Song of Kali
Ratings41
Average rating3.6
I picked this one up, since I both loved Hyperion and am interested in Hindu mythology and metaphysics. Suffice it to say, while this book does have some brief flashes of greatness that transfixed me to the page; most of it was mediocre. I can't hold it against Simmons considering this was his first full length novel, but you won't lose much by skipping out on it.
Great read, nice story and good resolution. Yeah it has some problems, but take it as it is: a horror novel written by a Western author. Not a ethnographic piece of how wonderful Calcutta is
Ehhh!! Most people misunderstood Goddess Kali, it's nothing new. But the hurt comes when a great author who wrote Hyperion didn't do research properly.
A REQUEST
When I die
Do not throw the bones and meat away
But pile them up
And
Let them tell
By their smell
What life was worth
On this earth
What love was worth
In the end
- Kamela Das
That ending really got me. A very solid debut, but what else could I expect from somebody who later wrote Hyperion.
This won a World Fantasy award, what, two decades ago? It wasn't particularly scary in the horror sense of the word. It was descriptively, delightfully disturbing, though. Dan Simmons seems to favour description; he kicks it old school, frankly, which I really like, and he revels in the things he knows and has studied, which I can relate to.
Thing about this book is...it's really good and making one disturbed. All the things about Kali and how terrible she is, very disturbing. But what is even more disturbing is the sheer squalor of Calcutta in the 70's. And the things that the main character, Robert Luczak, goes through in trying to get a story about a supposedly dead poet. It's not ghosts and demons and Sadako scary. It's humans being humans that make this book scary. Humans living in filth and either accepting it or being forced to. Humans doing horrible things to other humans. And that's essentially what this book is about. The Age of Kali, which wreaks havoc and destruction.
So, yeah, I totally enjoyed this book. Now, perhaps, on to ‘Drood.'