[QUOTE=Priceguy]
I thought that when I saw the thread and when I opened it, and for a few minutes of reading it. Then I realized it wasn’t, and that David Simmons had merely recommended this book that pissed Morbo off. It wasn’t until Just Some Guy said that Simmons had a history of this that I figured it out.
[/QUOTE]
It’s only now that I’ve figured out that the author in question is not Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code. Well, I noticed the name, but I only just realized that it wasn’t the person i thought it was.
A friend of mine once said that it’s a stamp of crappiness when the author repeatedly uses both the character’s first and last names (“John Smith pointed the laser rifle straight at the alien’s head. He pulled the trigger. John Smith was not a squeamish man.”).
I’ve found this theory to be mostly true.
In Olympos, Simmons usually calls the main character by his first and last names, title and occupation. I think he even sneaks a middle name in there too at some point.
I like Dan Simmons, even went out of my way to go to a book signing of his. But at the end of Olympos I had no idea what just happened. I liked the characters, but the story was really obtuse. Really obtuse. Really, really, really obtuse.
[QUOTE=Morbo]
Now I have to go out and buy Part Two.
[/QUOTE]
“Here’s a little tip for you Dr. Crane, it’s called a library card.” Woody from ‘Cheers’.
[QUOTE=Will Repair]
“Here’s a little tip for you Dr. Crane, it’s called a library card.” Woody from ‘Cheers’.
[/QUOTE]
But someone else will have touched it and gotten their eyeballs all over it! And how is it supposed to sit on your shelf to impress visitors with how smart you are by owning a large pile of books?
[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy]
So were Carrion Comfort – very good – and Summer of Night – which I hated.
[/QUOTE]
Summer of Night wasn’t a stand-alone. It was followed by A Winter Haunting which blatantly ripped off an old Peter Straub book, If You Could See Me Now. Of course, A Winter Haunting’s cover didn’t mention it was a sequel, and I was nearly though it before I found out it was. I never read Summer of Night because the sequel made me so mad. I know the Straub book is somewhat obscure, but A Winter Haunting even lifted characters!
Gah. Summer of Night read like a long-drawn-out pitch for a horror flick – the whole way through it felt like Simmons didn’t care about it as a book, only as a prospective movie deal.