The plot of this book is to complex to even attempt to go into but it has a dead historian recording events of the Trojan war for the gods, strange humans on a seemingly distant future earth, a machine race of explorers living on the outskirts of the solar system, and Shakespeare. Believe it or not they all go together in not such a surreal way as you might think. The characters are well rounded and evolve with the story. I don't know that it has important moral implications in the world but it was very entertaining to read.

I was quite excited to get back into Dan Simmons' science fiction. Well, ultimately I had to give up on this one about 2/3 of the way through. It was quite brilliant, but I have no knowledge of Homer's Iliad, and I think to fully appreciate the events in this novel, it's pretty beneficial to know something of this.
Sadly, the twists from Homer's tale were lost on me, and I felt short-changed. Given the opinions I've read on the sequel having the story come apart at the seams, I didn't feel that badly about giving up on the story.

More ambitious than Tony Stark, this book is a melting-pot of genres/tropes. I loved everything about it - space opera, greek mythology, far-future speculative sci-fi, action/war sequences, and passionate characters. I am definitely reading the sequel.

Niezwyciężony bohater Pafeu staje przed wyzwaniem wielkiej bitwy z armią Birba. Zdaje sobie sprawę, że samotnie będzie to trudne zadanie, ale technologia nanokokosowa oraz bomba termoarbuzowa mogą mu pomóc. Uzbrojony w swoją mikrogoferkową tarczę, rusza do walki...

Za namową Dawida sięgnąłem po książkę "Ilion" i jestem bardzo zadowolony z tej decyzji. Połączenie wojny trojańskiej z elementami futurystycznymi i science fiction to prawdziwe arcydzieło. Jak przeczytałem fragment w którym Zeus używa nanomaszyn lub podróżuje przez tunele czasoprzestrzenne to wiedziałem, że to książka dla mnie.

Książka przedstawia historię z trzech różnych perspektyw: grupy "nowych ludzi" pozostawionych na opustoszałej i zniszczonej Ziemi, Thomasa Hockenberry'ego, wskrzeszonego nauczyciela historii z XX wieku, który na zlecenie greckich bogów ma zbadać wojnę trojańską pod kątem zgodności z "Iliadą" Homera, oraz świadomych maszyn Morawców, które wyruszają z Jowisza, aby zbadać zwiększoną aktywność kwantową na terraformowanym Marsie.

Każdy z tych wątków jest świetnie napisany, a postacie mają wyraziste charaktery, co sprawia, że ich przygody czyta się z dużym zainteresowaniem. Pan Simmons z godnością przedstawił postacie znane z "Iliady", takie jak Achilles, Agamemnon, Hektor czy Helena. Każda z tych postaci ma unikalny charakter i doskonale pasują do tej książki.

To naprawdę świetna książka, którą gorąco polecam.

Ocena: ★★★★★

~ 15/02/17
I've only read one chapter but I can already tell the writing is so unbelievably brilliant. Insta-love for me.

~ 18/03/17
•I'm a little past page 100 and the writing is still brilliant, but all the rest isn't doing it for me -sure enough I've only been able to read 100 pages in 30 days. I've no doubt the world-building is complex and thought-out, but nothing is explicitly explained and the reader is supposed to glean all the information from the story itself as it unfolds; normally I would love this, but in this instance, at page 100 I still have no idea what's going on and this disturbs me, because I feel that I can't enjoy the story if I don't understand what's happening and who these people are.

•Briefly, I needed the world-building to reveal itself more quickly and more clearly. This proved to be such 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 work as the glue keeping all the events of the plot together. Without glue, all crumbles. And that's what kept happening when I was reading: the plot went on crumbling under my eyes, and in the end I found I had no patience for it anymore.

➽ n  Butn I'm not ruling out the possibility to give Ilium another try in the future. As I said, the writing won me over in a split second, and I think that further in the book things should work better, and therefore I could enjoy it more. But at the moment I feel that I have better things to read.

Ilium is good but flawed. I wish I could give it three-and-three-quarters stars If you haven't read Homer lately, you may want to brush up before reading this book. I started reading Ilium then quickly put it down, read Homer's Iliad, and then came back and finished Dan Simmons' Ilium. I was glad I did. You'll get a lot more out of Dan Simmons' book if Homer is fresh on your mind.

