Appropriate
Jul. 2nd, 2005 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysI have read a number of Dan Simmons' books this year. But they have mostly been detective stories - the last 4 anyway. it seems like ages since I read Ilium which was broadly Science Fiction. But today I read a book from a different genre. A Winter Tale is a ghost story which usually means it is from the Horror genre. Bizy Bees shelved it in the detective fiction, but it really is a horror story. Well more or less a horror story. It is one of those stories where you can never quite tell how much of what is going on is in the mind of the protagonist. There are times in the story where you become lost between mental instability and "real" supernatural happenings.
Simmons does this stuff superbly. He wanders around between genres and modes of storytelling like no other top author I can think of. However I believe he is at his best when there is a chilling menace that may or may not be real. The border between supernatural horror and psychosis is his richest hunting ground. Even by his own high standards, this is a top book.
Together with this work, I have read recently books by Matt Ruff, Sean Stewart and Jonathan Letham. All are gripping works where the mental landscape of the main character is the core of the story. This constitutes the greatest concentration of such books in a relatively short time that I have ever read. For the sake of my personal mental landscape I had better read a bit of space opera.
Simmons does this stuff superbly. He wanders around between genres and modes of storytelling like no other top author I can think of. However I believe he is at his best when there is a chilling menace that may or may not be real. The border between supernatural horror and psychosis is his richest hunting ground. Even by his own high standards, this is a top book.
Together with this work, I have read recently books by Matt Ruff, Sean Stewart and Jonathan Letham. All are gripping works where the mental landscape of the main character is the core of the story. This constitutes the greatest concentration of such books in a relatively short time that I have ever read. For the sake of my personal mental landscape I had better read a bit of space opera.