Song of Kali

Rating:
Summary: a disturbing pleasure to read
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Lush, breathtaking, deeply disturbing.
Review: According to Hindu teaching, we are in the Kali Yuga, the Age of Kali. Dan Simmons may well you believe it. With great intelligence and unexpected sensitivity, Simmons relates a story that could easily have turned to schlock, but which instead deals with cultural phobias, nightmare images, and the existence of a very unintellectual (and yet also very un-Stephen King) form of evil with the same deft touch. Certainly, the book sells as horror and roting corpses and all manner of nastiness abound, but Simmons handles them in context -- a context in which pain is sometimes sacred and the truly horrific merely a part of the pattern.

The point that makes _The Song of Kali_ so intensely readable is that Simmons doesn't make the mistake of avoiding the cultural politics of a horror novel about a foreign deity...nor does he make the greater mistake of beating one over the head with relativistic blather. In one of the novel's most derailing passages, a character describes the differences between India and the west as the difference between Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry...irreconcilable, nearly inconceivable.

_The Song of Kali_ has its flaws, but under the poisonous gleam of Simmons's Calcutta and even under the personal disaster that shatters the protagonist's life, there is an awareness of the darkness of an age where unspeakable violence is truly commonplace. That awareness, combined with the chilling thought that we have not, perhaps, chosen the right geometry, make reading this novel an experience that you will not -- and should not -- soon forget.

Rating:
Summary: All violence is power ... but other songs are also sung ...
Review: Wow! I just finished reading Dan Simmons' excellent first novel, "Song of Kali," and I must say that I am extremely impressed by this work of fantastic horror and its meaning in the real world the reader is invited to recognize as both insane and wonderful all at the same time.

Yes, there are some flaws in the book, and for that reason you should ignore the hype and superlative praise showered on it. For starters, the narrator is not a particularly likeable character; he admits to having a short fuse and a quick temper that often seem out of proportion to even minor annoyances.

In addition, the author goes on for too long just setting up this tale, and nothing much of consequence actually happens for the first third of the story. Then there is the problem of the loose ends that do not answer the questions raised by a murder which serves as the emotional climax of the novel. My best guess is that Simmons deliberately left some things obscure to reflect the protagonist's own confused and frustrated inability to understand what prompted the killing, but - if such is the case - it still leaves the reader unsatisfied with the unresolved mystery of why certain events happened as they did.

Finally, "Song of Kali" suffers from a lack of editing and/or proofreading (at least in its paperback edition), as shown by the many typos in the manuscript. Ordinarily, this would not matter a great deal, but in a story that concerns itself with wordsmiths in one form or another (i.e., writers, editors, and a literary agent) the errors are glaring and disrupt the flow of the otherwise nicely nuanced text.

However, having said all that, I remain amazed at how well the "Song of Kali" managed to pull me into its plot and delve into themes that were at once disturbing and yet undeniably fascinating. The dramatic tension between good and evil is captured in dialogue and descriptive prose that explores the duality of man at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels. This might sound dry and dismal but in fact the final third of "Song of Kali" truly does build suspense like a runaway freight train, and I was unable to put the novel down for the last 80 pages.

Simmons also does an especially good job of translating the universal nature of depravity from the teeming streets of Calcutta to the familiar environs of our own supposedly more civilized society. Although he touches on Indian mythology, the occult, mysticism, and the supernatural, Simmons suggests that the manifestations of culture and religion are merely props that mirror the darkness (or lightness) of the human soul.

And that is really what this book is about when you get down to it: the importance of free will and each person deciding for him- or herself whether to embrace hope and life or give into greed, hate, and the fear of death. In spite of its faults, "Song of Kali" concludes on an optimistic note that does not smack of a conventional, contrived happy ending. Instead, Simmons says, we must beware of the beast within us, but choose the better way.

