(english below) El libro anterior (Un verano tenebroso) se ha convertido en uno de mis libros favoritos, por lo que era difícil que este llegara a su nivel. Es un libro bueno, pero carece de la atmósfera de Summer of night. Las situaciones son a veces muy forzadas (una en particular forzadísima e ilógica) para dar pie a que ocurran ciertos acontecimientos. He fallado también, quizá error mío más que del autor, en empatizar con el personaje principal. Así y todo, la historia tiene momentos interesantes y algunas sorpresas al final. Es un buen libro para los amantes de las casas encantadas.

ENGLISH:

The previous book (Summer of Night) has become one of my favorite books, so it was difficult for this one to reach its level. It's a good book, but it lacks the atmosphere of Summer of night. Situations are sometimes pretty forced (one in particular is even illogical) to make certain events happen. I have also failed, perhaps my own mistake rather than that of the author, to empathise with the main character. Still, the story has interesting moments and some surprises at the end. It is a good book for lovers of haunted houses.

Dan Simmons does not disappoint in this psychological horror story. His prose is right up there with King and Straub. First rate writing! I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

I really liked this one. Written very well with lots of strange and creepy, ghostly goings-on.

After reading this book I am really curious about the first book, "Summer of Night." I stumbled upon this book looking for something spooky to read for October and immediately found myself enthralled with the story of both of the main narrators.

This was an interesting book where you are never quite sure what is reality and what is not. Even the main character doesn't seem to know for sure, which added an extra element of creepiness to the story.

I expected this to be a classic sort of ghost story where nothing much happened other than a few spectres and things going bump in the night, but it was not that way at all. This was an exciting book with a lot of unexpected twists.

I do have to say, I liked the current parts of the book much better than the flashbacks, which I often skimmed to get back to the main story. The author explained things a bit too much in some places and I was left with a few questions at the end, which I think was intentional on the part of the author. The ending could be interpreted a number of different ways.

Overall this was a good horror novel and clearly a very talented and creative author. Recommended.

3.5. A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons is a quiet, eerie follow-up to Summer of Night. While the first book was all about nostalgia and those sun-soaked memories of childhood, this one is cold, stark, and very minimalist. It really nails that unsettling feeling of looking back on your youth from the sometimes sterile reality of adulthood, and there are some genuinely creepy moments that Simmons does so well. It might not have the strongest story arc and can feel like it wanders a bit, but it's definitely worth a read.

Just not quite there. Lacking the same level of epic-ness as its predecessor and not quite delivering a solid horrific punch. And the book is exhaustingly self-aware. Almost every character has some line about "if this were a horror movie, we would..." or some similar line.

It was a fun book, though.

I definitely want to read more by this author, and I plan on circling back to Summer of Night shortly.

This book is a sequel to A Summer of Night, and once again I feel like Dan Simmons is imitating Stephen King. While A Summer of Night was extremely reminiscent of King's It, A Winter Haunting features one of the kids in that book, forty years later, a washed up college professor returning to the little Illinois town where it all went down. This of course reminded me of King's Dr. Sleep, which was a sequel to The Shining, starring a grown-up Danny.

Dale Stewart isn't a psychic, though. He's just a guy who helped his friends save their town from an ancient evil when he was 12 years old. Then he grew up, became a writer and college professor, and had an affair with a hot young graduate student and became completely unhinged when she dumped him. So he returns to Elm Haven, rents the house his old friend Duane used to live in, supposedly to get some solitude and writing time, but really to run away from the mess he's made of his life.

Few of the other characters from the first book really feature in this one, though. There's a ghost-narrator, and Dale's childhood bully returns, of course, but this story is mostly independent of the first one. Dale experiences hauntings, gets run off the road by skinheads, almost bangs the hot girl from his teen years, and questions his sanity.

Dan Simmons is a very literary author, so this otherwise typical ghost story is full of classical references, and a well-executed story arc, but there really isn't much connecting it to the previous book.

I had no idea this was part of a series-so it reads fine as a standalone. It was a very creepy, well written mystery/thriller. You aren't sure what is real and what isn't. It reminded me a bit of Stephen King. All of the olde English,etc. was kind of interesting but wasn't sure why it wasn't just a regular message-maybe that comes from the other books.

I loved this book for the same reasons that I loved William Peter Blatty’s “Legion”. It is (IMO) a spiritual successor, rather than a formal sequel to a book that’s been put on a pedestal. This book is doing its own thing and I am a fan of said thing. “Summer of Night” is a larger than life, coming of age, good v.s. evil epic in the style of Stephen King’s “IT”. “A Winter Haunting” is a Jamesian psychological horror story that mixes monsters with a descent into madness. These two books share a hand full of characters , locations and themes, but “AWH” doesn’t really read like a sequel and could probably stand alone. I love psychological horror. I love the gaslighting and the deterioration of a protagonist’s confidence as they slowly lose their shit. Hell, the only way I would have enjoyed this more would be if it had air raid sirens, some rusty grates and a “Red Pyramid Thing”!

A good horror story about a man who is dealing with the demons of his past - both figuratively and literally. The first half of the book is a little slow; however, readers who stick with it will be rewarded by a very good second half. The book is a sequel, of sorts, to Summer of Night, but you don't have to have read that book (I didn't) to understand this one. There is alot of psychological horror in the plot, along with the supernatural. While this isn't my favorite book by Dan Simmons, it still is worth reading.

So I recently read Summer of Night, and after I finished I was excited to find out that there a couple of novels that follow up on the some of the characters from that book.

A Winter Haunting is mainly about Dale Stewart, one of the main characters in SON, but it pretty much at least mentions every important character from the first novel. It is even partially narrated by one of the other characters, and I loved those parts of this story.

The book takes place 40 years after the events in SON, with Dale returning to Elm Haven in order to work on his next book. He's a professor on sabbatical, recently divorced, and still hurting from being dumped by his girlfriend. His life is such a mess that he even attempted suicide. Dale comes to the realization that he needs to revisit his past, since there is nothing left for him in his current life, so he rents the former home of his friend Duane, and decides to seclude himself in Elm Haven in order to write about the his childhood friends.

The horror in this novel is more psychological than Summer of Night, and just as creepy. I thought for a while that I knew where Simmons was leading the story, but then he completely veered away from where I thought he was going, and I was delighted to find the book was not as straightforward as I originally thought. I adore ghost stories, and this one is now up there with some of my favorites. If you enjoyed Summer of Night, I highly recommend picking this one up too. It was so wonderful to revisit the bicycle gang, but also a bit sobering to realize that many of them did not end up with the brightest futures.