Ilium

I received a review copy of this book from the folks at HarperCollins way back in 2005 before the release of its sequel, Olympos. That was the year I created the Hotlist! Not sure why it took me two decades to finally give it a shot. When the digital edition of Ilium went on sale a few weeks back, I realized that it was high time to read it.

Yes, I'm extremely late to this party and I have no excuse. I was afraid that maybe Ilium had not aged well, but it turned out to be a great ride!

Here's the blurb:

The Trojan War rages at the foot of Olympos Mons on Mars—observed and influenced from on high by Zeus and his immortal family—and twenty-first-century professor Thomas Hockenberry is there to play a role in the insidious private wars of vengeful gods and goddesses. On Earth, a small band of the few remaining humans pursues a lost past and devastating truth—as four sentient machines depart from Jovian space to investigate, perhaps terminate, the potentially catastrophic emissions emanating from a mountaintop miles above the terraformed surface of the Red Planet.

Dan Simmons' Ilium is epic science fiction at its best. Unlike a lot of hard scifi, this book is quite complex yet can be enjoyed by any SFF readers. Indeed, it's dense but still makes for compulsive reading. It's easy to understand why it was nominated for the Hugo Award for best novel.

A retelling of Homer's The Iliad as the Trojan War takes place on Mars and pseudo-gods get involved to influence one side or the other. The worldbuilding is quite impressive, the more so since we have to wait for the sequel for Simmons' universe to come fully realized. Ilium is a convoluted tale that echoes with depth. Beyond the war on Mars, back on Earth what's left of mankind have forgotten all about their past since the departure of the post-humans for the rings in the planet's orbit. Until a woman known as the Wandering Jew reveals the truth to a small group of people, setting them on a path that will have grave repercussions for what's left of their civilization. Meanwhile, bio-mechanical organisms known as Moravecs are sent on a secret mission to Mars to investigate what could be a threat for the entire solar system. It's a lot to take in, yes, but the author pulls it off in brilliant fashion.

The characterization is particularly well done. Thomas Hockenberry is probably the closest thing to a main character found in Ilium. It's through his perspective that we see the Trojan War unfold. A dead scholar rebuilt from his DNA, as a scholic he is tasked to report to the Muse on how the war waged on Mars compares to the conflict chronicled in Homer's poem. It's through him that we learn about the Gods and the conflict between the Achaeans and the Trojans. When Aphrodite approaches him to spy and kill another Goddess, the man knows that he's in over his head. When the proverbial shit hits the fan and he believes that he only has a few hours left to live, I loved that he spent what little time he had left to have sex with Helen of Troy, said to be the most beautiful woman in the world. I didn't expect the Moravecs to have such endearing personalities. But Mahnmut, aficionado of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Orphu is Io, a Proust enthusiast, make the most unlikely pair of likeable protagonists. It's the Earth's contingent that's the hardest to like, at least until Savi's arrival. From that point on, Harman, and especially Daeman, a frivolous womanizer, truly come together.

The pace can be slow at times, especially in the first half of the novel. There's a lot of groundwork to be laid out and Simmons is juggling a number of storylines simultaneously. And though every new answer raises its share of new questions, I feel that the author did a great job in weaving all those disparate threads into a cohesive whole. The rhythm picks up in the second portion of the book, and especially in that last 200 pages or so when the various plotlines converge. It does take a while for the overall story arc to start to make sense, but not once throughout Ilium does it feel like you're totally lost. You just need to buckle up and enjoy the ride.

The endgame raises the stakes even higher, which in turn raised my expectations for Olympos. Since this was always meant to be a duology, while it offers some resolution, the ending of Ilium just leaves the door open for what comes next in the second installment. The grand scale of this story looks like it's going to take on an even wider scope in the second volume. To all ends and pruposes, it looks as though Ilium is just the set-up for what will be an even more ambitious work of science fiction in the sequel. Can't wait to sink my teeth into that one!

Recommended.

The final verdict: 8.5/10

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