Rating:
Summary: THIS is what Horror Fiction should be...
Review: After reading Harlan Ellison's comments about this book years ago, I knew I had to have it. Not an easy book to locate then, but once I had it... Oh my God. I'd never read a horror novel like it. It was bloated with the corruption and festering malignancy of Calcutta: "Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist." With that provocative opening line, Simmons opens up a universe filled with an overpowering sense of the otherworldly that the Western mind cannot escape.

The novel feeds on our (inherent?) xenophobia, our fear of women (manifested in the devouring goddess of Kali), our passion for violence, and the all-too-real fear of our children taken from us. "All violence is power," the poet Das says. "Sometimes there is no hope. Sometimes there is only pain."

THAT, friends and neighbors, is the true crux of all great horror fiction, and Simmons doesn't hesitate to take us as far down the river at the heart of darkness. His knowledge of classic poetry, particularly Yeats, and Luczak's wife's knowledge of geometry, infuses this novel with an intelligence and moral weight most horror writers either fake or never bother with in the first place. And India has such a vast and bizarre mythology I'm surprised no one explored it before like this.

I love this book, and even picking it up again to write this review I'm tempted to read it a third time. Anyone with any knowledge of India's myths will find it all the more disturbing. The use of story-within-story that heightens the horror (for some reason I'm a sucker for this narrative trick; Lovecraft did it, King did it in "Pet Sematary", Anne Rice too-- it always chills me to the bone) I can't say enough of the fascination this book holds for me, its relentless darkness, its stench of rancid flesh, its charnel house images, its fusion of sex and death, its climax of delirium and fire--and the final moral stand of a man who comes to realize how truly helpless he is in the face of so much darkness.

Listen to the song of Kali if you have at all a true taste for the macabre, the funereal, the hopeless, the living dark, the taint of blood: "The world is pain/O terrible wife of Siva/ You are chewing the flesh/Your tongue is drinking the blood, O dark Mother! O unclad Mother/O beloved of Siva/The world is pain."

"The Age of Kali has begun/The Song of Kali is now sung." Hear it? Listen....

Rating:
Summary: Masterful and Uncompromising Horror/Suspense
Review: SONG OF KALI is a brutal but also subtle and evocative novel of almost overwhelmingly intense horror.

Kali sings a seductive song of violence and blood, a song her followers want to be heard throughout the world. One man's research into a recently published poem about the evil goddess ultimately leads him to Calcutta and a cult of worshippers who will stop at nothing to spread her malevolent influence.

Dan Simmons has devised an incredibly powerful story about a "civilized" man's near-absorption into an ancient and mysterious culture that seems to thrive only on violence and revenge. He vividly describes the steamy hot, paranoia-filled urban landscape of Calcutta, bringing the city horrifically alive. Its a place that no reader of this book will ever want to visit. Mixing urban paranoia with a strong tinge of the supernatural, the thickly atmospheric proceedings lead to a climax that is easily one of the most uncompromising and terrifying in all of literature.

SONG OF KALI is Simmons' finest novel to date. Normally associated with science fiction, he has subsequently attempted a series of overlong, ploddingly conventional "best seller" vampire novels strongly influenced by Stephen King. Simmons' recent disappointments cannot dilute the power of his first foray into horror, the lushly atmospheric and unforgettably cruel SONG OF KALI.

Rating:
Summary: Traveler Beware
Review: As an avid reader of horror, fantasy and science fiction, I like to think that I'm immune to any lasting effects from the frightening images that emerge from those dark places within the minds of our best contemporary authors. Most of the time my reaction is, "Been there ... done that ... NEXT!". But last night I finished reading SONG OF KALI by Dan Simmons. And I fear that the images he conjures will be with me for a very long time to come.