Please see my review of Olympos for my take on both Ilium and Olympos, which are a set.

n  n
Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.

On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.

While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).

In 2004, n  n    Iliumn  n won the Locus Sci-Fi award. In my opinion, if the award had been a motor race, the other contenders would have got their asses lapped. That’s not to say there weren’t some good books in the running that year, n  Quicksilvern is epic and I’ve heard good things about n  Pattern Recognitionn, n  The Speed of Darkn and n  Singularity Skyn – but n  n    Iliumn  n is so far up my alley that it’s sitting on my lap and fiercely tonguing my tonsils.

When I embarked upon my Locus Quest, I picked the Locus Sci-Fi Award over other more highly regarded genre awards (Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke) for one simple reason: n  n    Iliumn  n. I looked at my bookcase, saw this book and thought “I want to read more books like that”. Glittering on the cover was a little silver sticker ‘Winner of the Locus Award for best Sci-Fi novel’. I looked online and discovered that none of the more prestigious awards had recognised and rewarded Mr Simmons' mind-blowing madcap genius. “If the good people at Locus share my sensibilities regarding Señor Simmons,” I thought to myself, “then perhaps I’ll share theirs regarding other books.” Just like that, the decision was made and I committed myself to reading every winner of the Locus Sci-Fi award – a reading list that has taken me best part of two years to complete.

My introduction to n  n    Iliumn  n set my spider-sense a-tingling. My Mum popped her head round the door and said ‘I’ve got one for you, I couldn’t get into it – it was all a bit much’. Now, that may not sound like an encouraging description, but where my Mum’s tolerance for high-concept sci-fi drops off a cliff my personal sweet-spot begins. Previous authors to elicit this response that it was ‘all a bit much’ included Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan, and Alistair Reynolds – a warm welcome to the new chairman of the 'bit much' club, Dan Simmons!

Jayaprakash Satyamurthy has already done a superb job of summarising the story-strands so I advise you to pop over to his review to wrap your head around them.

This mash-up of classic literature with razor sharp sci-fi is audacious and inspirational. It’s the kind of book that I wish I could write. It’s the kind of book I wish I could trace back to the creative spark that initiated it to try and spin in a new direction. I read the book with a delighted grin stretching my cheeks throughout. The kind of book I’d risk walking into lampposts for because I simply could not tear it away from my face. I’ve read it multiple times and it never fails to delight me. I suppose you could call me a fan?

Off the back of n  n    Iliumn  n I read its sequel n  Olympusn (obviously) and then ventured further into Simmons’ work – The Hyperion Cantos, n  Song of Kalin, the Joe Kurtz Trilogy, n  The Terrorn and n  The Hollow Mann were all good reads and I’ve got n  Droodn on my shortlist and n  Carrion Comfortn and n  Summer of Nightn on my longlist to read as soon as the chance arises.

It’s fair to say I’ve become a big fan of his work – he consistently pushes my buttons.

I am happy to acknowledge that n  n    Iliumn  n wont be for everyone (like my Mum) but whenever anyone asks me if it’s worth a read I can’t help but gush. If you have even a passing interest in sparkling, original, intelligent, playful sci-fi – give it a try!

After this I read: Hyperion

Un talmes-balmes de Homer, Shakespeare, Proust si SF care cumva reuseste sa fie suficient de digerabil încît sa ma determine sa încep si volumul al doilea. :)

I went through a full spectrum of emotions while reading this book. Swinging between laughter, horror, sadness, boredom and confusion. The first half of the book I had no idea really what was going on, who was who and what the main plot of the story was. I mean there are aliens, Greek gods on Mars and a dinosaur! Who puts that lot into one story? I still dont think I can really explain the plot and characters to someone who hasn't read this book without sounding crazy and just rambling.
About 50% into the book I was ready to give in. The characters were too confusing, the plot just too obscure for me and too heavily sci-fi for my normal tastes. But im glad I persevered, the story line was still confusing but made more sense the further in to the book that I got and I actually started to care about the characters in the end. The Moravecs had to be my favourite, they provided the comic relief for me.
I would actually recommend this book to people after all. Only if they have an interest in heavy sci-fi though, some of the technological explanations flew right over my head.

