I picked it up because a friend of mine whom I trust to have good taste told me to pick it up.
Now, when I first got into it, I was excited, the writing was very mature and engrossing, I could tell it was epic fantasy, after the first few chapters or so.
When I got to the scene where
Spoiler
Lena was raped.
It just reallly shocked me. I'll refer to that scene as "the violence" so as not to spoil it for others.
Now, that scene was so vivid to me that I actually put down the book in disgust. It was kind of a clash of emotions for me. I was disgusted beyond belief at what the character had done, and yet at the same time, impressed that someone can write so well and paint a picture so vivid that I could recoil and feel the way I did about it.
Anyways, I had to set the book down, I started another an finished it and then came back and re-read the book and got to that scene and I was finally able to move on. Don't know what I'm really telling or saying here, but I find this to be one of the best fantasy books I've read in years and I've been reading fantasy for 15 years now, I've read most all the big authors, Jordan, Goodkind, Martin, Tad, Brooks, Weis & Hickman, Salvatore, Turtledove, Tolkien...and each of thoes books has their ups and downs and some are better than others and some are just mediocre, but this book hit me like Tolkien hit me when I was 12 and really got into Fantasy, WOW, thats all I can say, wow.
Somewhere in his various experiments of writing in various genres (horror, science fiction, crime fiction, and environmental fable) he has learned to express his sense of humor. 
I found myself laughing my head off at various places in Illium -- something I never did in the Hyperion/Endymion books. 