This horrible/delightful/remarkable book works on your psyche on two levels: it attacks your senses by describing, in graphic detail, the mundane, "real world" horrors that exist just beyond the field of awareness for most Westerners living in affluent, post-industrialized "societies"; but worse yet, it open up that dark place so deeply imbedded within our basal ganglia that it can only be assumed to be the most primal and ancient of human nerve centers. It triggers an autonomic recoil from the pure darkness, cold malevolence, and absolute EVIL that surrounds us. We begin, innocently enough on the first level, following our protagonist's journey to solve a mystery ... and then slowly ... methodically ... step by step and with our guard down ... we are led blindly into reeking depths of the primordial abyss. I've never been to Calcutta. But, like many other Americans, I have traveled to a number of other "Third World" settings, both in groups and as a individual. I never cease to be appalled at the the arrogance and materialistic ego-centricity of too many American travelers who fail to respect or even try to fathom other cultures, unfamiliar traditions, and those painful economic realities suffered by much of the REST of the world. Simmons captures the naive, and distinctly American, arrogance of his protagonist (Robert Luczak) remarkably well. But then he takes it one step further. He rolls Luczak's arrogance in broken glass and shoves it right down his throat.

I like to think of myself as a savvy ready. Most of the time, I can sense where a story is heading before it actually takes me there. All the way through the first three quarters of SONG OF KALI, I was pretty certain I knew where the author was leading me. I expected the expected. I was anticipating the cliché. But the sheer horror of that final twist of the literary knife-in-the-gut left me utterly speechless, with my heart a-pounding and my mouth hanging open like a drooling simpleton. I simply could not believe that I didn't see this coming! I was caught so completely off guard that I actually had to back up and re-read that section several times, just to be certain that I was really reading what I thought I was reading. What an ending! My congratulations to Dan Simmons for writing such a dark masterpiece. I wonder, what deep, dark recess in your mind did you have to tap to dredge up something so completely unfathomable? What nightmares you must suffer.

Rating:
Summary: A frightening experience!
Review: Particular scenes in The Song of Kali are still haunting me over a month after finishing the book. This is certainly the mark of a good horror story. What sets this novel apart is the mood created by the author. The story takes place in Calcutta, painted as a locale that is as evil as any you might find in your worst nightmare. The atmosphere and the local characters add to the effectiveness of this book in a way that exceeds any other book in recent memory. For lovers of well-written horror, you 'd be hard pressed to find a better page-turner. I'm a huge Stephen King fan, but this one has images that horrify more than Mr. King's best. If you read this book, you will be thinking about it for months. Try it and enjoy...

Rating:
Summary: There's the germ of a good novel in here...
Review: After havining seen the cover blurbs. I spent about two thirds of this book wondering what the hell I was missing. The overlong setup failed to get me invested in the main character, a self-involved poet, who comes across as rather petulant, dull and disengaged. We spend a short eternity with Luczack's literary mentor, a boring cliche of a cigar-chomping New Yorker with a heart of gold. Luczack's one saving grace is his capable, intellectually curious wife, whom he mostly talks down to and/or places in peril. (There's a ridiculous bit late in the book where he makes a big display of "I'm not leaving you again, kiddo", only to wander off again as soon as she falls asleep.) I would have been grateful for Luczack to get killed off early and the focus shifted to the wife.

In addition, while the horrified-travelogue aspect of the book is effective, we never go any deeper than Luczack's ugly-American revulsion at a society he doesn't understand. Simmons seems content to paint most residents of Calcutta as potential gangsters or murderous fanatics, and leave it at that. The story only gets interesting (far too late in the book) when the Luczack character mercifully shuts up long enough to let some of the Indians tell their own stories. The storyline involving the Kali cult is genuinely, darkly fascinating and I wish Simmons had done more than scratch the surface of it.

The emotional climax could have been wrenching if only I'd been invested in the main character, and unfortunately the novel peters out with him descending into a world of self-pity for several chapters. Some really interesting horror material here, sandwiched into an otherwise boring novel.

