Ratings26
Average rating3.8
Calcutta: a monstrous city of immense slums, disease, and misery, is clasped in the foetid embrace of an ancient cult. At its decaying core is the Goddess Kali: the dark mother of pain, four-armed and eternal, her song the sound of death and destruction. Robert Luzak has been hired by Harper's to find a noted Indian poet who has reappeared, under strange circumstances, year after he was thought dead. But nothing is simple in Calcutta and Luczak's routine assignments turns into a nightmare when he learns that the poet is rumoured to have been brought back to life in a bloody and grisly ceremony of human sacrifice.
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A REQUEST
When I die
Do not throw the bones and meat away
But pile them up
And
Let them tell
By their smell
What life was worth
On this earth
What love was worth
In the end
- Kamela Das
That ending really got me. A very solid debut, but what else could I expect from somebody who later wrote Hyperion.
Ehhh!! Most people misunderstood Goddess Kali, it's nothing new. But the hurt comes when a great author who wrote Hyperion didn't do research properly.
I picked this one up, since I both loved Hyperion and am interested in Hindu mythology and metaphysics. Suffice it to say, while this book does have some brief flashes of greatness that transfixed me to the page; most of it was mediocre. I can't hold it against Simmons considering this was his first full length novel, but you won't lose much by skipping out on it.