Different from what I expected: it is a more horror book in the sense of disgust rather than fear. However, emotionally it has really broken me. I should give it 5 stars for that. I give it 4 stars because of that bit of predictability in the final part and because I would have liked it to scare me more... and instead it has put this terrible sadness on me

I had long been acquainted with the name of Dan Simmons, yet this marked my initial foray into the actual realm of his work. It is truly astonishing to think that I had not delved into this earlier. The story unfolds in the most exotic of locales, transporting the reader to far-flung and mysterious places.

There are creepy cults lurking in the shadows, their actions and motives sending shivers down one's spine. The element of ritual sacrifice adds an additional layer of horror and intrigue.

And let's not forget the ancient supernatural entities that seem to step out of the pages and into our nightmares. The reveal in the airport at the end was simply mind-boggling. It left my imagination in a state of turmoil for days on end.

Moreover, it had the curious effect of making me want to watch Temple of Doom over and over again. While this may seem like an odd reaction, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It shows the power of Simmons' writing to evoke such a range of emotions and responses within the reader.

The feeling that something is missing has never left me.

There are many reasons for which I never get an answer, and which ultimately make you think that Simmons had an idea to write something, had well-written scenes to give, but without anything having any meaning and reason for existence.

It's as if he was just going through the motions, creating a story for the sake of creating one, rather than having a genuine purpose or message to convey.

Maybe he was trying to be too clever, or perhaps he simply lost his way in the process.

Whatever the case may be, the end result is a work that feels incomplete and unsatisfying.

It makes you wonder if there was more that could have been done to bring the story to life and make it truly engaging.

But as it stands, it remains a mystery, leaving the reader with more questions than answers.

This book was truly abysmal, yet it had me laughing out loud like a deranged maniac straight out of a cheesy horror flick. I "loved" reading the never-ending racist rants of a white guy. Here are some things that I found absolutely hilarious:

First off, the main character, Bobby, is clearly the author's self-insert. Now, Bobby is incredibly and painfully racist. You might think, "Oh, maybe that's just his character trait, maybe he's a complex, well-written bad character." Nope. All the characters are racist, which makes me believe that the author himself is... uhm... not too fond of other races. At one point, Bobby tells a group of people on a bus, "Have you never seen an American before?" This line had me in stitches to the point where my mom thought I was on the verge of dying. Dan Simmons really tried to make Americans seem oppressed. I've officially seen it all.

Bobby goes on and on about how intelligent and observant his wife, Amrita, is, but then he always underestimates her thought process. Also, one time he explicitly said, "Amrita probably hasn't seen [insert big ass building]." Like, weren't you just saying how she always pays attention to details?

Uh, this next one made me physically uncomfortable. Bobby calls his 31-year-old wife "kiddo/kid." And that doesn't creep her out? Amrita, girl, why are you married to someone with pedo fantasies? Move on and find someone else.

At one point, Bobby has a flashback from his childhood that really disturbed me, not in a good horror element way, but more in a "holy shit, is Amrita aware of this" way. He remembers raping a nine-year-old girl when he was ten. He has this flashback and keeps thinking about how "he enjoyed seeing her helpless, submitting completely." You might be wondering, what's so funny about this? Well, we never return to this piece of information. Ever. It's just dropped there and left undeveloped. It's never brought up again.

The cult situation is so poorly handled that it made me want to throw the book off a cliff. We get a glimpse of it, start getting excited for what's to come, and then it never comes. How did Bobby know that Krishna was Sanjay? There was no logical evidence to support his belief. Also, what happened to Kali's followers? Did they continue to sacrifice people and have their inhumane ceremonies? The author really introduced this plotline and never finished it. This book really makes you feel like you're the stupid one, the simpleton who can't understand its complexity.

It's so funny to me how Bobby wanted so bad to cheat on his wife. First, he instantly wanted to sleep with Kamakhya when he first saw her and kept thinking about her. Second, he had a wet dream about the goddess Kali. My guy had a wet dream about a deity. If that's not peak horniness, I don't know what is.

