My Random Rants

What a fine and incredible writer Dan Simmons is. It seems to me that he can take any genre, any tale and narrate it so that it acquires a certain intrigue and a certain gravitas. He has this incredible ability to pull you in to the most fantastical of conceits and concepts. When he writes horror he truly chills you right down to the bone. When he writes Science Fiction his mastery over the form is evident. His storytelling is brilliant. What he does in Song of Kali is incredible. The Hyperion Cantos might be amongst the most lyrical and profound books ever written. The six stories that the pilgrims narrate about their encounter with the Shrike and amazing to say the least. Although I thought Drood was a bit overlong, he captured perfectly the feeling of being in the presence of a greater talent all the time and being good enough to know who the lesser talent is. His novels have entire scenes that I recall as vivid images in higher definition than any film has ever managed. I...

This is the first book of Roger Zelazny that I have read and I enjoyed it. It is measured and pitch perfect with words chosen and sentences crafted with great care. What Zelazny does with great finesse is confuse the reader as to what the book is actually about. It starts of feeling like fantasy and mythology but the more you read the more it seems like Science Fiction but this is one of those books that makes it really hard to put in a shelf. This book also has the perfect sentence to begin the book. It is rare that one sentence capture the soul of a book and yet invite you in but Zelazny really nails it when he writes His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god. It concerns itself with Sam and his tales. Humans have landed on an Alien Planet and made it their own and for some strange reason they choose to mod...