Rowling? He is certainly better than these two modern literary cummerbunds. Why have I not heard much of this author? He’s incredibly talented, hard working, prolific, not a prisoner of genre, why is he not as as famous as say, Steven King or J.K. Still, not yet great, but inching closer in the very, very good class, Simmons is a modern writer, among several, who enters into the exceptional category. A A passing master of the art of verisimilitude, never attempting to hoodwink or cheat his reader, Simmons easily convinced him to suspend his disbelief of one or two perhaps totally outlandish storylines (at least, while in the act of reading or listening). Simmons seems to toss familiar characters & plot stereotypes into a blender to produce his own pungently flavourful characters and colourfully original creations. He catches the essence of a certain type of psychosis better than any author that I have yet to read. The strongest perhaps being Melanie, a sort of aged Scarlett O’Hara X Rosemarie’s Baby X Nurse Ratchet X Kathy Bates X Cersei Lannister character. Some of the his characters here were absolutely brilliant. Saying that, I thought the last hundred or so pages dropped the high standard somewhat and found the ending a little weak. I assume Simmons occasionally gets criticised for book length, but I always feel the longer ones, if done right, allow the reader more time to get sucked into the author’s world building and that you tend get your money’s worth. Whatever, I was hooked from this book’s opening scene.īrilliant, creepy imaginative, original, good character and plot development, covering a lot of genres (historical fiction, thriller, chiller, fantasy, science fiction, epic & horror). I would have chosen Yeat’s Second Coming or the Old Testament to kickstart a work of this epic proportion, but perhaps he felt those two resources already too well mined. The title is suggested from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (not one of my favourite poets). Having read and liked the author’s Song of Kali a year or two ago, thinking it a good but not a great read, I hadn’t picked anything by this writer since. " one of the few major reinventions of the vampire concept, on a par with Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and Stephen King's Salem's Lot." - DAVID MORRELL Read more Saul's quest is about to reach its elusive object, drawing hunter and hunted alike into a struggle that will plumb the depths of mankind's attraction to violence, and determine the future of the world itself. But at this reunion, something will go terribly wrong. Each year, three of the most powerful of this hidden order meet to discuss their triumphs of bloodshed and destruction. Killing from a distance, they are people with the psychic ability to "use" humans: read their minds, subjugate them to their wills, experience through their senses, and force them to acts of unspeakable aggression. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face-to-face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazis themselves.Ĭompelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of twentieth-century history to reveal a secret society of beings who throughout the ages may exist behind the world's most horrible and violent events. Caught behind the lines of Hitler's Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp.
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