By Dan Simons
I really loved Ilium when I read it in June so was looking forward to this, the sequel. And it kicks off right where we left the story in the first book. Unfortunately it just didn’t work as well. All through this book I was interested in what was going on, but never gripped, never fascinated or engaged by it. Merely hmm, that’s interesting. Continue reading
Tag Archives: intertextual
26 June 2010
Genre: biography, graphic novel
Setting: Pennsylvania
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Fun home : a family tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Like many father, mine could occasionally be prevailed on for a spot of ‘airplane’.
This is the memoir of Alison Bechdel, her recollections of growing up in an emotionally-distant family, the role of literature in her, and her father’s, life, her identifying as a lesbian at college and coming out, by letter, to her parents. It is the story of growing up in a house that can seem more like a museum than a home. Of living in a funeral home. Of trying to connect with her father. All told in graphic form.
11 June 2010
Genre: sff
Setting: alien, Ancient times, future, Roman Judea, Troy
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Ilium by Dan Simmons
by Dan Simmons
Ilium opens with Thomas Hockenberry, a twenty-first century professor, observing the Trojan War on behalf of a Muse. He has been reborn into this world of heroes and gods at the whim of a god or goddess and exists purely on their suffering. His job, to watch the happenings in the war and report back on whether or not they follow the path he is familiar with from Homer’s Iliad. The second chapter is from the point of view of Daeman, a youngish man at some point in the future, who is visiting his cousin’s house with the sole purpose of seducing her. The next storyline we are introduced to is that of Mahnmut, a sentient machine of sorts, who has been asked to attend a meeting for some mission, although his mind is more occupied with Shakespeare and his sonnets.