Dan Simmons is one of the most prolific, widely read, and bravest writers ever. This book is a pure example of all that. He feels a lack of experience, he feels a dose of hastiness, immaturity, it is simply visible that he is at the beginning of his career, but none of that prevents him from recommending himself to all those who love quality literature with this book. And to take big steps towards the immortality that he has bought for himself with the Hyperion and Ilion series.

His writing style in this work is both engaging and unique. The story unfolds in a way that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, eager to discover what comes next. Despite the flaws that might be attributed to his early career, Simmons manages to create a world and characters that are vivid and memorable. The themes explored in the book are deep and thought-provoking, adding another layer of depth to the overall reading experience.

Overall, this book serves as a testament to Simmons' talent and potential as a writer. It shows that even at the beginning of his career, he had the ability to produce work that was both entertaining and meaningful. It is no wonder that he has gone on to achieve great success with his later works, and this book is a great introduction to his body of work for those who are new to his writing.

If there is something fascinating in the horror books published in the past century, it is the awareness that their words are the perfect medium to convey an idea. Far from the audiovisual influence of the present times, where many stories seem more focused on adapting immediate fears rather than developing a premise to its ultimate consequences, these books seek to thrill the reader based on the development of their characters and a precise and surgical setting that chills on every page.

In "The Song of Kali", the recreation of a poisonous, dirty, and humid atmosphere will lead its characters to a state of unhealthy madness in which the reader himself will feel in his viscera those streets full of rats and corpses. It is true that we are talking about other times and that today, with a more modern perspective, the passage of time works against that perverse exoticism that hides in the streets of Calcutta that Simmons recreates. The accusations of racism against the author for recreating this branch of hell in India do not lack their own weight, but it is no less true that the unknown works in its favor to terrify the reader with the hidden places where it is convenient to accept our humility and set aside the well-known Western arrogance that Kipling himself reflected in his works.

The fear of the unknown underpins all the power of a novel that the passage of time has worked against. That does not prevent you from enjoying it, but it does drag its reading with the stigma that you smell, never better said, what will happen at each moment of the development of this story. That does not prevent enjoyment. In fact, there are certain moments in which the setting that Simmons creates makes the hair stand on end when narrating those ancestral rituals that surround the figure of that goddess of death that gives the book its title, describing with all the luxury of details situations that will horrify the experienced reader on more than one occasion. But it is true that, from a current perspective, reading this type of story drags the condemnation of its time, showing it as naive and predictable.

Nevertheless, "The Song of Kali" is a great horror novel that develops to its ultimate consequences a terrible odyssey into the unknown throughout its pages. One of those books that discovers the dirt that can be found in horror itself through words. A story that, although it does not invent anything, reappears in the middle of your nightmares.

Song of Kali might not be Dan Simmons' absolute best work, but it is a prime example of what makes him one of my favorite writers: his remarkable range. Simmons has a deep passion for history, mythology, authors, writing, and reading. This passion has led him to create an incredibly diverse body of work among active writers. He has written about John Keats in space, Ernest Hemingway in the Gulf, the Greek Gods, Franklin's lost Arctic expedition, retold Dickens' unfinished novel, and in Song of Kali, he takes on the bloody Hindu goddess of eternal energy, Kali, in a gritty, modern-day Calcutta.

It's an urban-fantasy horror novel with some truly freaky moments. What makes them even more terrifying is their macabre banality. For example, to become a member of the Kali cult, one simply needs to bring a corpse to the first meeting. It doesn't matter how you obtain the corpse - you can kill it, dig it up, steal it, whatever. This makes for a frightening sequence, filled with "what ifs" and "holy shits!". And all of this is presented as a reflection of what humanity truly is, even when most of humanity is happily hiding its ugly nature behind a sugary humanism.

Violence and its consequences run throughout Simmons' work, another reason I love him. However, it appears in many different forms and always from a different genre perspective. Whether it's historical fiction, urban fantasy, hard sci-fi, horror, historical horror, whodunnit, poetry, mythos, or something else entirely, Simmons is an author among authors. If you've never read his work before, Song of Kali is a great place to start. It may not be dazzling, but it will definitely pique your interest and prepare you for his more challenging books (and there are many of them).

p.s. I don't care if you think I'm crazy (or what he thinks, for that matter). I love him. So there. ;)

Does for India what Heart Of Darkness did for Africa. It uses India as a setting for a tale of unease and terror that, in reality, could have been set anywhere. However, using a third-world setting caters to the western gallery's delicate sensibilities. This is a superbly structured and masterfully woven horror novel. Yet, it's also a fucking travesty of the real nature of Kali and her various manifestations. The author has taken a unique female power-divinity, something without parallel in any other living religion, and reduced her to a 'bitch goddess' of evil. I truly wish that westerners would do a little more research. Nobody spells their name Jayaprakesh. It's Jayaprakash or Jaiprakash, but not Jayaprakesh. Thank you very much. For all the play Simmons makes of Indians mangling English, he certainly doesn't hesitate to mangle Indian names. Oh, and it also annoyed me that all the chapters have an epigram taken from an Indian writer, except the one chapter that introduces a note of hope and thus has to return to the light of western civilization with a quote from W.B. Yeats. Despite all these flaws, it still earns a 3-star rating. It really is a very good horror novel. But it does convince me more than ever that writers are on uncertain ground when they venture outside their own cultural contexts.

