I'll say that this book was rather short and well written. It contains endless descriptions of Calcutta and its overpowering smell that reaches the high heaven. Seriously, Brown described it as putrid sort of place filled with lepers, filthy, and vileness of a third world country that makes anyone reading this book not even consider going there to visit its rich culture. He might be right but it's not fun to read such things when there is hardly anything going on in the book.

There was not much action going on, the characters are OK but at times quite stupid in their actions (especially main character) and for something that I thought would be explored more in depth, the ending was a letdown. Even with the big reveal, it was still a letdown.

Up until a 200 page mark nothing really happens. It was all about going out, trying to set meetings with people, and a man telling us a story that was supposed to be frightening but it was everything but. The Kali scenes were awesome but should have been explored a lot more.

Overall a fun read but not a thrilling one.

A horrifying and bleak journey into the heart of darkness in Calcutta, India. I can see why this book is a little controversial but I don’t think it’s as offensive as people say it is. Sure he portrays Calcutta like a bad city, but he’s fairly respectful towards the rest of the country and Indian people and culture. I don’t think he meant any harm while writing this novel and you can tell he’s fascinated by Indian culture.

With that being said, this book is an awesome horror novel. It’s terrifying! It contains one of my favorite sections in a horror novel involving two college students and their initiation into a cult. I would’ve definitely given this 5 stars, but that ending will crush you like a cockroach. It’s so brutal and cruel. Overall an impressive debut that’s not long and delivers the scares and suspense plentiful! Love this book. Strongest 4 star rating.

There is some true horror in here...

I believe this is the third book by Dan Simmons that I had read. My favorite one is The Terror. I just loved how vivid that one was with the cracking ice and everything. This one was vivid too but in a vastly different way. Its Calcutta. The awful slums. Huge piles of refuse everywhere and people defecating in the street. Its very urban. So its a different type of danger.

To be honest I had no idea what this book was actually about. I do know who Kali is...and I knew the story took place in India. But I found this to be a weird mix of Frankenstein and the ever popular Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom... There are some truly dark twisted things in here, I guess because Kali is a very dark goddess... Or is she a demon? But there are events in here that seem to twist reality. And some part of you wonders was it real or was it some clever parlor trick (of the most awful bloody nature of course).

There were events in here I had never expected. Twists that came out of nowhere and then the aftermath was truly awful. True horror...

The book suggests that Kali is real and that this is the Age of Kali with all the horrible stuff going on in the world.

But here is the plot: Mr Luczak, his wife Amrita and their baby Victoria go to Calcutta. Luczak is an author and he has heard that the famous M Das has written another epic poem - but M Das is supposed to be dead! And that is the beginning of a complicated mystery with much tension, trouble and freaky stuff. And it seems once you go to that huge city its very hard to leave.

Some of the stuff in here was very disturbing and shocking. Read this in a day so its one of his shorter books.

Claustrophobic and horrific!

Story 4.5/5
Narration 5/5
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons is an unique tragic horror book. I liked it!
The story is well written, and made me traveled through it pages. I never went to India, and I knew nothing significant about the goddess Kali. So I don’t know if what has been said about Calcutta and the goddess is accurate. But what Dan Simmons described seems realistic. In my opinion, all the characters are well developed.
I found the claustrophobic, filthy and sinister atmosphere of Calcutta, well described. I could almost smell the city while reading. I felt the city’s humidity and the frenzy of all the unfortunate and fortunate people living there.
Song of Kali is a different kind of horror story. There are a lot of mysteries. I didn’t understand everything, about the ending, but I liked it nonetheless. The audiobook is very good and added to the mystery. I highly recommend it, if you want to travel without leaving your home, and if you want to get spooked.

Man, this book is something else. So many unanswered questions. I'm going to be tossing and turning all night long wondering what the hell happened here.

This book is more suspenseful and has a more compelling setting than most books I can remember.

But it's not particularly scary, and I don't get the sense that it ever tried to be. It's weird, then, that it's often pitched as "horror" novel and that virtually anything you can read about this book will try to sell you on how "scary" it is, including the back of the book.

Simmons, from the very first page, successfully builds up Calcutta as a city that you should have feelings about: specifically, deep concern for the main character and his family who are there on a supposed-to-be-brief business trip. The suspense keeps building from there. The characters go to Calcutta, and you're just waiting for things to happen that will bear out this suspenseful beginning.

And things do happen, and the book really pays off. The author delivers on this promise -- and it works out very well. So much of the book is spent on developing Calcutta as a place "that shouldn't exist," as the main character says, that the quality of this book basically depended entirely on whether this lived up to its potential. Simmons knew this, it seems, because he decides to go all-in on building up Calcutta from the first moment.

The pay-off is pretty... stark, and I don't think it could have been otherwise.

There's a lot more here to love: for instance, the characters are especially well-developed, and the book is lean and economical. It's a bit over three-hundred-pages long, and each chapter and page is captivating, and you never lose interest. It's remarkable that the book isn't always *exciting*: you might well find that it is a slow burn, but it's a slow, *suspenseful* burn, and I just couldn't put it down.

The Age of Kali has begun.

First I just have to say that that was a brutal reading experience.

