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Title: Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons ISBN: 0-446-35920-3 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.50

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Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (64 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: 1990 Bram Stoker Award Winner
Comment: This book is a very ambitious undertaking, with a very original premise. Taking the lore of the vampire a step further, into the mental stage. This book centers on people that can control others, like a puppet, through their minds, becoming "rejuvenated" through Using another person, partic- ularly for murder. The storyline revolves around three main "vampires", and a man that has set out to stop them. There is a vaguely "X-files" touch to this, as many of the upper level members of the government are also "Users". Very entertaining book, although, some people may be daunted by it's size (a little less than 900 pages), it is a fast read, and the last 100 pages are in the "I-can't-put-this- down" category. Well worth the money spent, I recommend this book wholeheartedly to any and all fans of horror/ thrillers. In fact, I recommend just about anything written by Dan Simmons, he is a well kept secret in today's better authors.

Rating: 5
Summary: Simmons: A Master of Character
Comment: 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.

Rating: 2
Summary: Big Disappointment.
Comment: 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.

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