Ilium

Dan Simmons — 2005

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.

Reviews

Cindy Lieberman@chicindy

Mar 26, 2022

I almost gave up on this book about 20% in, because the Greek gods’ storyline bogs down quite a bit. It was almost biblically boring with who begat whom.... Fortunately, the literature-quoting moravecs (biomechanical robots) from around Jupiter and the post-humans on Earth (the other two storylines) kept my interest sufficiently. Plus this is the author of Hyperion and its sequels, so the writing and world-building is top notch. I flew through the last third of the book and, yes, I’m going on to the next book (Olympus) now that I’m fully invested in learning the outcome. A bit less of the Greek gods’ lineage and I might have given it 5 stars.

Adam@adam

Aug 17, 2021

Simmons creates an intriguing world, but somehow this one didn't draw me in nearly as much as Hyperion. A world with time travel, Trojans, Achilles, Odysseus, Mars, Gods and other mysteries which are unraveled sounds amazing, leaving me unsure of what the missing piece was. Either way this did leave me wanting to read the next in the series.