Rating: 
Summary: Not his best, but still good
Review: Knowing what I know of the writing of Dan Simmons, I expected this to be a science-fiction novel when I picked it up a couple of years ago. I never even read the synopsis, and promptly forgot I owned it. Turns out I was about as far off as i could be. I wouldn't exactly call it fantasy, and I wouldn't exactly call it horror, and I wouldn't exactly call it an environmental novel (though that's probably closest to the truth, with shades of such ecodisaster scenarios Prophecy, the Godzilla movies, and suchlike running through it). It has aspects of all of them, but never turns into a full-blown anything, preferring to defy categorization like many of Simmons' best books do. Byron Trumbo is a billionaire with an attitude, a pending divorce, two young lovers who don't know about each other, and a money-pit Hawaiian resort he's trying to palm off on a group of Japanese investors who want to make it into a golf club. The problem is, people keep disappearing at Mauna Pele, and pieces of them turn up at the worst possible times. Add to this two intrepid adventurers who have come to Mauna Pele for different reasons (spoilers, again...) and who band together to try and solve the murders, an overly curious treehugger art curator who was hired after threatening to sue Trumbo for bulldozing over duck ponds, a crazed, murderous Hawaiian separatist, and a dimwitted pair of security guards, and the scene is set for a rollicking good time. All of the major characters are well-done and believable, if a little over the top sometimes (while I'm not usually one to balk at such things, the seemingly constant use of profanity in the book threw me for a loop; I could have done with less of it). Add cuts where we read sections of the main character's great-great-aunt's diary; the main character, Eleanor, is following in her aunt's footsteps, recreating a journey Aunt Kidder took with Samuel Clemens to the volcanoes on the Big Island (back when Americans knew Hawaii as the Sandwich Islands). This was one of the conceits that annoyed me in the book, and it wouldn't have annoyed me if it hadn't been done so many times: we find ourselves at a cliffhanger and the diary narration takes over again. The first time, I liked it. The second time, I liked it. The third time, I liked it a little less. And so on. However, that was the only real mark against the novel, and I have to say it certainly held my interest up to the very last page. Definitely worth looking out for.
Rating:
Summary: Great research, good storytelling.
Review: While this story is certainly well crafted, and is the best modernized version of Hawaiian myth I've ever read, its ending is awfully formulaic for a writer who's created such masterpieces in the past.
Simmons does prove here that he can tell a "double story" as well as anyone, skipping back and forth between the present and the past.
Rating:
Summary: A Many Layered Fairytail
Review: With this book Simmons introduces some fantastic themes. He does this with such ease and familiarity with an alien culture, aided by Mark Twain, none the less, that despite the far fetched nature of the plot it is possible to believe in it. You are left with the impression that the book was a labour of love and according to Simmons own admission on writing, probably wrote itself through him. It is a book that will get overlooked, because it represents a highly esoteric viewpoint, and that is why I have accorded it only four stars. If, like me, you consider yourself within that viewpoint, if perhaps not on the exact same ground, then stars are an irrelevance as you already know. Taken on a Mediocre level, some of the characters grate, but they are meant to. The parody is perhaps ironic in it's exaggeration, but maybe not to all. It works, but not if you haven't already got the joke before you read it. Try it. It is different, if reminiscent of Koontz at his scariest or Herbert at his usual genuinely scary levels. That is not the point, this is not a horror novel, but the horror serves to highlight the real issues.
Rating:
Summary: A Many Layered Fairytail
Review: With this book Simmons introduces some fantastic themes. He does this with such ease and familiarity with an alien culture, aided by Mark Twain, none the less, that despite the far fetched nature of the plot it is possible to believe in it. You are left with the impression that the book was a labour of love and according to Simmons own admission on writing, probably wrote itself through him. It is a book that will get overlooked, because it represents a highly esoteric viewpoint, and that is why I have accorded it only four stars. If, like me, you consider yourself within that viewpoint, if perhaps not on the exact same ground, then stars are an irrelevance as you already know. Taken on a Mediocre level, some of the characters grate, but they are meant to. The parody is perhaps ironic in it's exaggeration, but maybe not to all. It works, but not if you haven't already got the joke before you read it. Try it. It is different, if reminiscent of Koontz at his scariest or Herbert at his usual genuinely scary levels. That is not the point, this is not a horror novel, but the horror serves to highlight the real issues.
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