Song of Kali (Paperback)

In addition, while the horrified-travelogue aspect of the book is effective, we never go any deeper than Luczack's ugly-American revulsion at a society he doesn't understand. Simmons seems content to paint most residents of Calcutta as potential gangsters or murderous fanatics, and leave it at that. The story only gets interesting (far too late in the book) when the Luczack character mercifully shuts up long enough to let some of the Indians tell their own stories. The storyline involving the Kali cult is genuinely, darkly fascinating and I wish Simmons had done more than scratch the surface of it.

The emotional climax could have been wrenching if only I'd been invested in the main character, and unfortunately the novel peters out with him descending into a world of self-pity for several chapters. Some really interesting horror material here, sandwiched into an otherwise boring novel.

This horrible/delightful/remarkable book works on your psyche on two levels: it attacks your senses by describing, in graphic detail, the mundane, "real world" horrors that exist just beyond the field of awareness for most Westerners living in affluent, post-industrialized "societies"; but worse yet, it open up that dark place so deeply imbedded within our basal ganglia that it can only be assumed to be the most primal and ancient of human nerve centers. It triggers an autonomic recoil from the pure darkness, cold malevolence, and absolute EVIL that surrounds us. We begin, innocently enough on the first level, following our protagonist's journey to solve a mystery ... and then slowly ... methodically ... step by step and with our guard down ... we are led blindly into reeking depths of the primordial abyss. I've never been to Calcutta. But, like many other Americans, I have traveled to a number of other "Third World" settings, both in groups and as a individual. I never cease to be appalled at the the arrogance and materialistic ego-centricity of too many American travelers who fail to respect or even try to fathom other cultures, unfamiliar traditions, and those painful economic realities suffered by much of the REST of the world. Simmons captures the naive, and distinctly American, arrogance of his protagonist (Robert Luczak) remarkably well. But then he takes it one step further. He rolls Luczak's arrogance in broken glass and shoves it right down his throat.

I like to think of myself as a savvy ready. Most of the time, I can sense where a story is heading before it actually takes me there. All the way through the first three quarters of SONG OF KALI, I was pretty certain I knew where the author was leading me. I expected the expected. I was anticipating the cliché. But the sheer horror of that final twist of the literary knife-in-the-gut left me utterly speechless, with my heart a-pounding and my mouth hanging open like a drooling simpleton. I simply could not believe that I didn't see this coming! I was caught so completely off guard that I actually had to back up and re-read that section several times, just to be certain that I was really reading what I thought I was reading. What an ending! My congratulations to Dan Simmons for writing such a dark masterpiece. I wonder, what deep, dark recess in your mind did you have to tap to dredge up something so completely unfathomable? What nightmares you must suffer.

Yes, there are some flaws in the book, and for that reason you should ignore the hype and superlative praise showered on it. For starters, the narrator is not a particularly likeable character; he admits to having a short fuse and a quick temper that often seem out of proportion to even minor annoyances.

In addition, the author goes on for too long just setting up this tale, and nothing much of consequence actually happens for the first third of the story. Then there is the problem of the loose ends that do not answer the questions raised by a murder which serves as the emotional climax of the novel. My best guess is that Simmons deliberately left some things obscure to reflect the protagonist's own confused and frustrated inability to understand what prompted the killing, but - if such is the case - it still leaves the reader unsatisfied with the unresolved mystery of why certain events happened as they did.

Finally, "Song of Kali" suffers from a lack of editing and/or proofreading (at least in its paperback edition), as shown by the many typos in the manuscript. Ordinarily, this would not matter a great deal, but in a story that concerns itself with wordsmiths in one form or another (i.e., writers, editors, and a literary agent) the errors are glaring and disrupt the flow of the otherwise nicely nuanced text.

However, having said all that, I remain amazed at how well the "Song of Kali" managed to pull me into its plot and delve into themes that were at once disturbing and yet undeniably fascinating. The dramatic tension between good and evil is captured in dialogue and descriptive prose that explores the duality of man at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels. This might sound dry and dismal but in fact the final third of "Song of Kali" truly does build suspense like a runaway freight train, and I was unable to put the novel down for the last 80 pages.

Simmons also does an especially good job of translating the universal nature of depravity from the teeming streets of Calcutta to the familiar environs of our own supposedly more civilized society. Although he touches on Indian mythology, the occult, mysticism, and the supernatural, Simmons suggests that the manifestations of culture and religion are merely props that mirror the darkness (or lightness) of the human soul.

And that is really what this book is about when you get down to it: the importance of free will and each person deciding for him- or herself whether to embrace hope and life or give into greed, hate, and the fear of death. In spite of its faults, "Song of Kali" concludes on an optimistic note that does not smack of a conventional, contrived happy ending. Instead, Simmons says, we must beware of the beast within us, but choose the better way.