Carrion Comfort
by Dan Simmons
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Book Reviews of Carrion Comfort
Book Review: Tough On Kids...
Summary: 2 Stars
You can get most of the information you need on this book in the other reviews. There is one thing, however, that I found particularly disturbing (not in a good horror novel way, but in a really unpleasant way) about this book. And that's the unrelenting violence against children.
It begins with graphic descriptions of the treatment of children in Nazi death camps. Progresses to children being shot, thrown down stairs, having wires inserted in their brains through their eyes, being killed in a gang fight against the villains ... and I've still got 400 pages yet to go.
That's right, I haven't even finished the book yet. And frankly I don't know if I want to. The passage I just finished (and the one that caused me to write this review) alluded to the fact that one of the author's "mind vampires" has eliminated several of a family's children because she found them a nuisance to her co-opting the parents to her devices.
And the fact is, children are completely irrelevant to the plot. Simmons just seems to revel in throwing them in for the shock value of having his monsters mistreat them. It's a visceral device that is completely -- and unnecessarily -- overused in this book.
I have read good books where children have been in danger. I have read good books where children have been unfortunate victims of evil. But I have never seen this book's equal for using excessive victimization of children as a crutch in its attempt to create antipathy for the antagonists.
It's mostly a good book. Simmons didn't need to be so heavyhanded with this device.
Book Review: Simmons: A Master of Character
Summary: 5 Stars
I am truly stunned by an earlier reviewer calling Carrion Comfort "very, very boring," and stating that he "couldn't care less if all the characters died..."Carrion Comfort is very probably my favorite book. Simmons does an amzaing job of putting you inside the various characters' heads. As my brother put it after finishing the book, "All of the other books I read now -- the characters seem so flat." Simmons provides the 1st person disjointedness of a character undergoing a mental breakdown, the fear and loathing a concentration camp survivor has towards his SS nemesis, and the horror and disbelief "normal" people have towards the atrocities and seemingly supernatural phenomina around them with equal deftness.
And beyond the intriguing characters themselves, Simmons produces that "Maybe this IS possible..." sort of feeling by weaving factual and fictional history together within the framework of the story. JFK, WWII, Ayatollah Khomeni, John Lennon -- scores of the biggest news stories that involve death or murder are fair game to be included in Simmons' story line. And they all fit.
The book describes a chess match, both literal and figurative, between people and powers, both supernatural and politcal. It has twists and turns like the best mystery novels, and shear horror with the best of the macabre. It is no wonder that Simmons won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel with Carrion Comfort.
Book Review: Not your average Vampire story....
Summary: 5 Stars
Carrion Comfort is an amazingly complex and thorough story about "mind vampires". The mind vampires really share very little in common with what most people would think of in terms of vampires -- they don't turn into bats, suck people's blood, or need a stake through the heart to kill them. The sole defining criteria of a mind vampire is that they have the ability to control people's behavior. The book concerns itself with about a half dozen powerful mind vampires. These vampires range from those who use their "ability" for wealth and power, to complete psychopaths who kill innocent people simply because they are bored. The book gets started with a power struggle between the mind vampires, which engulfs a trio of human protagonists: a former concentration camp survivor, the daughter of one of the mind vampire's victims, and a small town sheriff. This book's strength is in the development of the characters. They all seem very real and lifelike, and a lot of effort is made to explore each of the mind vampire's psyches and understand their dark motivations. The one fault I had with the book is just that it's so darn long -- almost 900 pages. You'd better clear a week of your schedule just to read the thing! I've read several of Dan Simmons' books, and I have to say this is one of his best . I enjoyed it more than Summer of Night and A Winter Haunting because I felt the story seemed somehow more realistic.Book Review: Cumbersome at times, interesting during others
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm not going to rehash the plot as it has been done in most of the reviews below. I thought the author did a number of really good things in the book with extensive research and development of various themes: phychology, death camps during the holocost, and various medical areas. I found the overall theme and execution of the book creepy and interesting, but not really scary. Despite the length of the book and extensive background on many of the main characters, I never really felt any emotional connection to the characters and when some of the "good guys" get killed off throughout the book it was like, eh, I didn't really expect it but who really cares. I thought the book got bogged down in the middle and was overly cumbersome throughout with the multitude of characters, jumping forward and back in time, jumping around in location, third-person to first-person, etc. I never really got into a flow with this book. It wasn't bad, and I enjoyed the start and end portion of the book. The other part that bothered me is that it is one of those books where when things are totally destitute and the "good guys" need something to happen or some piece of equipment to help them out, it just sort of appears with a weak backstory on how that happened. So if you enjoy the horror genre, this book is decent at times and a cool concept, but for the length and time invested I was hoping for and expecting more.Book Review: Big Disappointment.
Summary: 2 Stars
I ordered this book specifically because there were so many glowing reviews and because it was so well-compared to so many books that I like (i.e., The Stand). Simmons is also a writer about whom I've heard good things.I'm inclined to give Simmons the benefit of the doubt and try another one of his books, but if this were my only basis for judgement, I'd be extremely dubious.
First of all, I didn't care about the characters. And this despite Simmons using every emotional trick in the book to get me to care about them. We had a holocaust survivor, a determined young victim of racism who lost her father, a poor but honest local cop. It was almost ridiculous how many hackneyed tricks he pulled out the hat to try to get the readers to care about these people.
Second, the sense of timing in the book is very poor. Deaths occur at times that you can't care about them, there are long meandering plot sequences that are absolutely irrelevant. This might have been improved with some judicious cutting (this book certainly did not need to be 900 pages).
There *are* certainly some good elements in the book. I like how he played with your expectations about the villains. It's impressive that he managed to finish it at all given how sprawling the plot is.
Anyhow, like I said, I'll give Simmons another chance. But if I had to do it over again, I'd give this book a miss.