Dan Simmons' new novel, Ilium

[Gatekeeper]

I've got Ilium on hold at the local bookstore ... I'd planned on checking Amazon.com out for reviews and whatnot before plunking down cash for it. I'm not sure if I'll get it ... I just discovered that my reading list stands at *14* books or so through January, three of which will be hardcovers. (And I still have two books to plough through from earlier this summer.)

Gatekeeper

P.S. There isn't much for exposition? Dang. I like books that are balanced in the sense that they have exposition along with character "talk" (i.e. ideally, a book has "strategic" and "tactical" levels).

[rah]

Yeah, like ming said. I usually don't read jacket covers unless I'm unfamiliar with the author. And checking the dates is key since I've been burned a few times.

GK, what other books are on your waiting list. The odds are I've probably read a few of them and can tell you how this one ranks against them.

[JohnT]

Well, yeah, I can maybe understand that...

But on the back cover of Ilium there is nothing other than author blurbs ("Dan Simmons is the greatest writer since...") and the following line:

This is part one of a two part series that will conclude in the upcoming Olympus

No plot synopsis, nothing.

And how do you determine if you're going to like a book if you don't read the blurb?

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by JohnT
And how do you determine if you're going to like a book if you don't read the blurb?

Because they are judging the books by their covers.

[Kropotkin]

Ilium is the city where much of the plot of "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut takes place. Wonder if there's some kind of hint in that title. The sentence "a post-technological group of humans, pampered by servant machines and easy travel via "faxing," begins to question its beginnings." do impy that. The rest of it seems to far out to me. Unless it's a parody of cource.

[JohnT]

A lot of the story has to do with the replaying of the siege of Troy. Simmons bases his books upon epic poems and this is his attempt to pay hommage to the Illiad and the Odyssey. His prior science fiction novels were hommages to Keats Hyperion and Endymion.

The man loves his poetry and he is likely the only author even capable of conceiving two 40th century robots constantly engaged in a heated debate about the relative merits of Proust and Shakespeare, much less capable of pulling it off.

[rah]

Buying any book is a crap shoot. You can't believe any "praise quotes" on the cover. So if I like an author, the probability of liking a book is probably twice as good as an unknown. (I will scan a jacket if I'm unfamiliar with an author) I read a lot of books so an occasional bad book isn't that big a deal.

And JT. At first I was somewhat aghast that two 40th century robots where having that heated debate, but I think he pulled it off quite well.

[Gatekeeper]

Originally posted by rah
GK, what other books are on your waiting list. The odds are I've probably read a few of them and can tell you how this one ranks against them.

Well, it's mostly "light-weight" reading material — the final two novels of the New Jedi Order series, a DS9 hardcover ("Unity"), possibly Ilium, and so on. If you've read any of these unreleased books, feel free to give me your thoughts on them.

Gatekeeper

P.S. I keep hoping they'll make Steven Pressfield's "Last of the Amazons" into a big-screen movie eventually. Supposedly the screen rights have been bought, but that's all I know.