Deeply unique and masterfully crafted

When you begin reading this book, there are disparate stories and characters which seem to have absolutely nothing to do with one another. By the end of the book, as the threads are being brought together, it all begins to make sense. While the book does start slowly, don’t give up, as the end result is just a fantastic work of science fiction which manages to also incorporate the characters of the Iliad to make a really interesting experience.

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We're not in the Iliad anymore Toto...

Fantastic. What starts off as a seemingly disjointed mess of 3 stories featuring characters and settings that are at times difficult to conceptualize, ultimately morphs into a layered epic worthy of the literary traditions it draws so heavily on for inspiration. in examining some of the critical reviews of this book, it appears that most critics have had a difficult time breaching the 100 page mark....tisk tisk.....

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3 people found this helpful

Amazing

Amazing. I was not expecting it at first then I couldn't stop listening. It is different then the Hyperion trilogy, but equally addictive.

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One of the best Sci-fi books on Audible

It's rare that I find a book fully deserving of 5 stars.
The story follows multiple separate and seemingly unrelated storylines.
Skipping from the incredible reimagining of the Trojan War to the adventures of the Jovian Moravecs, to the antics of the analphabet "adults" on Earth, the story is always immersive and entertaining,
It's hard to decide if you want to stick with the current storyline or catch up with the other characters.

This said this book might not be for everyone.
The story is big. Full of crazy ideas and characters. Interspersed with literary commentary on Homer, Shakespeare, and Proust.
It takes a genius like Dan Simmons to make it work. and for the right type of reader, open to originality (crazy to say that of sci-fi readers, right? but see some of the comments) - it makes for a brilliant listen and re-listen.

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Great concept, disappointing execution

I love classics, I love sci-fi, and I love re-tellings of The Iliad, so when I learned this book exists, I expected to love everything about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t love it, I found it disappointing, infuriating, and, at numerous points, outright distasteful. I’ve read a lot of books in sci-fi and other genres where the views, values, and political beliefs of the author are infused into the story or themes and don’t align with my own—I don’t have to agree in order to appreciate a particular story, but sometimes it can be jarring or off putting or distasteful if the author does a poor job integrating integrating these views into the particular story they’re telling or world they’re building. And that’s what I heard when listening to Ilium.

Why write a story containing the characters from the Iliad and also have a main character who in his former life was a classics professor from the late 20th-early 21st century if you’re going to make a casually homophobic story, through the eyes of this former classics prof who is chagrined to discover that Achilles and Patroclus are, in fact, not straight and how terrible it is that those ridiculous PC SJW queer students were actually right? It’s just not believable that a classics prof of this time period would not be aware that Ancient Greeks (and their Heroic Age heroes) didn’t have a heteronormative view of human sexuality. And Achilles and Patroclus having a bond far deeper and more intense than simple friendship is hardly a fringe opinion. It’s jarring because of which character is expressing these views.

If it had been established that this character was bad at his job, or his political views frequently warped his interpretation of classical texts like The Iliad and that was negatively impacting him in his role as a scholic observing the Trojan War, or even had this professor been from the late 19th-early 20th century (at the latest the 1950s) when scholarship was purposefully editing queerness out of translations and thereby imposing heteronormative interpretations in academia and the classroom, then it could work and not be jarring. Or, more simply, the author could have not made this character be surprised or chagrined.

This is just one example. Other examples include the islamophobia pertaining to Jerusalem, and a main character being aroused by spying on a nude 14-15 year old girl whose body is described with an uncomfortable degree of detail. It’s jarring, unnecessary, distasteful, and detracts from what otherwise could be an intricate or cerebral sci fi epic.

I both want to know how the story progresses and don’t want to subject myself to so many more unpleasant hours listening to Dan Simmons’ writing. I don’t think it’s worth another credit from me.

It’s a great concept, I just wish it was written by someone else.

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