Ilium is one of the more ambitious books I've read. It's got just about everything: A retelling of the Iliad set in the far future on Mars, observed by a 21st century scholar. Humans, still on Earth, live for 100 years of ignorant bliss before ascending to the "rings" in Earth orbit to live in paradise, which ends up actually being a dead city full of horrors, ruled by characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Sentient AI robots from Jupiter play a role, as do little green aliens (literally called Little Green Men).

It's a complex behemoth of a novel that rewards being well-read and knowing your history. It mixes together bits of mythology with science fiction, with a plot that contains several levels but is never too hard to figure out. The chapters alternate between 3 POV characters: Daeman, an 'old-style' Earth human; Hockenberry, the 21st century scholar recreated from bits of DNA to observe this future reenacted Trojan War; and Mahnmut, a sentient AI robot on a mission to discover what's really going on on Mars.

Ilium was a really rewarding novel that took me quite a while to work through. It's very readable, but also very long and can be a little bit of a slog in some parts. The Hockenberry chapters were by far the most engaging, with Daeman's chapters being a bit underwhelming, at least until the end.

I definitely want to read the sequel, Olympos, but I need a bit of a break before diving in.