Book Review: "The Song of Kali" by Dan Simmons

I adore Dan Simmons' book The Terror and it is quite possibly to this day, one of the greatest horror novels I have ever read. Check out my review here:

Was The Song of Kali as good as The Terror? Not quite but that doesn't mean it was no good at all. Dan Simmons has done a pretty good job here and I'm not going to lie, the start of the book is something to be admired. Dan Simmons' ability to make a large atmosphere feel claustrophobic is definitely something and in The Terror, this is characterised by the Arctic - in The Song of Kali, it is Calcutta. I have never read anything that I can class as the Neo-Indian Gothic before, but I like it. Postcolonial Gothicism is alive and well, just like the poet in the book - the one that was once thought to be dead...

Dan Simmons introduces us to the sense of place before we can feel anything else. Calcutta is presented as one of the most evil and wrought places on earth, somewhere where darkness lurks the backstreets in the night-time, and definitely somewhere we will be going later on. Robert is sent there because a poet who was once thought dead has reportedly done some more writing, he's been sighted there. Robert's wife goes with him with their baby daughter, Victoria. It is important that Robert's wife is Indian but educated in Britain because he definitely seems to think Amrita can speak Bengali (she cannot). The baby Victoria is more important to the story than a lot of people realise. Dan Simmons cultivating deep symbolism is something he does so well and we definitely recognise the importance of baby Victoria in the same way we recognise the man draped in a flag in The Terror.

Robert knows the rumours of what brought this poet back to life. He wilfully investigates and learns more about the cult worshippers of the goddess Kali - the goddess dedicated to death, destruction and everything that is truly terrifying. I'm not going to lie, though I felt the book was far-fetched in some respects, it was still an enjoyable atmosphere. What do we have? - a foreign atmosphere and place that feels terrifyingly cultish and the air of evil is almost constantly in the air. One thing I did like about this far-fetched idea is that the writer seemed dedicated to immersing us in the idea of the 'other' through a sense of atmosphere. It is definitely Dan Simmons' strong point as he does the same thing in The Terror. Though I have to say that The Terror was more intense and was also quite a bit longer, the atmosphere therefore felt very raw and once you disappear into the tone and mood, you cannot escape.

As the book reaches its climax though I feel like the story becomes almost a predictable mess. Be that as it may, I think this is probably because it is his debut. So I'm going to forgive it. The book's darkness does not deplete though and, as the climactic part of the book happens, we wrongly believe things are done and everything is solved. One thing I do love about Dan Simmons and even authors like Peter Straub and part and parcel as to why I love certain aspects of Stephen King novels is that there is always a 'false bottom' like a problem hidden within a problem. It's as if the solution were are first introduced to could be some sort of effort in misdirection.

The book may end on a strange note, we don't really know if every question has been answered - but isn't that a lot like real life when a truly troubling situation ends? We don't have all the answers and who says we need them? We've lost quite a bit and we are truly traumatised, but we don't need complete closure. The characters display this perfectly and yet, the idea of the book feeling incomplete (I have read reviews which state this) is to show us what this situation (even though it could not have possibly happened in real life) does to actual people. Robert and his wife are perhaps the closest to actual people we get in the book.