Swan Song

Rating:
Summary: Great bok
Review: Swan Soong is one of the best books I have ever read. At first, I thought I would never finish it because it was so long, but after the first few chapters, I had a hard time putting it down. It has a great plot and wonderful characters. Anyone who can read should check this one out!

Rating:
Summary: McCammon should be up there with the rest
Review: Screw dean Koontz. He had a few good ones but now he is writing the same story again and again. Sure he changes the titles and the names, but the story is the same. As for McCammon, he should have kicked deans booty long ago in ratings. I read Swansong when it first came out and i was enchanted. It was one of the first books i read that spent as much time with the characters as it did the story. I didnt want it to end, even after 840 pages. So when i was done i waited a year and read it again. Dont take McCammon for granted, Read Swansong, then check out his others, they are all rewarding.

Rating:
Summary: Best of the best
Review: I have read Swan Song three times and hope to soon be able to read it again. Have bought 3 copies, because I have loaned it out so often they became old ragged and falling apart. The best book dealing with the subject that has been published..Loved The Stand, but this surpasses it..anyone know what McCammon is doing now....I've read everything, but nothing new in last few years.

Rating:
Summary: the best i've ever read
Review: I've read alot of books on alot of different subjects and i agree without a doubt with every other review listed thay this book rules! I've reccomended it to everyone I know and i do the same to you.If you don't read it, it's a great loss to your own library.

Rating:
Summary: Buckle up for the ride of your life!!!!
Review: I've read this book 3 times. Each time it gets better and better!!!! This is a MUST for any horror fan. It rates right up there with The Stand, by Stephen King. No other horror books have stayed with me so long. A book you can go back to time and time again!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: The American, non-sectarian answer to Dante's INFERNO
Review: SWAN SONG is rather like MOBY DICK, in that it is so richly textured and densely layered that a virtually infinite number of structures and meanings can be discovered in it. One of the things that fascinates me about this novel is the structural similarity that exists between it and Dante Alighieri's DIVINE COMEDY. "Midway through the journey of my life" begins Dante's COMEDY, while making his way through a dark wood, he falls down a hole, finding himself in Hell. He is greeted there by Virgil, his teacher and ideal. Guided first by his beloved teacher, then by Beatrice, whom he loves above all save God, Dante is guided first through Hell, all the way to the bottom; then down the hole at the bottom of Hell to find himself at the base of Mt. Purgatorio; then up Mt. Purgatorio to Paradise and the Empyrean, the Throne of God. Similarly, the protagonists of SWAN SONG, making their way through the darker parts of our quotidian, familiar world, fall down holes -- and emerge to find themselves in a truly hellish, post-nuclear apocalypse world. In three groups of two each, they make their way toward their ultimate meeting on Warwick Mountain. There, via an ultimate confrontation between good and evil, each of them then leaves the mountain, one way and another, in life or through death, to go to the place which he or she most truly deserves. And at the end the world is redeemed and cleansed and made whole once more, as close to heaven as before it was to hell. Now, the actual _story_ of SWAN SONG is a great deal more complex than that, and rather than being a mere morality play, forms one of the truly great American novels. But the underlying _structure_, content or not, is virtually identical to that of Dante's COMEDY. It is thus, while being a truly great modern novel, also, at the same time, a wholly non-sectarian, American version of the DIVINE COMEDY. Whether this happened by design or accident -- probably the latter, for great novels are not written with a conscious intent to "make art" or mimic the rhythms or structures of another novel -- is not important. But the similarities are there, and worth exploring. Like some fantastic natural sea-shell cast up on the beaches of time, THE DIVINE COMEDY is, in terms of pure structure, one of the most beautiful literary works ever written, regardless of one's religious beliefs and sensibilities. The same is true as well of SWAN SONG -- which also gives one helluva good read, in the bargain (but then, so does Dante's work, come to think of it <G>) Great novels are windows on the Collective Unconscious. American horror writers today fill the same niche that the authors of the religious plays of the ancient Greeks did in their day -- and which Shakespeare did in his. (Some of them are great, and some of them are frankly lousy -- niche isn't a matter of quality, but rather of the nature of the job itself, however well or badly it is done.) Sophocles and Shakespeare are immortal because their works are true windows on the most important parts of the Collective Unconscious, on the timeless and eternal truths of the human condition and our embedment in it, for better or worse. The same is true of modern creators of the literature and cinema of horror. When they are bad, they are very, very bad -- but when they are great, as McCammon is in SWAN SONG, as Stephen King is in his best work, as all their colleagues are in their most memorable creations -- they create something that will shine in the heavens of human awareness for ages to come. SWAN SONG is stellar: ". . . as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars -- by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars" (Dante Alighieri, THE PARADISO, Canot XXXIII, ll. 145-146 [a new translation by John Ciardi. New York: The New American Library, 1970, p. 365]). -- Yael R. Dragwyla

Rating:
Summary: Makes you wonder
Review: I read this book from a friend of a friend about 8 years ago. It's haunting realism has always stayed with me. Wonder if it'll ever make it to the big screen ?

Rating:
Summary: *** Simplemente la mejor ***
Review: La mejor novela que he tenido oportunidad de leer, una historia que te atrapa y te envuelve, una novela de accion continua, una novela que no da tregua al lector. Indiscutiblemente superior a The Stand the King. NO LO DUDEN, QUE ESPERAN PARA LEERLA =)

Rating:
Summary: Review from a VERY skeptical reader
Review: I went to my local bookstore and couldn't find any horror books! I had either already read them, theu weren't thick enough, or they sounded just plain stupid. I asked an employee to recommend something and he recommended SWAN SONG. I told him I'd give it a try, even though I wasn't into the whole Nuclear Warfare Sci-Fi bit. Man, I almost missed out on one of the best books of the decade! If you want a book to read, even if you are skeptical like me, don't hesitate to read this book. It will be a mistake if you do!

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderous View on the Apokalyptic Fate of Mankind
Review: This is my all time favorite Robert McCammon book. A must read for any true fan. It shows us the inevitable future which man has man. READ IT!!!