Fires of Eden

If Simmons wasn't such a darn good writer this probably could have been an absurdly silly book, all the warning signs are there. Giant talking god animals, people dropping like flies, nature rebelling against man's injustice to it, stuff like that. And yet Simmons pulls it all together and manages to make something good of it. The setting here is appropriately Hawaii at a hotel that billionaire Bryan Tumbo is trying to desperately sell to the Japanese, unfortunately for him, his few guests keep dying off, killed by some utterly sadistic and vaguely supernatural forces. Into this mess come our heroes and as things escalate (as you know they will) the puny humans trying to stay alive around the erupting volcanoes becomes a backdrop for the conflict of god versus god. And really it all works. Simmons has a knack for making even the patently silly (giant talking pigs with eight eyes) sincerely frightening and while the book probably isn't horror so much as old time adventure (it's pretty scary toward the beginning but once you know what's going on the fright factor goes away) with a bit of a feminist slant you're having too much of a grand old time to really care. Even better he intersperses the narrative with another narrative taken from someone's diary about similar events in 1866, featuring none other than Samuel Clemens (psst . . . Mark Twain) who Simmons writes so well that if he didn't talk like that, he should have. The diary also gives Simmons the opportunity to create twice the suspense by flashing back and forth between the two (though less so in the diary, she's obviously writing it after it's all over so you know she has to live to write it). Of course the story feels more suited for the old fashioned nineteenth century setting but Simmons' gift for description (especially of the contrast between the lush Hawaiian surroundings and the primal violence of the volcano) and his ability to immerse you in that setting. Events get so over the top after a while that you have no choice but to be swept away with it and his plotting is as deft as ever. And while I thought the climax lacked a bit in suspense it's still entertaining as all heck. Yeah it won't win him any awards but that's not the point here, he's just out to spin a good yarn and that's what we got...Track it down if you can to see an excellent author cutting loose and having some (admittedly well researched) fun with a story.

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.

I found this book at a Borders just after I finished Children of the Night by Dan Simmons. The man is such a brilliant author. This book is fascinating and worth looking for. Mark Twain pops up as a main character. After reading this book, I can't help but watch a Discovery channel program about volcanoes and Pele. Simmons is mesmirizing and hypnotic. Read any of his books. This book is over 500 pages and I finished it in 3 days, I could not put it down!

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.