Song of Kali is about a New Englander who runs a paper about poetry, and travels to Calcutta (Kolkata) India to search for a famous, supposedly deceased, poet who has apparently turned up alive. We’re talking about one of the greatest poets of all time here, with 500 pages of fresh verse! So he jumps on a plain with his wife and young infant daughter to find this man. And hey, it’s going to be a good story to print as well, right? Well, things don’t go as planned. He gets pulled into the dark underbelly of the city. He gets involved with a cult that worships the goddess Kali, and things get weird. After all, there’s nothing quite like that old time religion!

This is a hard book to rate, it really is. I found it interesting, entertaining, thought provoking, and very, very dark. I believe it to be very much a horror book as well. I’ve also seen this book called xenophobic, even racist. While the book does paint a harsh picture of India that absolutely could be offensive, I don’t think it was necessarily meant in the way some interpret it. The Song of Kali can be heard anywhere, pockets of horror exist all over the planet, and this is a point that is often made in the book. This is just one form of it. Some also say this book is hopeless; I wouldn’t agree with that, though it definitely comes close at times.

Somewhere along the line, the book takes a turn. It quickly becomes something else after a dark and heartbreaking turn of events. It’s all done really well, too, and that is a big credit to Simmons writing ability. Given that this is his first novel, it shows his skill as a writer was in tact very early on. I wouldn’t consider it a masterpiece, but Simmons would go on to write a few books that are worthy of that word.

If you’re a horror fan, this should be on your list. Simmons crams a whole lot into those 300 pages; characters that feel real, some genuinely creepy sequences and a lot of emotion. 4/5

I love Dan Simmons but I wasn't a big fan of Song of Kali the first time I read it. The only reason I bothered to reread it was because Audible had it for just a few bucks in their Black Friday sale. I'm glad I gave it another shot. I'm not sure what I missed the first time around, but this ranks among his best works.

Thematically it was interesting to read this right after No Country For Old Men. While No Country lacks the supernatural elements, the two exist in very similar thematic territory: namely how do we deal with evil that defies understanding? Both arrive at a similar answer: survive it and don't succumb. Both present a certain dissatisfaction with that answer.

The book is very dark. In fact, I'm not sure Simmons has written anything quite this disturbing since. But if you don't mind that it's well worth your time

Seit langer Zeit konnte ich kein Buch wegen Notfalls in meinem Heimatland nicht lesen.
Ich habe dieses Buch gerade im Nachtdienst im Krankenhaus fertiggelesen und.. was für ein herzberaubendes Buch.

Es ist ein gewaltiges und pechschwarz dramatisches Buch. Luscak-Familie erleben eine der üblichen, aber bitteren Erfahrungen in Kalkutta. Man könnte denken, im Vordergrund steht Lied von Kali, aber ich denke nicht. Es enthält eine perfekte Kritismus nebenbei. Dialoge, Beschreibungen und unvergessliche Emotionenübertragung.

Jetzt interessiere ich mich dür alle Bücher von Dan Simmons!

I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more had my last Dan Simmons book not been Drood. A lot of the more interesting elements of this book, the hints of the bizarre supernatural right beneath the surface of daily life, the disfigured maybe-real-maybe-not character, the literary too-smart-to-believe main character, are all in Drood but in a much more polished form.

Also, this book didn't really seem to have a point above the very basic light will always shine through the darkness.

I would only recommend this for people who have a burning desire to read every word Simmons has ever written, otherwise he has much better stuff available.

"Song of Kali" was a very interesting book. Set in the late 1970s Calcutta, it is a horror story centered around the Hindu goddess Kali.

Robert Luczack works for Harpers and is sent to India to locate the works of a poet long thought dead. Luckack and his Indian-born wife travel to Calcutta and get far more than they bargained for. The poet, Das, had been thought dead for over 8 years in a mysterious accident. Luczak finds that the papers are newer works by a dead poet. This mystery leads him into the darkest parts of Calcutta as he crosses paths with a dark cult that worships Kali.

What makes this an interesting story is that, even after reading it, I am not sure if the events were supernatural or a culmination of events that made it seem so. The rather nebulous ending didn't really do it for me.

By no means is this a bad story. It's quite a good horror story. It is up to the reader to determine whether this is psychological horror or supernatural horror. I liked this book, but not as much as some of his other books. Not a bad read with Halloween in mind.

Although Dan Simmons talks about many ancient practices of Hinduism that were rendered illegal by the insurgence of British humanitarian laws, the scope of this novel and its main focus go way beyond that. From the perspective of the Indian folklore and myths, he puts forth how the “age of Kali” (which is metaphorically synonymous to “the era of destruction”) has begun. Though the book is dark and disturbing at certain parts and the opinion of the protagonist, Luczak, is offensive towards the Hindu religion and Indian culture as a whole, the book was a good read. The main reason for this is the respect that the writer shows towards the Hindu beliefs by incorporating parts of the folklore into his storyline – the main twist was left unrevealed which may intrigue the readers enough to think about the possibility of supernatural interventions.

Being a follower of Hinduism and having a locally termed “jagrata” temple of Kali attached to the front of our village house, I must admit that I could relate to the environment that Dan Simmons created and the horror that it might present. I highly recommend the book to those of you who love myths in general and are interested in legends from different cultures and religions.