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Title: Ilium by Dan Simmons ISBN: 0-380-97893-8 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.16 (86 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Well, we are definitely not in the Iliad any more, Toto
Comment: I reached the point long ago where I became rather fiercely committed to the idea of reading a novel without knowing too much about the story. Book covers are immediately discarded upon purchase (sometimes not to be found for months later when they surface again all crumpled and wrinkled), and I passionately avoid reading the back covers of paperbacks until after the book is read, at which point I am usually grossly offended. Consequently, I picked up Dan Simmons' "Ilium" simply because I heard it was a retelling of the Trojan War in general and Homer's "Iliad" in particular. Since I teach that epic poem in my Classical Mythology class and have always considered myself to be an "Iliad" person rather than an "Odyssey" person, that was enough to get me to pack this book away for a recent trip when I could commit myself to some serious continuous reading. So I was rather surprised to learn that a retelling of the "Iliad," after a fashion, is but one of three story threads that start to come together over the course of this 576 page novel, which is itself but the first half of a the saga envisioned by Simmons.
The Trojan War is being reenacted on Mars by a race of metahumans who have assumed the roles of the Greek gods of classical mythology. Our vantage point to this exercise is Thomas Hockenberry, a scholar who is pretty sure he is dead and remembers little of his life on earth, but knows Homer's epic poem chapter and verse, and along with the rest of his colleagues is cataloguing where the action diverges from the "Iliad." It seems that Homer played around with the chronology when he wrote his epic thousands of years ago, which begs the question of why Hockenberry is now watching it played out and getting involved in a way that goes well beyond academic interest, beginning with a night in the bed of Helen of Troy herself. Meanwhile, a couple of robots with a propensity for quoting Shakespeare and Proust are leaving Jupiter to head to Mars to check out the strange readings they are picking up and back on Earth a group of humans living in a post-technological world where mechanical servants take care of their every needs are starting to rethink the way things are. When the latter meets up with Odysseus, we have another substantial clue that (surprise, surprise) these three plot threads are all parts of the same puzzle.
I have to admit that my interest for the non-"Iliad" parts of "Ilium" took a while to be kindled, mainly because my fascination with how the Trojan War was playing out was so great. Hockenberry has been studying the Trojan War for nine years and as the novel begins he and his colleagues are excited because they have finally reached the start of the "Iliad," when Agamemnon, King of the Acheans, arrogantly insults the great warrior Achilles over Briseis of the lovely arms. However, this becomes almost a minor consideration for Hockenberry the Muse he serves brings him to the goddess Aphrodite, who wants the scholar to kill the Athene herself.
From the opening paragraph, where Simmons does a pointed take off on the famous beginning of Homer's epic, Simmons dances his story in and around the "Iliad." The question of how a mere mortal such as Diomedes could dare to attack the gods themselves on the battlefield, and actually wound then, is not answered: he is injected with nano-technology by another deity. However, it is when we get to the fateful point where Homer's story is effectively derailed and Hockenberry makes the inevitable declaration to Dorothy's little dog that we are no longer in the "Iliad" and are now charting new ground.
Ultimately Simmons is more like Euripides than Homer. It was the Greek dramatist who set up the ironic foreshadowing of the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles in "Iphigenia at Aulis" and who created an emotional counterpart in "The Trojan Women" to the end of the "Iliad," where Hector's corpse is brought back to the city. Homer's epics were not holy writ for the ancient Greeks, and the tragic poets could use his characters to tell their own stories, which is exactly what Simmons is doing (there is one part that struck me as a deadly serious twist on Aristophanes' "Lysistrata"). I have the feeling that the conclusion will be more like the "Odyssey," especially since the "original" fate of Troy, Achilles, Hector, and the others are well over the rainbow, but now I am curious to see not only what happens next, and who wins the new war that has begun, but also because I want to find out who is behind the curtain.
Rating: 5
Summary: Truly extraordinary
Comment: I loved this book. Science fiction isn't my prefered genre, but this is an exception. Dan Simmons has created a novel with as much scope and depth as Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I can't begin to describe the story; it has characters from the Iliad (Hector, Achilles, etc.), "moravecs" (sentient partially organic machines that were "seeded" throughout our solar system), normal humans, Greek gods, and more. Oh, and much of the story takes place on a newly-terraformed Mars. This is one of those stories that seems to tell 3 separate tales until suddenly you find these vastly different storylines intersecting.
My only complaint is the way the book stopped. Not ended. Stopped. Another novel is supposed to follow, but the end of "Ilium" is still a bit abrupt.
Rating: 2
Summary: Not an Easy Read, Often Incoherent
Comment: This book lacks coherence and many parts were often unintelligible. Simmons has the bad habit of making up his own words and terminology - this would not be such a problem if he defined them and explained the words when using them. However, he often does not explain the terms until hundreds of pages later, if at all!!(scholic,moravecs, voynix, faxing humans?- i still dont know what these are after reading the novel).
He seems to be trying to tell more than one story at a time, and measn the novel lacks any semblance of a normal progression. I often found myslf mumbling, "what the heck is going on?"and found myself looking again and again at the story summary on the dust jacket vainly seeking an explanation.
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Title: Worlds Enough & Time : Five Tales of Speculative Fiction by Dan Simmons ISBN: 0060506040 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 26 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) by Neal Stephenson ISBN: 0380977427 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan ISBN: 0345457684 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Golden Age by John C. Wright ISBN: 0812579844 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2) by Neal Stephenson ISBN: 0060523867 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 13 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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