Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have a slew of adjectives to use to describe my experience of cramming this 900+ page book down in just 8 days of reading. The very first one that comes to mind, though, even as I was only about 100 pages into this book (not counting the excellent 20th Anniversary 50+ pages of introduction by the author), is DISTURBING. The others that come to mind: raw, excellent, intricate, horrific, detailed, well-researched, interesting, unnecessarily long-ish, etc.
I’ve read many of Simmons’ books over the years. This one was pure Dan Simmons, yet you can also tell (introduction aside) that Carrion Comfort was a bit of an obsession for the author. It took so long and so much wrangling for it to actually get published and put on the shelves at the bookstores and libraries; it had to have been frustrating for Simmons. We all have our windmills; Don Quixote was not that unique in that regard.
I do definitely recommend this book. However, there are some caveats… it’s going to disturb you. It’s going to make you think. It’s going to possibly resemble current events (politics, religion, racism, antisemitism, wars, bloodshed, suffering of innocents, and so on…) in some ways, even though it was written quite a few decades ago. It’s probably going to cause you some discomfort while you’re reading it. All these things are the thoughts and emotions that a talented writer should elicit from his/her readers. Last warning, though… this book is NOT for everyone. Many of you will be horrified and turned away within the first few chapters. Still, if you’re up for it, it is one HELLUVA book!
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