Rating:
Summary: All violence is power ... but other songs are also sung ...
Review: Wow! I just finished reading Dan Simmons' excellent first novel, "Song of Kali," and I must say that I am extremely impressed by this work of fantastic horror and its meaning in the real world the reader is invited to recognize as both insane and wonderful all at the same time.

Yes, there are some flaws in the book, and for that reason you should ignore the hype and superlative praise showered on it. For starters, the narrator is not a particularly likeable character; he admits to having a short fuse and a quick temper that often seem out of proportion to even minor annoyances.

In addition, the author goes on for too long just setting up this tale, and nothing much of consequence actually happens for the first third of the story. Then there is the problem of the loose ends that do not answer the questions raised by a murder which serves as the emotional climax of the novel. My best guess is that Simmons deliberately left some things obscure to reflect the protagonist's own confused and frustrated inability to understand what prompted the killing, but - if such is the case - it still leaves the reader unsatisfied with the unresolved mystery of why certain events happened as they did.

Finally, "Song of Kali" suffers from a lack of editing and/or proofreading (at least in its paperback edition), as shown by the many typos in the manuscript. Ordinarily, this would not matter a great deal, but in a story that concerns itself with wordsmiths in one form or another (i.e., writers, editors, and a literary agent) the errors are glaring and disrupt the flow of the otherwise nicely nuanced text.

However, having said all that, I remain amazed at how well the "Song of Kali" managed to pull me into its plot and delve into themes that were at once disturbing and yet undeniably fascinating. The dramatic tension between good and evil is captured in dialogue and descriptive prose that explores the duality of man at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels. This might sound dry and dismal but in fact the final third of "Song of Kali" truly does build suspense like a runaway freight train, and I was unable to put the novel down for the last 80 pages.

Simmons also does an especially good job of translating the universal nature of depravity from the teeming streets of Calcutta to the familiar environs of our own supposedly more civilized society. Although he touches on Indian mythology, the occult, mysticism, and the supernatural, Simmons suggests that the manifestations of culture and religion are merely props that mirror the darkness (or lightness) of the human soul.

And that is really what this book is about when you get down to it: the importance of free will and each person deciding for him- or herself whether to embrace hope and life or give into greed, hate, and the fear of death. In spite of its faults, "Song of Kali" concludes on an optimistic note that does not smack of a conventional, contrived happy ending. Instead, Simmons says, we must beware of the beast within us, but choose the better way.

Rating:
Summary: If you can't live up to the hype...
Review: It's probably a huge mistake to include inflated words of hype on the cover of a horror book. "SHOCK TREATMENTS ABOUND!" And inside the cover, we're made to believe that this is one of the most harrowing novels ever. Well...it had the potential. I won't give in to the "should have beens", but I assumed the end dealt with some kind of sacrifice. The narrator would fall under the goddess Kali's influence and ravage his own family. Would this be more horrific? Or how about some subtlety? I feel the ending came out of left field. I won't give away the secret, but the resloution seemed unrelated to the main plotline, or perhaps thrown in to manipulate what would happen. It is a dreadful conclusion, but grates against simple logic. Perhaps Calcutta trapped the family in a quagmire of despair, forcing them to remain in its corrupt embrace. Either circumstance kept the wife and child there, or an author's slick contrivances.

As for the protagonist, I felt little for him. He was either an arrogant wise#$%, or would explode into fits of anger that seemed disproportional to what was happening. He never really developed a personality, unlike the other characters. The descriptions of Calcutta's rank alleys and abysmal moral center were well done, but I wonder if the author has ever been to India. If so, I think there would have been more fascinating details than the children constantly defecating in the open, bathing in mud puddles, or sleeping under sheets in the rain. He paints a vividly gruesome portrait of the slums, but it grew almost repetitive after a few chapters. The cult of Kali and its mechanisms was frightening, but it never seemed to plummet into the realm of true, paralyzing terror.

All in all, this was a creepy book with a fair share of terrible images. Perhaps a little more time and imagination would have made it the scare classic it boasts about in the opening pages.