Having recently reread the Iliad of Homer this book is a good follow-up both as a change, in genre, and as renewing my knowledge of the Iliad helps in understanding Simmons' novel. For in his novel Homer's relevance is more than an opening prop or gimmick. It is the Iliad that initially provides a bearing, a compass for the reader upon which the rest of the narrative depends, and without which, it could be argued, the rest, at least during the first third or so of the book, would unravel. This is a complicated novel with regard to plot and it is the familiarity of the Iliad storyline that initially binds the work together, serving as a sturdy foundation while the other two strands, at first seeming unrelated, gradually come together.

Part humor, part literary space opera (and perhaps part mind game for intellectuals), Ilium is fascinating in its grand scope as well as the way it reimagines earlier works to conform to an entirely new epic type. Within it references abound, not only to literature but popular culture, current events, philosophy and recent concepts of physics. It can be difficult to keep one's bearings as the author's vision is so expansive that the scale of events, characters and themes so often touched upon or merely suggested, only to be later viewed from different circumstance or perspective. Much of what occurs throughout the novel is driven by anticipation of how the author will ultimately resolve and integrate all of his various plotlines, cast and speculation. Intriguing hints are laid, sometimes in opposition: Proust's exploration of time, memory and perception or the secret paths to the puzzle of life; the moravec Mahnmut's interpretation of Shakespeare's Sonnets as a dramatic construct; the interaction and influence of will, represented by Zeus, the Fates, and kaos, upon events taking place upon the plains of Ilium; the fulcrum Hockenberry is urged to find in order to change the outcome of Homer; or the identity of "'A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.'" Cosmologies and ontologies, as well as metaphors, are borrowed, their identities and purposes remaining unclear or unexplained, as is so much else by novel's end, though suspicions are delectably stirred. It is a novel that successfully entices the reader to continue the saga in the sequel, Olympos.

ČITATELJSKI IZAZOV - NASLOVI PREMA SLOVIMA MOGA IMENA (17 - I)
Uvijek kad čitam ovako kompleksne knjige, ostanem bez riječi i ne znam kako sročiti suvisli osvrt. Al evo piskaram pa što ispadne.
Kroz knjigu se provlače tri priče. Prva prati Adu, Harmana, Daemana i Hannu koji žive na Zemlji budućnosti. Život je lagodan, samo se zabavljaju, roboti rade za njih i čuvaju ih. Ako se razbole ili umru, odlaze u bolnicu (koju nitko nikad nije vidio) i tamo ih izliječe (ili ožive, ako treba). Ništa ne propituju, ne znaju puno toga, ne znaju čitati, pisati, ni kako izgleda svijet izvan područja na kojima žive i kreću se. Uvijek su mladi, a kad napune 100 godina, odlaze živjeti u gradove na orbitalnim prstenovima koji se vrte oko Zemlje. Tamo se nalaze posthumanci, ljudi koji su evoluirali i njima omogućili lagodan život na Zemlji. No je li zaista sve tako kako oni misle da je?
Druga priča prati dva presimpatična robota (moraveca) Mahnmuta i Orphua, koji s Jupiterovih mjeseca putuju na Mars da otkriju neobične i opasne stvari koje se tamo događaju. Jedan citira Shakespearea, a drugi Prousta i moram priznati da su me njihove rasprave o djelima tih pisaca pomalo zamarale. Ali njih dvojica su mi bili super simpatični, ispoljavaju mnoge ljudske osobine, razmišljaju kao ljudi i osjećaju kao ljudi. Njih dva su mi najdraži likovi. Za njih sam baš navijala da uspiju sa svojom misijom.
Treća priča mi je bila jako naporna, predetaljna i zamarala me je. Pratimo borbu Grka i Trojanaca. To je ona stara priča iz Ilijade. Paris ukrao Helenu, onda Grci došli po nju i napali Troju. Borbu prate grčki bogovi (Zeus, Hera, Apolon, Ares, Atena...). E al tu postoji jedna caka. Bogovi zapravo nisu pravi grčki bogovi već visoko tehnološki razvijeni ljudi koji su si svašta umislili. Oni „oživljavaju“ profesore i znanstvenike iz 20-og i 21-og stoljeća koji su u svoje doba proučavali Ilijadu. Jedan od njih je i Thomas Hockenberry koji im je pomrsio planove.
Iskreno, još uvijek ne znam koja je bila bit te grčke priče. Bilo mi je naporno čitati ju jer ono na sto stranica opisuje tko je bio čiji sin i kako je izgledao oklop svih Trojanaca i Grka. Ali doslovno svih!!! Malo se Simmons previše nabrijao na Ilijadu.
Nitko od likova (osim robota) me se uopće nije dojmio, nitko mi se nije svidio, za nikog nisam navijala. Bilo je čak nekoliko likova koji su me iznimno živcirali. Prva je Savi koja Adi i ostalima malo pomalo otkriva njihovu prošlost i pravu prošlost Zemlje, ali to čini s toliko prezira prema njima, kao da su oni krivi zato što ništa ne znaju. Umjesto da ih sve nauči i pokaže im i objasni. Drugi je Daeman, koji je na početku knjige gotovan, umišljen, kukavica. Doduše, on me baš ugodno iznenadio do kraja knjige. Ostali likovi su mi potpuno bezlični i zasad se još nisu nimalo razvili. Roboti su mi jedini baš simpatični i jedva čekam da pročitam što će se dalje s njima dogoditi.
Što se tiče izgradnje svijeta, Simmons ne razočarava. Zemlju budućnosti sam već ukratko opisala, ljudi su se proširili i na Jupiterove mjesece, točnije iz nekog, nama još nepoznatog razloga, tamo su ostavili svjesne robote da se razvijaju, a na Marsu su izgradili... pa Olimp. Svjetovi koje je Simmons osmislio zaista su mi fenomenalni. Toliko detaljno opisuje život na Zemlji budućnosti, detaljno je osmislio i sve događaje koji su doveli do trenutka kad čitatelj upoznaje likove. Stari-novi gradovi, stare i nove životinje (dinosauri, teror ptice....), novi pojmovi za likove i predmete u knjizi (moravec, voynix, firmary, faxnode...) i milijun drugih detalja koji su me očarali. Sve u svemu, nije bilo loše pročitati Ilij. Definitivno mi nije na razini Hyperiona, (pomalo me smorio dio s Grcima i Trojancima), ali svejedno sam uživala.

