Books and book reviews

So, in continuing reading books related to the Trojan War I recently read two books by Dan Simmons – Ilium and Olympos. These strange, convoluted, but interesting books were “loosely” about the Trojan War, but also included aliens, modern and post-modern humans. Essentially, there were four or five distinct and quite different stories being told simultaneously. This was accomplished by alternating story lines in each chapter. Ultimately in the second book all of the story lines came together in the pen-ultimate chapter.

Ilium is the first book in this two-book series. In here you are introduced to all of the characters and story lines that at first seem totally unrelated. This included some odd twists on the story of the Trojan War. It also introduces the importance of William Shakespeare. At the end of the book there was a cast of characters, which in my opinion was critical. Actually, in reading the second book I often referred back to this cast in understanding how characters were involved and to which stories they were important to.

Olympos continues the story after the cliff-hanger ending to Ilium. While you think this could have been condensed into one book – it couldn’t. Each book is roughly 700 pages. Like the Iliad, there is a lot of redundancy.

So, the bottom line was this a fun read? Absolutely, it took the better part of a month to push through them.

Now, what will I read next? Or perhaps, where will I go next? More on that later…