The death of his child, Victoria, added nothing to the story. It just gave them a reason to leave Calcutta, but that was it. I think it would've been a lot more interesting if Victoria had served as a sacrifice. Picture this: Madman Robert Luczak gets trapped in this Kali cult situation, and the pressure becomes too much for him to handle. So, when he's asked to bring a corpse to the Kalighat, he brings Victoria's lifeless body.

Nothing really happens in the entire novel. It's so painfully uneventful that it slows down your heartbeat, and you start to wonder, "Is this how I'm gonna die?" The "lost poet" plotline goes nowhere. You just find out that he's been resurrected through human sacrifice to Kali, he gives a manuscript to Bobby, and when Bobby gets back to America, he just tears it apart. That's it.

The "action" scenes that were supposed to be exciting and suspenseful were so long and boring. I do not want to read a 20-page chapter about Bobby running from the kapalikas. "Then I went there and did this, oh and after that I ran there and wandered through here." Boo, boo, I'm throwing tomatoes.

I fucking hate the "oh our child died in creepy circumstances but that's okay because [insert wife's name] is pregnant again" trope in any kind of media. I've seen it everywhere, from movies to books to music albums. I feel like the second child is just there to distract the reader and give the impression that everything's fine now and they're happy again. Like, bitch, tf? Having another child while still mourning the loss of another does not sound terrifying to you?

Also, the short blurb on the back cover makes you think that the action being set in Calcutta was one of the main premises of the book and that the city was going to be a major horror factor. Nope, the guy just hates Calcutta. He just said, "Fuck Calcutta, I'm gonna write a whole book about how horrible Calcutta is."

Uh, other stuff that's mentioned in this book or expanded on throughout the story: misogyny, child labor, a crap ton of descriptions of dead animals, detailed descriptions of a person with leprosy, fantasies of killing people, poorly handled mental illness, death of a child + probably a whole lot more stuff that I can't think of right now.

It’s far from being completely full on horror, or as it has been described, “the greatest horror book of all time”.

It is indeed readable, yet I never truly experienced that spark while reading the book that I had been anticipating.

However, considering it’s his first novel, it is written very well.

Dan Simmons has a rather significant following of people, and I’ve noticed that he seems to be more geared towards the intellectual readers.

The subject matter was interesting enough that I had to stop reading and conduct my own research. Once I returned to the book, I couldn’t help but feel that the research I did on my own was more enjoyable than the book itself.

(A heavy sigh escapes)

I neither hated nor loved this book. In my opinion, it was simply just okay.

Although this novel is classified as horror, the nature of that horror is somewhat ambiguous. There are hints of supernatural horror and the presence of violent criminality. However, in some ways, it is the Indian city of Calcutta (Kolkata in modern spelling) itself that is the true horror portrayed in this book.

This is due to its densely overpopulated environment, shocking levels of deprivation, vast gulfs of inequality, and poor sanitation. All of these are worsened by the monsoon season, during which the story is set.

The protagonist, Robert Luczak, is introduced to Calcutta at night. He describes the sudden transition from the marshy fields to a jumble of shacks and the narrow, rain-filled streets.

In the daytime, he finds the city both impressive and intimidating. The chaotic scene of various modes of transportation, wandering cattle, and piles of garbage is vividly描绘.

The plot is interesting. A literary journalist in America is assigned to travel to India with his family to interview a poet. What starts as a straightforward task turns into a mysterious and dangerous undertaking involving cultists of the Hindu goddess Kali.

Set in 1977, the story was written in the early 1980s. The lack of modern technology like the World Wide Web and mobile phones adds to the atmosphere.

What I liked most about this book is its rich yet economical prose and wry humour. There are also interesting observations about Calcutta in the 1970s, such as the use of cow dung as fuel and the significance of gold bracelets for young girls.

Overall, the book was an enjoyable read, although the horror aspect was relatively mild. The quality of the prose makes it still worthwhile, and I look forward to reading more of Simmons’ work in the future.

