Song of Kali by Dan Simmons Review

Song of Kali Novel ☑️ Recommended

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review

This book was recommended to me because I bragged to a colleague that I rarely get scared when reading horror. Horror movies, now that’s a whole other issues, but horror books don’t usually scare me. He assured me that I would find this book disturbing and scary.

Song of Kali by Dan Simmons

The novel takes place, for the majority of the time, in Calcutta, India where the narrator, a writer/poet named Bobby Luczak is on a quest to interview a famous poet who was supposed to be dead for some time but has recently resurfaced. He travels with his wife and baby daughter to India to secure a manuscript of the poet’s writing and to possibly interview him. He wife goes because she can speak several languages and thinks that she may be needed to translate for Bobby.

The novel is steeped in vivid description that paints an eerie picture of Calcutta. Description that also offers a commentary on the customs of the people who live there. It is very interesting and made me curious about the accuracy, having never traveled to India myself. The writing was tight, the tension mounted well and kept me turning the pages. Almost until the very end Simmons teases until you think that there really isn’t going to be a major crisis after all.

Let me warn you now, if you are a mother you will NOT want to read this novel. Scary no, not really, disturbing to the point of nightmares, hell yes! It’s a good novel but I will not be reading it again, nor will I recommend it to anyone with sensitivities in the children department. If you don’t like to see kids getting hurt you will not like this novel.

Song of Kali Summary

Calcutta: a monstrous city of immense slums, disease and misery, is clasped in the foetid embrace of an ancient cult. At its decaying core is the Goddess Kali: the dark mother of pain, four-armed and eternal, her song the sound of death and destruction. Robert Luczak has been hired by Harper's to find a noted Indian poet who has reappeared, under strange circumstances, years after he was thought dead. But nothing is simple in Calcutta and Lucsak's routine assignment turns into a nightmare when he learns that the poet is rumoured to have been brought back to life in a bloody and grisly ceremony of human sacrifice.

A chilling voyage into the squalor and violence of the human condition, this novel is considered by many to be the best work by the author of The Terror, who has been showered with accolades, including the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Hugo Award.

ISBN-10 ‎ 0274900947
ISBN-13 ‎ 978-0312865832
Publisher: ‎ Tor Books
Song of Kali Release Date: January 15, 1998

‎320 pages



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