I feel that there are other books that I would rather read.

"Ni fu ni fa xD" is an interesting expression.

It seems to convey a sense of lightheartedness or playfulness.

However, when it comes to personal preferences, everyone has their own unique tastes.

In this case, the person also mentions that "piolita más me gusta 'El terror'".

This shows that they have a particular fondness for something related to "El terror", which could potentially refer to a horror movie, book, or other form of entertainment.

Horror can be a thrilling and captivating genre for many people, as it elicits strong emotions and keeps them on the edge of their seats.

Whether it's the anticipation of a jump scare or the exploration of the darker side of human nature, horror has the ability to engage and fascinate its audience.

It's interesting to see how different people are drawn to different types of media based on their individual interests and personalities.

In this instance, the combination of the lighthearted "Ni fu ni fa xD" and the love for "El terror" creates a unique and perhaps unexpected contrast.

It makes one wonder what specific aspects of horror this person finds so appealing and how it fits into their overall entertainment preferences.