I start with the reasons why I wouldn't give this book any stars at first, but then I will also follow with the reasons why I think it deserves the two stars I give it.

It really bothered me that he called Kolkata a miasma. Whatever story you want to support or tell, it should be in the introduction and not during a loaded scene when there is already familiarity with the characters. It shows immeasurable arrogance. In Kolkata, in Argos, in Madrid, people live just like anyone else and that's enough. Also, the influences of the classics on the author are obvious. When the classics wanted to aim with their arrows, a common trick was to create a fictional city that was both the same and different from the one they wanted to talk about.

Equally bothering was the continued attack on Kolkata below. And I can think of 50 reasons why I don't like Lily and use 200 quotes from others, taking away every good element selfishly and pretentiously. Is that valuable? Even as a means of maintaining a cramped, dark climate, I don't condone it.

Nor do I agree with the commodification of the culture of another people, because Hinduism, apart from being a religion, is also a culture.

Finally, people and nations do not suffer to amuse tourists, and this gives them the right to have reactions that are not stylized or fancy. And in fact, the way they express their pain or despair indicates to a certain extent their national identity, as well as the various fermentations of their society.

In addition, when the demand expresses despair through violence and rudeness, it is much more valuable and justifiable than the rapacious mentality, which is also characteristic of the expansionist policies of some countries that give birth to and have arrogance towards part of their people, even if it is hidden under the cloak of mourning.

Another mistake I notice is when someone is scared for unclear reasons and it is characterized as fear. This is not fear. Fear always has clear causes and somewhere the causes are also visible. The inability to find the reasons only coincides with panic.

"I continue to believe that some places are so wretched that they exceed the limits of endurance. Sometimes I dream of nuclear missiles over a city and human silhouettes dancing in a hell of fire that was once called Kolkata..." Why such a vehicle? Who gave you the right?

Nevertheless, chapter 9 in its way is interesting. I'm referring to the dialogue Tsatsanis - Amrita. It gives you the feeling of underlying violence due to xenophobia, that dangerous look in the eye that we talk about, or the impression that the place is inhospitable, or simply that they don't want you there. By no means simple images, but they exist.

However, I traveled to Kolkata, to the castes. The chapters related to the crematorium are poignant and speechless. I remembered the scene from the movie about the life of Mozart who dies and is thrown into a common grave, hands, feet, ashes. I also remembered my trip to Cairo several years ago, on one side people living in shacks in the cemeteries, dilapidated buildings, a neglected culture, and on the other side luxurious Mercedes.

It is well-written, has humor. Louzak is well-dressed as he matures, Amrita is stylishly balanced although insufficiently psychologically portrayed, and Imb is wonderful. Also, something that I consider a rare quality, the book is not nonsense. A rather good plot that of course does not avoid some commonplaces of the area. A story to amuse you. I also liked the hesitant, caustic and minimally spoiled explanation of how someone turns into a chocoholic.

Also, to a certain extent, I also liked the explanation with the black holes that he started to give, but not the connection with Kolkata.

Nor did I like the allusion to Kolkata and Hansen's disease.

Two observations on the plot:

a) How did the weapon pass the airport check?

b) What is the anachronism regarding Robinson? Dass disappeared in 1969, in 1977 he characterized Robinson as a new poet. Robinson died in 1935, so why is he characterized as new? And even if he learned the song of Simon and Garfunkel for Cory then, it was already playing since 1966.

Below are also some excerpts that contributed positively to the grading, with the exception of the excerpt from page 257 which, although stylishly spoiled, I do not record because it refers to the ending. There are some points that are so beautiful and well-written that if the author had avoided the cheap tricks, he could have impressed.