I read this book because my brother told me that over time, many people had said it was just about the scariest book ever written. However, I'm happy to report that the rumors of its scariness have been greatly exaggerated.

I think it's utter rubbish and probably trash as well. I have a difficult time understanding why this book won the World Fantasy Award (a fact I'm completely unfamiliar with, and I'm ashamed of myself for that) when the competition that year included other books. I actually read two of those other books, namely The Vampire Lestat and The Damnation Game, and I remember enjoying them much more than this one.

Almost from the very beginning, I saw this book as a story where a white Westerner goes to a brown people's country and gets horrified by everything. And that's exactly how it went for the entire length of the book. Is everyone who is not white unpleasant? Yes! (Unless they were the wife or the sexy vixen of a non-character who the white Westerner can ogle). Are brown people compared to animals? Yes! Monkey, toad, rabbit... Is the portrayal of an entire city, culture, and religion extremely narrow? Yes! Open any page and you'll find an example. When pretty much every non-Western character is dehumanized into repulsive or otherworldly caricatures, you'd have to be willfully naïve to say "it's just a setting, it could be anywhere!"

While a couple of "scary" or "creepy" things happen in the book, none of it really ties together very well. While other readers mention the dread or conspiracy they felt permeated the book, all I saw was this bumbling main character acting like the perfect dunder-headed horror victim should in order for the story to fulfill its purpose. Nothing really makes sense from a story perspective unless you view it as a narrative necessity for the book to be a horror book. The main character's turning point into madness is a wet dream he has about the goddess Kali. After that, he's sort of in thrall to her, but only to explain his being a jerk to his wife (never mind that he's a jerk in general). I never got the sense that anything supernatural actually happened to him. It was just that he was so disturbed by this different culture that it made him crazy (as another reviewer points out, similar to Heart of Darkness, which has its own history of being a literary touchstone of racism and xenophobia).

This book is just not good! Whoever thinks they're getting a cultural lesson about India from this, please stop. Whoever thinks this is a good horror book, either I'm not so easily scared or... I don't even know how to finish that sentence. If you're scared by third world countries, brown people, or clumsily vague supernatural conspiracy theories, then this is the kind of horror for you.

I have to admit that I was truly horrified by this book, but not in the way it was intended.

The Age of Kali has begun.

First and foremost, I must state that this was an extremely brutal reading experience. "Song of Kali" is centered around a New Englander who manages a poetry-related paper. He embarks on a journey to Calcutta (Kolkata), India, in search of a renowned, allegedly deceased poet who has seemingly resurfaced. We're talking about one of the greatest poets of all time here, with a staggering 500 pages of new verse! So, he boards a plane with his wife and young infant daughter to find this man. Surely, it'll make for a great story to print, right? However, things don't unfold as expected. He gets drawn into the dark underbelly of the city. He becomes involved with a cult that worships the goddess Kali, and the situation takes a strange turn. After all, there's nothing quite like that "old time religion."

This is a difficult book to rate. I found it to be interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking, and extremely dark. I firmly believe it can also be classified as a horror book. Some have even labeled this book as xenophobic or racist. While the book does present a harsh portrayal of India that could potentially be offensive, I don't think it was necessarily intended in the way some might interpret it. The "Song of Kali" can be heard everywhere; pockets of horror exist across the globe, and this is a point frequently made in the book. This is just one manifestation of it. Some also claim that this book is hopeless, but I wouldn't entirely agree, although it does come perilously close at times.

At some point in the story, the book takes a significant turn. It rapidly transforms into something else after a dark and heart-wrenching sequence of events. It's all executed extremely well, which is a testament to Simmons' writing prowess. Given that this is his debut novel, it showcases his writing skills were intact from the very beginning. I wouldn't consider it a masterpiece, but Simmons would go on to pen several books that are worthy of that description.

