Song of Kali by Dan Simmons

[Scott]

Time for a new book. Our Halloween/October book will be Song of Kali. I can't remember reading any Dan Simmons books before this one, but all the feedback I've heard has been good.

[grodog]

Let me know when you're going to pick it up, Scott, and I'll read along this time, too.

[Scott]

I have already started it. No spoilers for a week or so. i really like it so far.

[Scott]

I'm about half way through already. It starts out with a pretty standard mystery novel vibe, but then Chapter 6 happened. I couldn't put it down for several chapters.

[GRWelsh]

Starting it this afternoon.

[geneweigel]

Okay got it and started reading up to arrived at airport.

[Scott]

It's mundane, but the writing is very descriptive. I could feel the heat and humidity there.

[geneweigel]

I finished last night but I'll withhold commentary.

[GRWelsh]

Still reading it. Anyone remember that old strip from horror comics about Kali killing some thieves? I think it was a reprint/second story in the 70's. They thought it was just a superstition...

EDIT: I think I found it:

13. Tales From the Tomb v3n5, Oct 1971, 52pp, $0.60
Cover: Fernando Fernandez

Tomb of Horror (6p, Antonio Reynoso)
Rework of The House Where Horror Lived, Web of Evil #6 (Quality, Sep 1953)
A jealous assistant tries to scare a fearless daredevil with a bogus haunted house.
The Blood Goddess (7p, Larry Woromay, script: Jack Cole)
Rework of Goddess of Murder, Web of Evil #3 (Quality, Mar 1953)
A collector resorts to murder to get what he wants when a Hindu priest refuses to sell him a statue of Kali - but he soon wishes he hadn’t.
The Hairy Humanoids TEXT ARTICLE (3p, Desmond Martin, Illustrations: Ezra Jackson)
Reprint of Sasquatch - the Hairy Humanoid, Exploring the Unknown #56, Mar 1970
The Weird House (6p, Oscar Novelle)
Rework of The Desert Castle, Weird Tales of the Future #3 (Gillmor, Sep 1952)
A scientists creates a fluid that brings inanimate matter to life and accidentally spills it on a suit of armor.
The Slimy Mummy - Reprinted from Weird v3n5
The Ghosts TEXT ARTICLE (4p, Doug Edson, Illustrations: Ezra Jackson)
Reprint of A Night of Tahitian Ghosts, Exploring the Unknown #6, Apr 1971
And Death Makes Three - Reprinted from Weird v2n9
Blood and Old Bones - Reprinted from Tales From the Crypt v1n10

[geneweigel]

I just read that at this download link:

digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=16441

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A homocidal furry crossdrssing yogi?

[Scott]

I haven't finished the book yet. Not a lot of reading time recently. On Chapter 12. I like the book. I like the writing style and the pace, but so far it's much more mystery than horror.

[Scott]

How could this book be reccomend we as a good Halloween horror read? While I liked the book, for the most part, it wasn't horror. And it just kind of whimpered out at the end.

[geneweigel]

Alright, I liked it as a weird story but you're spot not horror enough. Its like the baby thing is terrible that it happened but at the same time you're thinking the protagonist is his own antagonist. Which is realistic and I enjoyed that part but because his ego insists on finishing his job you kind of see it coming.

As an aside, I kept imagining "Robert Luczak" as the Indian wife version of "Walter Sobchak" from THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998) and as weird as that sounds it kind of fits here.

A really weird part was about 25 years ago (I can't tell you the details) but there was this Indian surgeon that I worked with who was my drinking sidekick for two or three years before disappearing off the face of the Earth (I think he went back to Sri Lanka and was killed.). This guy was obsessed with Glenlivet. He didn't have running water in his fancy apartment but had all the kitchen cabinets filled with Glenlivet. So when I got to the chapter with the writer's union link Mr Chatterjee. It was kind of weird because I could hear him say it in a thick Indian accent.

[Scott]

It was well written. The chapter with the dogs digging up the bodies outside the morgue was gross and humorous. When they jumped into the alley to escape the kapalikas was good. This was written in 85, a few years before a Brief History of Time and Stephen Hawking became somewhat of a celebrity. There's the line at the end where he mentions Amrita reading stuff about black holes, mostly written by some guy named Stephen Hawking.

[geneweigel]

I think the big disconnect for me with the protagonist was when he puts down the original Star Wars. That seemed to make him less likable. But the initial disconnect with ignoring of the foreshadowed warning by someone he trusts then living it out was in the back of my mind the whole time. I think what really pushed me over was the talking about another woman in a relationship way right after she walks out of the room with his wife. That made me wonder what is missing from this story, because we had the full sex scene with Kali, was there some elaborate home life sex scene that was pulled by the editors because it was too much of a patriarchical foreign wife type thing?

[GRWelsh]

I finished SONG OF KALI. I agree it was well written, but doesn't live up to the hype of some of the reviews. "The best novel in the genre I can remember," as Dean Koontz said. Or from another reviewer: "When Stephen King flinches, Simmons doesn't." Okay, I wouldn't rank it that high. The implication was that there was nothing supernatural, and the statue of Kali coming to life was part of a dream sequence... But it was left vague enough to be interpreted differently. I couldn't help wondering if Simmons had read some of the same horror comics I came across, because the theme of statues of Kali animating in temples was a recurring one, in particular to threaten or kill foreigners who didn't respect the locals and/or the local religion. This book felt like an "adult/mundane/literary" spin on one of those old horror comics stories.

I felt a bit let down when Das turned out to be not nefarious, but pitiful. The scene when Luczak and Das first met after all of that build up, was, I thought, riveting. It was the clash of two different worldviews. Das seemed like this imposing, intellectual villain throughout that exchange: someone who had renounced the Western world to embrace this older, darker, alien worldview. But when he turned out to just be a victim, himself, it was disappointing to me, story-wise.

[Scott]

I agree. There was a great build up, but no real climax. At one point ok just started to fizzle out.

[GRWelsh]

This book jogged my memory about something else. In the 90's I picked up a book titled WORMWOOD (formerly SWAMP FOETUS) by a fairly new author who was being hyped at the time: Poppy Z. Brite. Dan Simmons wrote the introduction. It was a short story collection, and one of the stories was titled "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves." It seems obvious now that Brite wrote that story after reading SONG OF KALI, since Chapter 10 begins with quote: "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves/Why do you want to destroy me entirely?/I do have a horse and eternal foreign-stay/I go to my own city." -- Pranabendu Das Gupta. SONG OF KALI was published in 1985, the short story "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" was first published in 1992. The short story mentions several of the same place-names as the novel: Chowringhee, the Hooghly River, the Howrah Bridge, Kalighat, Upper Chitpur Road, Sudder Street. So, I think the short story is obviously inspired by the atmospheric setting of Calcutta from the novel, but is different in that it is more overtly supernatural, with the walking dead roaming the streets.