Summer Of Seen-It-All-Before.... . (Summer of Night - Dan Simmons)

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	Summer of Night - Dan Simmons
Date:	20/05/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hmmm....shows how no writer can hit the mark all of the time...

Disadvantages: That I had to give this even one star....

Summer Of Night is one of Dan Simmon's earlier novels that I was inspired to pick up after being impressed by his latest novel, The Terror and having enjoyed re-reading Carrion Comfort recently; an old favourite of mine which I revisited and found just as impressive second time around. Unfortunately this novel is nowhere near on the same par as either of those two books and feels hackneyed and far too similiar to other material we have seen written by bigger and better writers. There is nothing new in the plot and nothing we have not seen before here and the executiuon just feels sloppy and lazy. If all this sounds as though I am being a bit harsh then that is because I am but only because the story borrows heavily from some of my favourite novels of all time. And does it badly!

Basically, the plot of Simmon's novel is an amalgamation of Peter Straub's Ghost Story, Stephen King's It and Robert McCammon's Boy's Life, which was easily and by far the best thing he ever wrote. All these novels have in common the basic premise of one boy or a small group of friends banding together to fight an ancient evil or a buried secret that they discover hidden amongst their town and which has supernatural or paranormal overtones that run through the plot. Here, in Summer Of Night, we have a small group of friends let out of school for the summer break in the sixties who discover that their school, which is due to be torn down very soon, has it's own secret in the shape of an unmentioned Borgia Bell in it's clock tower that bears a curse that has been triggered by a blood sacrifice several years beforehand. Teachers begin to act strange a la The Faculty and slowly our group of pint-size heroes begin to piece together the threads of a conspiracy that no adult will believe. Apparently two of the kids go o to feature as grown-ups in Simmons' later books but whether or not they are any better than this I am not sure if I can be bothered to find out. Certainly this badly written novel feels a million light years away from the innovative concepts and ideas explored in both Carrion and Terror and could almost be written by a completely different author. It is also true that the book never really seems to know what audience level it is aiming for- is this a book for young adults, mature readers who grew up in the sixties and can read this as reminiscence or hard-core mainstram horror fans looking for their latest fear fix? Part of the problem seems to lie in the fact that the author himself doesn't know and so, instead of appealing to one of these target readership, the book manages instead to appeal to none.

Those of you who have read and rated my other reviews will know how much I hate to be damning about a book but put simply, there is very little for me to reccommend here. If you want to check out this author, by all means pick up The Terror, about the lost Franklin expedition in the nineteeth century that aimed to explore the fabled North-West passage between Canada and the Antartic, or Carrion Comfort- an alternative and highly original vampire novel that takes this breed of supernatural creatures and gives them an entirely new spin.

But take my advice- avoid this novel like a bad case of Swine Flu.....

Summary: A group of kids, let out of school for the summer, find themselves caught up in a desperate battle..