If you're a horror enthusiast, this book should definitely be on your reading list. Simmons packs a wealth of content into those 300 pages, including believable characters, some truly creepy sequences, and a great deal of emotion. 4/5

I find myself feeling slightly detached from this book. I suspect this isn't the kind of reaction the author had in mind. I'm glad to have delved into one of Simmons' fantasy-horror novels, as I've only read his Hyperion series, which I probably should reread since my memory of it is sometimes hazy. I adored the first half of Song of Kali. However, once the story gained momentum, a little over halfway through, I felt less engaged and, consequently, less interested. After pondering for most of the day why I felt this way, I determined that perhaps there wasn't as much character inner monologue as I typically prefer. There seemed to be an overabundance of observation and relaying of the scene rather than a natural progression of events.

That's not to say this was a bad read. Simmons' descriptions of Calcutta were believable, startling, and all too easy to envision given their nature. It's almost as if Simmons wrote about the city so masterfully that the rest of the story paled in comparison. So perhaps I'm being unfair, judging one part of the book against the other and penalizing Simmons unjustly.

The characters were unique. The setting was chilling and intimidating. There were many scenes that I'm eager to analyze, but I won't do so in a review without spoilers, so I'll save that for a group discussion. However, I will be exploring more of Simmons' horror novels.

And as a caution, there were some extremely disturbing scenes, particularly towards the end. Just remember, this is a horror novel, representing the horror of more than one incarnation or origin.

A strange thing occurred as I was engrossed in reading this book.

Throughout the first half or so, I clenched my teeth and muttered curses. I was convinced that I wouldn't relish the remainder of the literary journey. Had I abandoned it midway, I might have returned to Goodreads years later (I read this book around 2007) and perhaps awarded it a measly two stars.

Then, something remarkable happened. I came to a realization, or at least I think I did, regarding what Simmons was attempting to achieve. I understood that the reason I was struggling with this book was my growing and intense aversion to the narrator/protagonist, Robert Luczak. I've perused other reviews on this site, and it doesn't seem that anyone else had this particular issue. But from almost the very first page, I simply felt a great deal of scorn for this man. He was so clearly out of his element, yet so blatantly filled with self-satisfied complacency and a sense of full-bellied relief that he was living in a nice, safe country. There, he could raise a stable, middle-class family and strive to become some sort of intellectual paragon while writing for his little magazines. He even took a step towards embracing liberal multiculturalism by marrying an Indian woman, albeit one born into privilege and far removed from the cesspits of Calcutta. "Well, good for you, Mister Luczak, you pretentious prick," I thought to myself, with my most scathing and cynical sneer.

Then, Simmons, through the voice of Luczak, made some offhand, derogatory remarks about science fiction and science fiction writers, and I couldn't help but chuckle. I suddenly grasped the essence. Simmons, a science fiction writer among other things, wasn't merely trying to convey something about India and its culture. This was as much a commentary on western foolhardiness and ineffective dabbling as anything else. At one point, Luczak witnesses a low-caste cleaning girl accidentally electrocuted while performing her job. And while he is justifiably horrified, all he can do is complain to his hosts. There's this attitude, completely unconscious and unintended on Luczak's part, that despite the fact that he's ostensibly doing serious work and is intellectually capable of learning and growing, he can't help but be grumpy about a lot of dirt spoiling his holiday. While I wouldn't say Luczak distorts the truth to the extent of being considered an "unreliable narrator," he is part of a longstanding horror tradition: one who is too preoccupied with looking at the trees to see the forest surrounding him.

Ultimately, I released the tension of my contempt because I realized that Luczak was not a surrogate for Simmons himself. Instead, he was a well-intentioned but ignorant man who simply gets himself deeper into the mire without even realizing what's transpiring. In fact, the buildup to the book's harrowing climax is truly quiet and subtle, so that one simply reads along and, like Luczak, doesn't quite realize how dire the situation has become until the very last moment. Then, there's no turning back. The ending...oh, the ending: an ascent into madness and the most nerve-wracking tension, followed by one of the most downbeat and depressing conclusions I can recall reading. While Luczak is not exactly redeemed, I felt so sorry for wishing him ill by the last pages. The man endures so much so suddenly and deserves so little of it, even though he may be a bungler. Initially, I gave this book three stars, but as the final quarter or so has remained with me for such a long time and has left some kind of indelible mark on my mind, I found that I had to increase the rating.

There's also a significant amount of ambiguity here. Did supernatural events actually take place? Luczak doesn't believe in such things, but his drug-addled brain is by the end ill-equipped to explain anything. We, the readers, can infer whatever we please. I appreciate how the novel doesn't spoon-feed us. Though Luczak in his nice high-rise tower loftiness would surely have attempted to do so, the last pages demonstrate that this tower is truly shattered, even though Calcutta is far behind him, and he can no longer even make the effort. This is powerful stuff, all the more so because it is ultimately told in a voice that I found rather unsympathetic through large portions of the narrative.

Uf – it's really hard for me to write about this part without the popular'spoilers', but let's try to say in a few sentences why this is worth it.

