Song of Kali

This was a haunting book by Simmons, so different in style and tone from his epic Cantos and Ilium series. I though it was well-written and fast-paced as an extreme case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time! It is a short book, you could probably finish it in a few hours, and so I won't belabour the plot points so that I don't spoil anything, but I will say that it is not for the faint of heart. I have been to India (Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Mysore), but never got to Calcutta where this story takes place. I remember inquiring of my hosts in the places I stayed about whether it was as bad as its reputation, and they told me, yeah pretty much. I witnessed something akin to the devastation described in Song of Kali when I visited Haiti as a teenager, and some of the feelings that the book provoked took me back to my reaction to some of the more awful states of human poverty. Definitely worth a read after you have finished Olympos and or The Rise of Endymion.

Wow. Just save me a sit on the next plane to Kolkata, 'cos I need to see that hell with my own eyes.

Song Of Kali is only the second book that I've read of Dan Simmons's novels, the first being the truly superb Drood. Song of Kali was Dan Simmons' first novel and it won the World Fantasy award. It is a very good read and the length for this particular novel is just about right. It is a dark and depressing story and features some genuine creepy moments. I would definitely read this if you are contemplating doing so. I will say this, Dan Simmons is a superb writer (Drood in particular is a masterful novel, excellent prose)
and I will most certainly be reading more of his books in the future.

Due to a longstanding affinity for horror fiction and film I consider myself pretty jaded to and desensitized by the morbid, the creepy and the fucked up. The scars inflicted by these kinds of things on my psyche are old and pale and don't hurt on even the coldest days. That said, every time I finish a Simmons novel there's always a few fresh traumas that I have to deal with. Even stuff that you wouldn't think would be very disturbing like Hyperion cosmically scarred me. I don't know why I keep doing this to myself...it's like the most creepy masochistic relationship ever. The relationship I have with Simmons' books is seriously some Last Tango in Paris shit, with his bibliography as Marlon Brando and myself as a much less attractive Maria Schneider.


Much, much less attractive.

Song of Kali was Simmons' first novel, but his style is already surprisingly gelled and mature. There's no first-book clumsiness or hesitation here, just 300 pages of atmospheric, visceral tension and horror. The story proper concerns one Mr. Robert Luczak, an editor at the literary magazines Other Voices and Harper's. Recently some new work by the purportedly-dead Indian poet M. Das has surfaced and Robert's editor wants him to fly down to Calcutta (Kolkata) and find out if there's anything to it. Sounds easy enough, but when Luczak lands in Calcutta he finds himself in a hellish world of oppressive heat, grinding poverty and an intense general sense of malevolence. Most of the people he meets are similarly weird and creepy. All bets are off on their intentions and the sense of being surrounded by unreadable but generally unsettling people perpetuates the novel. Anyone who's been to a foreign country that doesn't speak your language will be familiar with the generally uncomfortable feeling of not knowing what the FUCK anyone is saying, and that's extrapolated here to a crushing extent.

While I'm on the setting, I might as well talk about Simmons' painting of Calcutta and its many, many denizens. To say it's unflattering would be a massive understatement, and I'm sure that this book has been called xenophobic or even Indophobic. That said, I really don't think that Simmons is just being an American asshole in this; as this is a first person narrative, these are specifically Luczak's impressions, and as the reader will find out he certainly has reasons to hate the city. Simmons just seems too smart and cognizant of the history and humanity of other cultures to cavalierly write them off as inherently evil or misguided. It's just a great setting for intense, sustained urban horror. You never hear people crying about stories set in supergross Victorian London or anything like that, so what the fuck? It's just unfortunate fact that parts of India are overcrowded, poor as shit, oppressed by the caste system and dirty as hell due to rampant open defecation and pollution.

A maddening sense of ambiguity is sustained throughout the entire novel. There are no easy resolutions or explanations here and some of the events in the story are just as senseless and haunting as those in real life. I'm not even sure if there was any fantastical content in this book, and it won a World Fantasy Award! A lot of it could definitely be rationally explained (but of course is not), which only adds to the disturbing mystery and atmosphere of the novel. I'm hardly an expert, but the content concerning Hinduism (most specifically the titular Goddess) seemed well-researched and thoroughly vivid. Simmons' obsession with all things literary is also already present here, as a lot of the novel concerns poetry and the people that write it. The sustained focus on literary business and poetry only added to the realistic feeling of the novel and thusly gave added impact to the scenes where Luczak has completely left the mundane world of magazine work and entered an altogether alien and nasty plane.

Altogether an impressive first novel, even for one of the authors that has quickly become one of my favorites. Anyone interested in a dark-as-night horror story with a well-drawn protagonist in a novel setting should check this out. Since I mentioned him, I should probably say a few words about Robert--I'm not sure that I ever liked the man, to be honest; he has a serious anger problem and just generally can be a dick, which are two things that I really fucking hate in human beings. But I didn't have to like him for him to be drawn as a realistic character, and that he is. One second he's being super sweet to his adorable baby Victoria (I loved the scenes with her, they had a vivid sense of tenderness and love) and the next he's dealing with intense bouts of rage induced by the smallest of stimuli. Unfortunately this kind of personality is not alien to humanity and I applaud Simmons for drawing a character that wasn't just some bland, nice Anytown, USA average Joe. It certainly adds to the horrifying realism of the story. An easy recommendation for Simmons fans and a still-pretty-easy recommendation to horror/suspense fans.

