Dan Simmons

[lenny nero]

I think this guy is an incredible author. He's won awards in 3 different genres: horror, sci-fi, and crime fiction. Pretty amazing I think. My favorite books by him are Carrion Comfort and A Winter Haunting, which is a sequel to Summer of Night. The latter was the last book I read that gave me the heebie jeebies. He's also got a great collection of short stories called Lovedeath.

[hay82]

Summer of night is the only book ever that had me wanting to look under my bed before I went to sleep.

Had thought about reading more of his books, but there are so many books I want to read and horror is not exactly on the top of my list.

[jay]

I picked up _Song of Kali_ after hearing Harlan Ellison praise it as (something like) 'the best book in years'.
Well, I wanted to toss it on the fire within 10 pages. I gave it a chance to nearly 100 pages and it just continued to suck (and *hardly* shock or scare) and go NOWHERE.

If this is the cream of the crop in the current SF and horror world, clearly the bottom of the barrel has been achieved.
j

[victorlaslo]

Yeah, I read Song of Kali, thought that was very good. Carrion Comfort was OK. Unfortunatly I can't remember the name of the other book, by DS, I read but it was about a retired astronaut trying to find himself, it was very intelligently written but a bit slow, completly different to the other two. Anyone know what it was called?

[lenny nero]

I think that one is called Phases of Gravity. I liked it too.

[lies]

I've never actually given Simmons a chance. His name turns me off for some reason.

For anyone who's interested in more in depth discussions of Simmons's books, there are two TBF threads already that would welcome some discussion: Hyperion and Ilium.

[lenny nero]

He's got a new one out that sounds good, but I'll probably wait till it hits paperback to get it:

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hugo-winner Simmons (Olympos) brings the horrific trials and tribulations of arctic exploration vividly to life in this beautifully written historical, which injects a note of supernatural horror into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. Sir John Franklin, the leader of the expedition and captain of the Erebus, is an aging fool. Francis Crozier, his second in command and captain of the Terror, is a competent sailor, but embittered after years of seeing lesser men with better connections given preferment over him. With their two ships quickly trapped in pack ice, their voyage is a disaster from start to finish. Some men perish from disease, others from the cold, still others from botulism traced to tinned food purchased from the lowest bidder. Madness, mutiny and cannibalism follow. And then there's the monstrous creature from the ice, the thing like a polar bear but many times larger, possessed of a dark and vicious intelligence. This complex tale should find many devoted readers and add significantly to Simmons's already considerable reputation. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[ifpiper]

The Terror is a phenomenal book with a so so ending. The amount of research involved is immense. More literature then "pop" fiction. Highly reccomended. Two other great novels by Simmons are "Children of the Night", and "Summer of Night".

[TDFuhringer]

I have to agree with ifpiper. I've just finished The Terror and for 90% of the book I was on the edge of my seat. What a horrifying and exciting story. I guess 90% of a great book is better than 100% of a bad book.

[lenny nero]

Finished The Terror last nite, and it's easily the best book I read in '07. It actually made me want to do some more reading about the Franklin Expedition. Simmons really gets across the isolation and the cold that these men must've gone through. I can't recommend it enough.

[Sofia]

I have A Winter Haunting on my shelf.......question though: is it recommended to read Summer Of Night first?

[lenny nero]

I would definitely read Summer of Night first.

[saliotthomas]

hello

He is a very good writer ,and i also just finished the terror,it's very good!

but ,as a low point he wrote a book call Darwin bladethat just about as good as a Dick Francis! I didn't read anythings from him for years after this one.

[saliotthomas]

I read last week Children of the night by Dan Simmons and i must admit that's another bad one.I wonder if he does have a ghostwriter,The terror, Carrion confort,Hyperion,and olympos are exellent and sometime he drops some dung worth of the other Dan.
Badly written,unimaginative,caricatural characteres,the lot.
Maybe helping out an ungifted writer brother in law?

[lenny nero]

This was the vampire one, right? I didn't like that one much either. You should check out Summer of Night after Drood.