Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fears and tears, 6 Jan 2004
As with other novels by Dan Simmons, the worst horror is the reality so movingly depicted. The real monster is Calcutta, a city dedicated to Kali, goddess of death, with its open morgues and its fresh dead on the morning streets - something that should be dead, but putrefyingly persists. This is not the only source of horror, however - at least one scene in an unlit room had me reading with my hand over my mouth in fear. And the ending is heartbreakingly desolate. As Mr Simmons says, don't blame him that his books are marketed as horror, and don't blame him for the artwork. He is a highly literate author whose novels are driven by character, not incident. A satisfyingly frightening and surprisingly moving read.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a classic, 23 April 2005
The Song of Kali was Dan Simmons' first novel. As such, it is something of an apprentice work. The themes which appear in his beter known works (the Hyperion Cantos and the Olympos series) are present: scholarly heroes, writers and great literature, and doomed children and the effect on their parents. The setting (Calcutta in the 1970s) is also extremely vivid and well described - there is an awful lot of wading around in filth, and a clammy, miasmic feeling is very strongly evoked.But it has to be said, not a lot really happens. Our hero arrives in Calcutta to see a supposedly deceased poet, has a few stories related to him about the cult of Kali, a few nasty things happen to him (and one very nasty thing) and then he heads off again. The plot does seem a bit thin, and becomes fairly incoherent towards the end. And the tone is not really very fantastical or horrific - it is probably deliberate on the author's part, but we never really find out if his fantastical expreiences are real or not, or just figments of his imagination. Overall, this is a good book and a worthwhile read if you like Dan Simmons. But it is not his best, and if you are new to this author, try Hyperion or Olympos first.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A one-way ticket to Calcutta for the price of a paperback, 10 Sep 2006
Robert Luczak, poet and editor, has just been hired to hop on a plane to Calcutta and investigate the claims of a man who says he wants to publish new material by a celebrated Indian poet... the problem is, the poet has been dead for years. So Bobby and his Indian wife Amrita pack their bags and their baby daughter and head off to Calcutta to hear about M. Das' mysterious resurrection. And as it turns out, Das has indeed been resurrected - by the Goddess Kali, the Hindu Goddess of death and destruction, so that he might be the voice that proclaims the coming of her dominion to the world.
And that is the entire plot, I'm afraid.
India and Hinduism have always fascinated me, so when I spotted "Song of Kali" in the bookshop I couldn't resist. Simmons is a fine writer, really: he describes Calcutta in glorious, disgusting detail. Reading the book, I could smell the stench in the streets, feel the overpowering heat, breathe the foul air... but unfortunately, Simmons talents as a writer seem to stop there (in this book, at any rate). He has no concept of a plotline, a coherent story with a beginning and an end. I don't by any means insist on hero quests in fantasy novels, but I do like to finish a book feeling as if someting had happened. I finished "Song of Kali" with the sights and sounds and smells of Calcutta all around me... and nothing else. Simmons went to a great deal of trouble to describe the most horrifying, frightening, sickening, miasmic city I have ever read about - and then he did nothing with it. Just to make matters worse, the ending drifts off into sheer silliness: Star Warsian philosophising on the Good and Evil inside us corruptable humans (Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And Hate is the path... well, you know the rest.) The book's title should have been "Song of Calcutta" - the city gets more "screen time" even than the main protagonist, and is far more interesting.
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