Read Today, Read Tomorrow

Throughout my recent bout with the flu I've been fortunate enough to have a load of books that I could read. It all started with Knife of Dreams, the latest installment from Robert Jordan. It's a decent read; more exciting than Crossroads of Twilight, where all you read about were weevils.

Then the library told me that Olympos, the sequel to Ilium was ready for me to pick up. These two are by Dan Simmons, who wrote the excellent Hyperion series (if I ever needed a killing machine, I'll give the Shrike a call). I re-read Ilium, which is loosely based on Homer's Iliad...except it doesn't quite go according to script. More like an alterna-history for Achilles, Hector (who I still see as Eric Bana) and the boys; with a couple of intelligent Asimovian robots thrown in for good measure.

Ilium was a great page-turner, and the battle scenes are stupendous. It really appealed to the seven-year old boy in me; so, when I finished Ilium and started in on Olympos, I was stoked.

In a way, it doesn't quite live up to Ilium; oh, the battle scenes were still there, and Achilles was a bad-ass as usual (Achilles vs. The Shrike. Hmm). However, Olympos seemed to be a bit more tongue-in-cheek, and there was a lot of sex. The kind that's written by horny D&D kids living in their mom's basement. In one instance, the only way to wake an important character up...was to have sex with her. Shades of Ghostbusters--the "Keymaster" and the "Gatekeeper".

Then Feast For Crows, the latest installment of A Song of Ice and Fire, arrived from Amazon just as I was in the middle of Olympos. Then the library told me that Anansi Boys was available for pickup; while there, I picked up Jasper Fforde's latest as well.

So many books, so little time...