Carrion Comfort
Ratings27
Average rating3.6
Carrion Comfort is an action-adventure thriller with supernatural elements. The novel is loaded with social and political commentary. It is not enough that the powerful evil beings Simmons created can control others with their mind and feed off incredible violence, but they are also racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic etc. (One of the main villains was a Nazi; another is a racist old southern lunatic; a third is a Harvey-Weinstein type Hollywood producer.) The heroes who dare to fight them (with incredible violence) are underdogs representing historically oppressed groups. It's not meant to be subtle (I'm guessing). While superficially epic and action packed, it was really boring at times. It felt very long and scattered compared to Simmon's [b:Song of Kali 3979 Song of Kali Dan Simmons https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1165368440l/3979.SY75.jpg 1623747], which explored similar themes but was tight and focused. All the various plans and schemes and betrayals and confrontations in Carron Comfort get jumbled up and lack trajectory.
Big book, maybe a bit too big. It has interesting layers and lots of good scenes. Multiple interesting characters. Even though I do feel that it was too long, the overall plot was something I was interested in seeing through to the end. Horror aspects come from various violent, even disgusting and quite horrific scenes, which don't appear too often.
There were areas of slow burn and scenes with a faster pace. It was quite unbalanced from that point of view. Too much slow sections with not a lot of pull. It took me surprisingly long to finish. Still overall ok. Like said, they could've edited it for much more balanced package.