"He died right there. We wiped and followed with our eyes the finger of Krishna. The corner he was pointing to was empty. In 1941, Krishna continued, the old man was breathing his last, fading. Some of his students came to pay their respects. Then others. Slowly the house filled with people. Most of them didn't know the poet. The days passed. Tagore didn't say he was going to die. In the end, they decided to amuse him. Someone went to the American embassy - there were already soldiers in the city - and returned with a projection machine and several rolls of film. They watched for hours Hound Dog and Mickey Mouse. The old man was in a coma, forgotten in the corner. Somewhere, the waters of his terminal sleep were churning and he was coming out like a fish to the surface. Imagine his confusion and dismay! Beyond the plates of friends and the heads of strangers, he saw the trembling images on the wall."

"- Have you never resorted to violence?
- No
- Nonsense
- I'm telling the truth. Alright, I admit I've fought a few times, but I always tried to avoid violence.
- No, you're not telling the truth. Everyone has tasted the bloody wine of Kali.
- You're wrong. Some insignificant incidents. Childish things.
- There are no insignificant acts of violence."

"Whatever we fear, we fear because some power exercises its authority over us."

"- It offers no hope.
- There are times when there is no hope.
- There is always hope.
- No, there isn't. Sometimes there is only pain. And acceptance of the pain. And perhaps contempt for a world that causes and requires so much pain.
- Contempt is a form of hope, don't you agree?"

Here, instead of describing the horrible with terms of horror, he chooses the sarcastic, avoiding the commonplace and stylishly unloading, in the way we think with the greatest coldness and indifference in the most tense moments when we have completely despaired.

"When I was a child, my parents had bought the complete series of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Compton. My favorite volume was the one that dealt with the human body. Many pages of it had transparencies. They started with the whole body - skin, sensory organs, everything - and as you turned the thin sheets of paper, you slowly entered the mysteries of the organism. Everything was orderly and coordinated, coded by color, with captions for the references.
The body I had in front of me now was the second page - MUSCLES AND TENDONS. From the neck down, the skin was torn and pulled back..."

"The girl's eyes were tightly closed, as if she was trying to concentrate, and her body was half-open. She was hugging the doll to her small chest. Soon she would have to wake up, light a fire, serve breakfast to the men, bathe the younger children, face the end of a childhood that she hadn't even had time to live. Very soon she would leave her father and pass into the possession of another man - her husband - and that day she would receive the traditional Hindu blessing, something like a chrism: << May you give birth to eight sons >>. But for now, she had sleep as her consolation: with her chest clenched, her head on the pillow, her eyes closed against the morning light."

"...with my only defense the clumsy tool of language and the feeling of an indeterminate, uncoordinated mechanism of reality."

A Spellbinding Tale of Psychological Horror by Dan Simmons

This novel by Dan Simmons is like a fictionalized account similar to books such as The Serpent and the Rainbow or In Sorcery's Shadow. It chronicles a white man's descent into native superstition, existential dread, and finally, life-threatening evil while studying abroad. An appropriate subtitle might be "Never get off the boat".

In 1977, Robert Luczak, a creative writing instructor, poet, and co-editor of a literary magazine in New York, ignores his editor's advice and accepts an assignment to Calcutta. He is allowed to bring his Bengali-born wife, a translator, and their infant. However, his wife is far from excited about returning to her country of origin. Luczak's task is to obtain a new manuscript by a famed Indian poet named M. Das, but the problem is that M. Das disappeared eleven years ago. So, either the manuscript is a fake, or M. Das has a story to tell.

Over half of the novel is dedicated to building mood and adding intrigue. Simmons doesn't rely on stock villains; instead, the city of Calcutta becomes the antagonist. It is portrayed as an abyss of poverty, famine, disease, pollution, corruption, and suffering that threatens to suck the soul out of the protagonists. From the moment Luczak exits the airport, his dread is palpable, and so is the reader's. Simmons trusts the reader to use their imagination to determine whether Luczak is plagued by demons he brought with him or is being tormented by the goddess of death herself. The language is exquisite, full of vivid, sensual detail, and it's scary. The climax hits the reader like a hammer and makes one consider the wisdom of ever getting their passport stamped in India.

Here's the thing about Song of Kali -- it's truly not good.