First of all, the atmosphere in which a large part of the action takes place is described more than well and very descriptively. The stench, filth, lost souls, and damned darkness – the darkest iteration of India that I have encountered so far. A kind of descent into the 'Heart of Darkness' with elements of gentle supernatural. It's no wonder that the'modern public' considers this book racist.

Secondly, this is the type of story that I personally like the most. Written in the first person, which is – if you ask me – ideal for this type of literature. So the suffering, here huge, is best conveyed!

Thirdly. The story itself is engaging and easy to follow. A journalist/poet goes to Kolkata to take on a new commission for a poem by a famous Indian poet... the problem is only that the same poet has long been dead. How and why the new work appeared, it's up to you to see.

This is Simon's first work, so that'sharpness' and the desire to shock the readers a little with some disgusting descriptions and events that I personally consider the best possible can be seen. That sharpness has been blunted in the meantime, but this book remains as a monument to the audacity and youth of the proven author.

I recommend it... and I (almost) never lie.

4,2/5

Kolkata is a city that is full of contradictions.

On one side of the road, there are magnificent high rises that stand tall and proud, while on the other side, there are shanties and hastily put together human habitations.

As you travel through the roads, you will see garbage piled high and refuse floating through large bodies of water.

But then, turn a bend in the road and you will be greeted by a tree lined pavement, well cared for houses and apartments, and the road will lead you to some of the swankiest shopping malls in town.

There is a mix of the old and the new, the beautiful and the repulsive, and the eye catching and the forgettable.

In short, Kolkata is a replica of any other large city in the world.

However, Dan Simmons paints a rather grim portrait of this town in his novel Song of Kali.

He calls it a nest of many evils, capitalizing on the Hindu Mythology of Kali, who is a manifestation of uncontrolled feminine power.

The cults that follow Kali are said to be violent in nature, and Simmons takes this imagination to a higher level when he calls Kali an undoubtedly evil entity with a ruthless cult behind her.

While I agree with many reviewers that the characters and the story make us feel that Kolkata is solely and completely evil, this is far from the truth.

Also, the moment the characters walk back into America, all sense of horror dissipates.

But I must say that even after close to 35 years of the novel's setting, there still are places in Kolkata that retain the same shades.

This book goes to my favorites list because it completely drew me into the ambiance of the tale's setting.

However, there are a couple of funny things in the book.

According to the Indian dialect, you do not call a person Jayaprakesh. You call him Jayaprakash or Jayaprakas.

Also, a hymn with 108 stanzas is not called a mantri. It is still called Gayatri Mantra.

I am an extremely huge Dan Simmons fan, and the Hyperion series is very likely my all-time favorite series.

This is Dan's very first novel. Although it is much different from his science fiction works, it is still truly awesome.

However, oh my goodness, is it dark and disturbing! It is filled with vivid descriptions of squalor, violence, and some really very unpleasant people.

After you finish reading this novel, it will remain with you.

It has a certain charm and impact that lingers in your mind long after you put the book down.

The unique style and the powerful storytelling in this novel make it a memorable and unforgettable reading experience.

Despite its dark and disturbing nature, it still manages to draw the reader in and keep them engaged until the very end.

It is a testament to Dan Simmons' writing skills and his ability to create a world that is both captivating and disturbing at the same time.

Overall, this novel is a must-read for any fan of Dan Simmons or anyone who enjoys dark and thought-provoking literature.

A 300-page diatribe against Calcutta? It seems that Simmons has a vendetta against this city for some unknown reason. The hero of his story, Bobby Luczak, is far from admirable. He's a coward who acts stupidly and illogically. Despite being an effete literary type, he fails to treat his mathematician wife with respect, repeatedly hiding things from her and deserting her without cause. He claims to have a terrible temper, yet in a crisis, he's completely impotent.

Bobby has a 7-month-old daughter, but her existence serves only an unpleasant purpose. His wife, on the other hand, seems to be there just to highlight how stupid he is in comparison. One character, a college kid, gets the plot going by telling Bobby a story about the worshippers of the evil goddess Kali. The story, which starts on Page 62 and ends on Page 111, is a bravura performance with a backstory, chapters, and a narrative arc. However, Bobby doesn't applaud at the end, perhaps because he knows it could have been shortened. He even demonstrates this by condensing the boy's 3-hour monologue to 10 minutes when telling it to his wife.

Very little actually happens in this story, which is instead filled with repeated descriptions of the rampant squalor of Calcutta. Bobby decides that the people are evil, which makes it easier for him to feel nothing for them. He even dreams of the city disappearing in nuclear fire, which he finds pleasant. Simmons seems more interested in creating a sense of Lovecraftian dread than in developing a compelling plot. But Lovecraft didn't write 300-page novels, and perhaps there's a good reason for that.