Song of Kali by Dan Simmons Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Song of Kali
Book Review: Yeah Dan Simmons rocks
Summary: 4 Stars
Dan Simmons manages to take the tourist fears of third world countries and make them palatable enough that you not only sympathize with these people, you never want to travel to the places that they travel.
This book is a rich textured trip into hell-on-earth as the poverty and decay slowly overwhelm the narrator and his wife. The caste system, drug dealers and apologists all work together to create an eerie hopeless desperation that the main character can only deny by the barest shred of rationalization.
I am only giving this book 4 stars because the ending is stupid (it's an urban legend for chrissakes) but the trip there is just too horrifying to believe.
Book Review: a disturbing pleasure to read
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been a fan of Dan Simmons for some time now, but it was only recently that I put my hands on a copy of "Song of Kali". I approached the book expecting a standard horror story yet Simmons delivered much more than that. The city of Calcutta is described as a surreal, nightmarish hell on Earth, and certainly won't earn Simmons a job writing Indian travelogues. The overall picture painted here is bleak, unforgiving and downright horrifying, even to a longtime follower of horror novels like me. I was captivated and truly unnerved at many of the events described here. There is an underlying sense of "wrongness" within these pages disguised as a rather straightforward tale. I read this novel in one sitting and it kept me riveted to my seat.
Other reviewers have commented upon the lack of "closure" in some of the plotlines. From my perspective, the terror of the unknown and leaving the horrors unsolved made for a more realistic and true-to-life ending. Certainly in "real life" there are not too many times when events wrap up in a neat little package. H.P. Lovecraft was a master of using fear of the Unknown to horrify his readers, and Simmons has learned his Lovecraft lessons well.
If high quality horror is your bag, you need "Song of Kali" in your library.
Book Review: do ya not like children
Summary: 1 Stars
The book so so very predictable. As soon as Bobby takes his wife and baby to the arm pit of the world you knew that there was serious trouble. The flimsy excuse of using his wife as an interpreter was weak at best. Why would his intelligent wife let a stranger into her hotel room becuase she sais that she is a relative of the poet that Bobby is looking for much less let this woman handle her baby. If Booby, and I do mean Booby, had done his research on Das then he would have known that Das had no female relatives and, realistically, that is what would have happened. I think Simmons likes to put children in the way of great danger just to shock his readers. While Booby wanders around this dangerous trash heap of a city leaving his wife and child to the tender mercies of a demented town, I was just waiting to see what happens to the kid becuase that is what the story was driving to. Yea, sure the song of Kali was about the ultimate spread of violence committed on all humankind, but the climax was so predictable and finally not satifying, just plain sad. Simmons, I don't reccommend him. The action of the main people in the story just don't make sense and the children seem to suffer the most loss.Book Review: interesting read
Summary: 4 Stars
in my review on "drood" by dan simmons, i wrote that he is one of my favorite sci-fi authors, but that i've rarely ventured outside that genre for his writing. after reading "drood" and thoroughly enjoying it, i decided to backtrack a bit and get one of simmons' earlier novels, "song of kali." again, thick with rich and socially disturbing images and descriptions of the novel's locale, in this case calcutta, india. but the story beneath this backdrop is just as disturbing. i enjoyed it - read it all in one weekend - and appreciated simmons' references to the history and social structure of calcutta at the time of the story.