I admire what Simmons has done here greatly and mostly I enjoyed reading the novel very much, but there is still that nagging "we're never going to get there" feeling. Ilium comes very, very close to a five-star read for me, but I found myself a bit bogged down in the last two hundred pages or so and a little weary at the thought of having to go through another 700 pages of this to get the answers. Nothing at all gets resolved here, and I dearly hope that I will find resolutions when I get into the sequel, Olympos. Literary and cultural references also abound, with Shakespeare, Proust, and (obviously) Greek mythology playing major roles in the narrative. The writing is gripping, the world-building fascinating, the characterization good enough, and the plot races ahead, spooling out fresh revelations and clues about What The Snarking Heck Is Going On at just the right pace. Meanwhile, a group of Wellsian Eloi-esque humans in our far future begin to question their easy but culture-less existence and a band of sentient robots in Jovian space detect technology-what-shouldn't-be coming from Mars and set out to investigate. (Obviously, some manner of time and space travel shenanigans must be going on here, the exact nature of which is part of the narrative thrust of the book). The Greek gods have set up a new Mount Olympus on a terra-formed Mars and have enlisted the aid of resurrected 20th century scholars in observing how closely the Trojan War raging below corresponds to Homer's telling of it. The book is new and unread, and the dust jacket is also in mint condition.Simmons combines a retelling of The Iliad with a post-apocalyptic science fiction story in Ilium. This book is #146 of the 250 numbered limited edition, signed by Dan Simmons. For this edition, they did a signed, numbered run of 250 copies, and an unsigned trade edition. Subterranean Press has earned a well-deserved reputation for the high quality of the work they do on the books they publish.
Originally published in paperback in 1989, Subterranean Press was the first to publish the book in hardcover in the US. This book is PHASES OF GRAVITY, by the excellent writer Dan Simmons. Item: 222865460598 Signed by Dan Simmons, PHASES OF GRAVITY, Subterranean, Limited #247/250, New.
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