My review of Ilium in a nutshell:
“I liked it?”

AMBISHUN: DAN SIMMONS HAZ IT.

I’m not sure if it is possible to be too ambitious when creating a plot for a novel, but Dan Simmons seems to be on a mission to find out. There are concepts, there are high concepts, and there are Dan Simmons concepts.

When it’s time for Simmons to begin a new novel, I picture something like this:

Dan Simmons is smoking a pipe (made from the bones of an aurochs), deep in the bowels of Stately Simmons Manor. Inspiration hits. He must write a novel about the Trojan war! But ANYONE could do that. How does Dan Simmons make his version stand out? TO THE TOPICS BARREL!

He dramatically opens the oversized mahogany double-doors to his study and PickWick, the Simmons family butler, is already cranking one of those super-sized bingo barrels. Thousands of ping pong balls –nay, sliced baby eyelids, each bearing a single topic tattoo- are skittering about. When the barrel stops barreling, out slide three moist subjects.

Robots.
Mars.
Shakespeare.

Dan Simmons downs the last of his chilled cognac, freshly squeezed from the teats of a three-breasted whore. He twirls an imaginary mustache. “Yes,” he mutters. “Only Simmons could set the Trojan War on past and future Mars and tell it from the perspective of two cyborgs (one who will be shaped like…a CRAB!!!!) who constantly bicker about Proust! ONLY SIMMONS!”

He jauntily skips across campus to his vintage moveable-type machine (the ink contains the semen of Ben Franklin!) and writes 1,200 words in 4 days.

-END SCENE-

Seriously. Does he do this with every novel? Just off the top of my head:

Arctic Exploration + Yeti = The Terror.
Charles Dickens + Serial Killer = Drood.
Vampires + A Dangerous Game. Nazis = Carrion Comfort.

I really liked Ilium, even if I have no idea how the concurrent randomness actually ties together. I know there’s a sequel that should explain everything, but man, my brain is far too tired to risk another multi-pronged mind-asplode scenario. For a while, anyway.