Book Review: Summer of Night by Dan Simmons

What's interesting about the opening of this 60s-set horror book, at least the printing that I read (through Kindle, so I don't know if the word "printing" still applies), is that in the prologue Dan (can I call you Dan?) talks about how kids have so much less autonomy nowadays. A former school teacher, Simmons produces hard data showing hours of play, unsupervised time, and distance travelled from home, all decreasing rapidly decade over decade.

I feel this in a major way. I grew up with parents talking about lives in the 50s and 60s where they barely saw their parents. I was astonished by that as a child of the 80s - despite having my own silly unsupervised adventures like wading neck-deep in the Merrill Park Stream and touring downtown Metuchen in a sleep-over at 4 in the morning. And now...I have trouble letting Ronan out of my sight for anything. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but Dan argues that it's a bad thing, that children are resilient and learn from their experiences and adventures, that children should be free to roam around and get into trouble.

Despite one of the kids in this book dying.

The thing about Summer of Night is that it's basically Dan Simmons' It. It's kids in the 60s discovering an absolute horror that parents would never believe and taking it upon themselves to fight it. It even has a sequel where the kids are all grown up and have to finish the job (although that sequel was written decades later and was not originally planned).

But, as I said, this is Dan Simmons' It, so it is also centered around mythology of the Borgia popes.

I enjoyed this book on a number of levels. The first being the characters. There are a lot of them. But that wasn't a problem. That doesn't mean they all stood out - I still had a hard time distinguishing Mike from Dale from Kevin at times - but when the book needed you to be sure of who a character was you knew it. Also, several characters stood out, like Cordie, the rough-neck girl from the edge of town, and CJ, the town bully.

The second is the setting. I have to admit I loved the parts where these kids just got to enjoy being kids on summer vacation. Hanging out from morning through dark riding bikes, playing baseball, swimming, playing war games. It made me envious, but also appreciative of how much Ronan has been able to do so far on his summer break (through an awesome camp Rebecca has signed him up for!).

Third, the horror worked. Even in the brightest moments there was a sense of dread throughout these pages. That dread grows and grows until all is finally revealed. A few caveats: First, I feel like for a book written in 1991 some of the scenes were almost written for the TV/film special effects available at the time - I could clearly see the bad CGI of rapidly moving mounds of dirt and a person's face morphing into a lamprey's (note: I'm not saying that Dan wrote this to get it filmed, but I feel like this could have been filmed - badly - in 1991). Second, once the full horror is revealed, it's a bit underwhelming and doesn't really require anything too special to be overcome (again, this is Dan Simmons' version of It). But, did it make for a scary book? Yes, yes it did.

And finally, I mean THE BORGIAS! Talk about coming out of nowhere (although, again, remember that this is the author of a book series that was the Iliad on Mars - but ended up depending on a thorough understanding of The Tempest). If something had to come out of left field like that, I'm glad it was my favorite Jeremy Irons TV series.

Anyway, this is fun book well worth the read...IF YOU DARE!!! Nine out of ten hot dogs!