A wonderfully visceral horror tale set against the thronging, miasmic streets of Calcutta. There's a Cthulu-like feel to the story, which Simmons expertly reframes here within Hindu belief and myth, but also hints at an inherent primal darkness at the heart of every human soul with only a thin veneer of civilization to constrain it. Resisting the urge to reveal too much in the denouement, Simmons leaves readers with lots of open ends and few answers. But like pornography, with horror it can be a lot more scintillating (or more appropriately terrifying in this case) to conceal rather than reveal, leaving many of the good bits to the imagination :)

"I think that there are black holes in reality. Black holes in the human spirit. And actual places where, because of density or misery or sheer human perversity, the fabric of things just comes apart and that black core in us swallows all the rest."

I am a huge Dan Simmons fan and the Hyperion series is probably my all time favorite series. This is Dan's first novel and while much different than his science fiction is still awesome. But OMG is it dark and disturbing and filled with descriptions of squalor and violence and some very unpleasant people. This one will stay will you after you are done reading it.

this book was so bad that it made me laugh out loud like the stereotypical maniac in any wannabe horror movie. i *loved* reading the neverending racist vent of a white dude. here’s a list of things that i found hilarious:
- the main character, bobby, is actually the self insert of the author. now, bobby is incredibly, PAINFULLY racist, and you’d think ‘oh maybe that’s his character trait, maybe he’s a complex, well written bad character’. nope. ALL characters are racist, which leads me to believe that the author himself is… uhm… not fond of other races. also, at one point, bobby tells a group of people on this bus that he was on: ‘have you never seen an american before?’ and this shit made me laugh so hard my mam thought i was on the verge of dying. DAN SIMMONS REALLY TRIED TO MAKE AMERICANS SEEM OPPRESSED. i’ve officially seen everything the world has to offer. that’s it that’s my last straw
- bobby goes on and on about how intelligent and observant his wife, amrita, is, but then 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 one made me physically itch. it made me want to crawl out of my skin. this man calls his wife ‘kiddo/kid’. his 31(?) year old wife. AND THAT DOES NOT CREEP HER OUT??? amrita, babes, why are you married to someone who has pedo fantasies. move on girl find someone else
- at one point, bobby has a flashback from his childhood that greatly disturbed me, but not in the ‘oh this is an awesome horror element’ way, and more in a ‘holy shit is his amrita aware of this’ way. so, he remembers the time when he raped a nine-year old girl as a ten-year old. he gets this flashback, he keeps thinking about how ‘he enjoyed seeing her helpless, submitting completely’. you’re wondering: ellie, what’s so funny about this? WE NEVER RETURN TO THIS PIECE OF INFORMATION. EVER. IT’S JUST DROPPED THERE AND LEFT UNDERDEVELOPED. it’s never brought up again.
- the cult situation is so poorly handled it made me want to throw the book off a cliff. we get this glimpse of it, we 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 that led to him believing that they might be the same person. nothing. 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* are the stupid one, *you* are the simpleton that cannot understand its complexity.
- it’s so funny to me how bobby wanted *so bad* to cheat on his wife. firstly, he instantly wanted to fuck kamakhya when he first saw her and *kept* thinking about her. secondly, 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 dunno what is.
- the death of his child, victoria, didn’t add shit to the story. nothing. 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 would have served as a sacrifice?? picture this: madman robert luczak gets trapped into this kali cult situation and the pressure of the cult 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 entirety of this novel. it’s so painfully uneventful to the point where it slows down your heartbeat and you’re starting to wonder ‘is this how i’m gonna die?’. the ‘lost poet’ plotline goes nowhere. you just find out that he (the poet) has been ressurected through human sacrifice to kali, he gives a manuscript to this bobby dude, and when he’s back in america he just tears it apart. that’s it.
- the ‘action’ scenes that were supposed to intrigue you and be these suspenseful moments 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 IM 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 meant to distract the reader and give them the impression that oh 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 backcover makes you think that the action being placed in calcutta was one of the main premises of the book and that the city is going to be a major horror factor. nope, my guy just hates calcutta. dude just said ‘fuck calcutta i’m gonna write a whole book about how horrible calcutta is’.
uh other shit that’s mentioned in this book or is expanded on throughout the story: misogyny, child labour, a crap ton of descriptions of dead animals, detailed descriptions of a person who suffers from leprosy, fantasies of killing people, poorly handled mental illness, death of a child + probably a lot more shit that i can’t think of right now

This is one of Simmons' best horror novels, a very dark and gritty ancient-evil story set in Calcutta. It's a good blend of well-written, well-polished, quite literary prose mixed with horrific tropes and aspects of pulp inspiration. It's a very tense and terrifying suspenseful page-turner, somewhat off the beaten path but perfect for a Halloween season spooky read.