Song of Kali

This book is INSANE, in a "just a few more pages" kind of way. The twists and turns will keep you up until you've devoured this book and leave you utterly shaken.

Dan Simmons managed to take me from a feeling of safety to sheer terror in a flash. I'm still confused about this book, but in a good way! Certain aspects were not tied up in a nice big red bow. I can still remember finishing the last sentence and just wondering if it was really over....creepy and great!

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 reader. 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.

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.

I am *never* going to Calcutta.Apparently he only spent two and a half days there, but Calcutta must have made one hell of an impression on Dan Simmons. I don't know if his portrayal of it is accurate, but he's presented a dark, dirty, frightening city -- a place I've visited in my nightmares many times since reading "Song of Kali."This is a novel that really stuck with me. In fact, after reading it I had to get rid of my copy, because it freaked me out so much. It's a thoroughly engaging story -- part of why it was so upsetting is that I believed the protagonists (a writer and his wife and baby) so completely.Lots of writers have approached the subject of bad places -- mostly in the form of haunted houses (Shirley Jackon's classic "The Haunting of Hill House," Richard Matheson's "Hell House," and Stephen King's "The Shining" all come to mind). This is the first example of a *city* as bad place that I've seen. It's also the first book in a long time that's really scared me.

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...

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....