Dan Simmons, a writer from a colonial country, pens about Calcutta in India, a colonised nation that has endured and continues to face exploitation at the hands of colonial powers. His racial prejudice is glaringly evident from the very first page.

The book commences with what is presumed to be our narrator reflecting on his thoughts about Calcutta after his visit. Here, he states:

Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist. Some cities are too wicked to be suffered. Calcutta is such a place. [...]Calcutta should be expunged. Before Calcutta I took part in marches against nuclear weapons. Now I dream of nuclear mushroom clouds rising above a city.

Even if one attempts to overlook that disturbing monologue, every chapter in Song of Kali begins with more quotes that belittle Calcutta's existence, commenting on its filth and sin, and suggesting that its streets should be eradicated. Simmons, a white man, seems to echo the white supremacist notions of "lesser countries," as if the United States is without fault.

At one point in the book, it appears as if Simmons is about to show some self-awareness when a minor character, Michael Leonard Chatterjee, confronts the protagonist Robert with a scathing critique of his racist views on Calcutta,指出Calcutta的问题并非独特，历史上和现在都与英国和美国有相似之处。然而，当Amrita, Robert的妻子，一位印度裔英国移民，插话表示不同意Chatterjee的观点，并坚称印度的种族主义和肤色主义有着独特的恶劣之处时，这一反思的时刻被突然打断。

This is not the only instance of blatant racism in the book. Early on in the story, we are introduced to Krishna, an eccentric caricature who, despite having studied literature abroad in the U.S., speaks in broken English. This conveniently ignores the fact that English is the official language taught in India due to colonialism. Simmons further insults Krishna by mocking the thesis rejected by an American professor, which focused on the exploitation of Eastern religion, themes, and ideas by American writers. Despite Krishna's valid point, Simmons presents it as laughable.

Moreover, the entire "horror" aspect of the book is based on xenophobic ideas about Hinduism and its worshippers. Here, a cult of Kali worshippers is portrayed as rapists, murderers, and necromancers who conduct human sacrifice to Kali, despite the fact that no such Hindu sect exists in India. The closest one could come to Simmons' fictional racist cult is the Aghori Sadhus, a Hindu sect that embraces and lives among death and consumes the flesh of the dead to purify their spirit and assist them in the afterlife. However, this sect practices no murder, no rape, and no bloodshed. The dead they encounter are those that have been discarded and left to rot in the environment. This is, of course, very different from Simmons' portrayal of Hindu worshippers and plays into the Western Coloniser's perception of barbaric non-white religions.

Unfortunately, this is not at all surprising when one delves deeper into Simmons' opinions and his latest writing. In Flashback, his cynical and racist views envision a post-Obama future as a desolate and destroyed wasteland, where the American populace has become drug addicts and Chinese and Muslim terrorists pose a threat to U.S. soil. His aggressive rant targeted at Greta Thunberg only further reveals his alt-right and conservative views. What more can we expect from a Coloniser? I am actually surprised that his malice did not extend even further in Song of Kali.

In conclusion, Song of Kali is not only a shockingly racist take on Calcutta and India as a whole, but it also offers very little to the horror genre that hasn't already been done much better by Colonised authors. Save yourself the trouble of reading this book and instead pick up some works by Nuzo Onoh or Graham Jones.

I reached 33% of the book, and then I just had to throw in the (moist) towel.

The main character in this book was an absolute insufferable asshole. His actions and behavior were so irritating that it made it really hard for me to continue reading.

Moreover, the repetitive description throughout the book also got on my nerves. It felt like the author was just repeating the same things over and over again, which made the story feel dull and uninteresting.

This is my first experience with a book by Simmons. However, I'm pretty sure that his later books will be better. After all, this was his first book, and I believe that he has improved as a writer over the years.

I really hope that Drood won't disappoint me like this one has. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best!

A horrifying and bleak journey into the heart of darkness in Calcutta, India.

