Ilium
Dan Simmons Hyperion books have been the weirdest SF books I read as a freshman student. Ilium is at least as weird, althoug in my view less confusing. Have you read Homers Iliad? Take that and put it in a hard SF environment, where the ancient Greek gods reenact the Trojan war, carelessly squandering the lives of those involved. The Greek gods always were rich in human weaknesses and childisch behaviour even, and in this version it certainly is no different. With Homer you never had a sentient biomechanical explorer ship that quotes Shakespeare's sonnets though!
Just recently the sequel to Ilium, Olympos