Song of Kali (©1985)

I'm sure the tourist bureau of Calcutta was really delighted when this book came out. "Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist. Some cities are too wicked to be suffered. Calcutta is such a place." And so begins Song of Kali. I felt like I was reading one of those pop up books, except rather than popping up, it sucked you in. I actually felt like I was there watching the story unfold. It was so vivid I felt like washing after reading.

The basic story is pretty simple - a guy goes over to pick up some poetry by this guy who's been missing for years and presumed dead. He brings along his wife and toddler. Turns out the guy wasn't dead anymore. Along the way not much of anything happens, but for some reason the book is almost impossible to put down. With about fifty pages to go a lot of weird and sad stuff happens, and before I knew it the book was over. "What the heck was that?" I said to myself. Then I thought about it, and thought some more, and the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. I'll bet there are people who will feel cheated and ripped off by the ending. No big finish, and too many loose ends. It felt honest. Like life not everything gets a pretty little red bow on it, with "THE END" on the last page (hey look a mixed metaphor).

Reviewed February 3, 2001

Endymion

Wow. I read Simmons' Cantos a few years ago, and I was very impressed (although it wasn't exactly the fastest reading book I've ever opened up). When I began this book I didn't know what to expect.  Thankfully this book didn't directly follow the two novels.  Set a few hundred years after the fall of the old world, we meet Endymion, and follow him as he tries to protect Aenea from being snuffed out before she can reach her potential.  The story is full of rich images, and tackles some interesting issues. The result is a very compelling read.

Reviewed March 2000

The Rise of Endymion

. . . and straight into The Rise of Endymion - wow again. The story picks up right where it left off, and held me by the short hairs until the end. There were a couple of spots where the description dragged, but when things got going this was a beautiful book. Answers all of the questions, and is very satisfying. I've read some rather unkind reviews that view the "power of love" stuff as so much detritus. However, I found the story very moving, and yes I'm afraid to say that it was thought provoking.

Reviewed March 2000

Ilium (©2003)

I should have read the dust jacket before starting this one. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this wouldn't be a one off. Now I have to wait and wait to finish the story, and my memory isn't the steel trap it once was, so who knows how much I'll have retained in a year. Oh well, other people manage to deal with this, and so can I.

Ilium is only the first half so I'm somewhat reluctant to say this is excellent. So far it is, but then again I really liked the first half of Waterworld too, and could see why people were killing it until the back half.

Mister Simmons threads a number of braided stories together in the first half, and slowly pushes them through the story funnel until they all converge - which of course is where the first part ends.

This is pretty wicked cool in places - the whole Greek gods thing in wonderful in it's execution, are they gods? The remaining humans on earth are a pathetic lot who seem to have come directly out of Logan's Run. We also have a couple of sentient artificial life forms - think C3PO and R2D2 but different, well - a whole lot different - but they're cool.

I am eagerly awaiting the next book.

Reviewed January 21, 2005

Note to the publisher: what's the deal with your copy editor on Ilium? Holy crap, there were enough little errors in here to choke a horse, and one huge one on the last page where you have the wrong character talking: "Do you know what's going to happen next there?" asks Hockenberry. "In your new world?" "Not a clue," I say. The freaking "I" is Hockenberry you dolts!

Oh I could blame Dan, but it's the editors job for crying out loud. This had more errors in it that one of my old English essays - talk about distracting.

The Terror (©2007)

First things first - much of this book was amazing. Lots of fun. A wonderful re-imagining of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, and what really happened on the ice and the fate of the crews of the HMS Terror and it's sister ship the HMS Erebus. Stuck in the ice with no hope of escape, something on the ice begins to stalk the men.

Simmons has a deft hand, and his attention to detail is keen. Anyone familiar with the story knows from the onset that there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - and despite knowing the ending I was still rooting for Crozier and his crew to make it. However, along the way the various threads so carefully woven together throughout the first two thirds of the story start to unravel, and come apart. The "Monster on the Ice" storyline becomes laughable, and there's a bunch of mystical mumbo jumbo that's forced into the story that is out of place with the rest of the narrative.

Which is a real shame, as I really enjoyed much of the book, but the longer it went on, and at over 750 pages I'd invested a little bit of time, the more top heavy and unwieldy the story became until it simply collapsed and I was left thinking about what could have been rather than what I'd read.

The three stars are for what I enjoyed. But overall not a book I'd recommend.

Reviewed July 24, 2008