One can easily understand why this book has stirred up a bit of controversy. However, in my view, it isn't as offensive as some might claim. Indeed, the author portrays Calcutta in a rather unflattering light, but he shows a fair amount of respect towards the rest of the country, as well as the Indian people and their culture. It's evident that he had no malicious intent while penning this novel and, in fact, seems to be deeply fascinated by Indian culture.

That being said, this book is an outstanding horror novel. It's truly terrifying! It features one of my favorite sections in any horror novel, which involves two college students and their initiation into a cult. I would have undoubtedly given this a 5-star rating, but the ending is simply brutal and cruel, crushing the reader like a cockroach. Overall, it's an impressive debut that is not overly long yet manages to deliver an abundance of scares and suspense. I love this book and give it a strong 4-star rating.

What an exceptional book within the horror genre! It is a true masterpiece and extremely hard to put down.

Reviewing it is a challenge as it's difficult to comment without spoiling. To fully appreciate it, one must transport their mind back to the period and places where it was conceived in the mind of Dan Simmons, a young American liberal and literary intellectual. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, in India and the US, the former seemed to have an intractable social problem of never-ending poverty, cruelty, and the latter was still in or just emerging from a recession similar to the one we're now entering.

The book couldn't be written now. The hopeless South Asia of that era has been replaced by a vibrant and expansive India (though we'll have to see what the recession brings), and the despair has shifted to a declining West. The book is filled with a vision of the teeming, filthy hordes of Calcutta that would be considered insulting and almost racist today. In that sense, this book is oddly closer to the imperial adventure tales of the Raj's thuggees than to our modern world just 25 years later.

There's also an undercurrent of despair at the Holocaust and nuclear destruction that has somehow become attenuated. Rwanda and Srebenica haven't normalized the horrors of the 1940s, but as the survivors of older horrors die naturally, modern small genocides seem more manageable to liberals, if only the UN could get its act together. Such massacres are no longer in the category of all-encompassing global existential evil that excites hopelessness like Calcutta does to Simmons' narrator.

Similarly, the war on terror is scary, but the opponents are gangsters, not the corporatized mass-murdering bureaucrats of competing ideologies. Gangsters, despite Simmons' hero's experience, are very bad but not capable (or are they?) of destroying the world. Maybe that's the one doubt that nags at us twenty-five or so years on - that maybe gangsters, terrorists, and insurgents can bring the Kali Yuga to pass.

This is the point of the book - it's not pure psychological horror nor the horror of monsters and demons, but something different again, a novel of cultural horror of its own time and place with elements of both. I don't recall the phrase Kali Yuga being used, but that's what it's about - a deeply conservative sense that the Age of Kali was upon us.

And it's beautifully and clearly written with scarcely a wasted word. Indeed, my heart sank in the first few pages because I thought I might be burdened with that great American literary vice, the egoistic first-person story that slows down the story with precise and self-indulgent descriptions of place and sentiment. I was very wrong. The prose is, well, perfect.

Simmons takes the standard literary model and subverts it into a narrative that works precisely because we can see a highly cultured but often weak and often dim 'one-of-us' being out-maneuvered and out-classed by a cunning underclass of consummate brutality. It's a novel about crime and criminality as much as it is a novel of horror - and the horror is visceral because it's real, the filth, the mortuary, the decay of the human body, the disease, the fear of the dark, of monsters... and the last chapters will shred you if you know anything of love. There's even a skilled irony as the 'hero' notes the difference between his position and what would happen in a movie about his position.

This is a masterpiece that might be read as a companion piece to Ligotti and King's The Stand. It offers some small hope in a way that Ligotti doesn't (I can't say more without spoiling the tale), and it's much better than The Stand (written around the same period as Simmons' book), if only because it's more'real'. All three are explorations of the dark side of the human condition from a uniquely American perspective.

The sense of decay and impending evil felt by some in the age of Jimmy Carter may be returning, but these books can also be read to show that such fears are both reasonable and exaggerated, and that, unless one's philosophical back is broken like Ligotti's, the dark may again be replaced by the light. Perhaps we're not, in fact, in the Kali Yuga but only in a simulacrum of it that will pass in due time.