Summer of Night

Finally accepting that this goes in my DNF pile.

If you want a spooky, nostalgic adventure by a pack of generic white tween boys on their bikes, just go read some Bradbury. He does it way better, and while poetic is infinitely more concise.

If you want a non-supernatural nostalgic adventure by a pack of distinctive white tween boys, just go read “The Body” or watch Stand by Me.

If you want a spooky, nostalgic adventure by a pack of tween misfits (including a girl and an African American boy) who are all well-drawn and distinctive characters, just go read IT. Try to ignore the SUPER WEIRD and uncomfortable event at the, uh, climax that I still don't understand King getting away with. The rest of the story is pure gold.

My recommendation is not to bother with this one. Why?

- The characters are dull and largely interchangeable. The closest it comes to painting unique characters is designating The Smart Kid, The Dumb Oaf, The Little Brother, The Catholic One, and so on. Even though the Smart Kid was the most interesting, I found myself constantly confusing him with the main character (who has no discernible personality traits) because they have similar names.

- It's not scary. The story meanders a lot, with long stretches of gee-whiz nostalgia punctuated with sudden interpolations of horror cliche set pieces. Things that should have had me squirming were dulled because they're secondary to the lengthy naturalistic backstory. They pop up and then are forgotten in favor of something ludicrously mundane. Moreover, the horror is neither left mysterious enough to be scary nor explained well enough to be satisfying. We're left in the completely bland place between, where one starts to ask questions like, “Are the ghouls just trying to gaslight these kids?” “Why do these supernatural creatures attack in broad daylight but then hide when a grownup comes around?” “Seriously? It's an evil . . . bell?”

- It's annoyingly sexist. The female characters are present enough around the fringes of the story to create a misogynistic undertone absent from the Bradbury and King stories where the main characters simply don't have girls on their radar. When one boy mentally reviles his mother for being an irresponsible slut of a bad mom, it's not super clear if the author means to show the boy in a bad light, or agrees with his assessment. The Bev-analog has no point of view and serves only as a sex object on the bare periphery of the story. It's made more frustrating by a tantalizing aside painting Mike's grandmother as a badass, complex character whom I'd much rather read about. But within the current story, she's literally mute and paralyzed.

This was disappointing. I really, really tried to like it. But now I just get more annoyed the more I read, so better to stop.

Summer of Night is a novel about a group of children who fight against evil in their hometown during the summer of 1960. Simmons carefully sets up the stage by introducing all the characters with care. At times, he can be a bit long-winded with his descriptions, but as a reader, you begin to care about the children, their families, and the village.

Spooky events begin to occur right from the start, and the tension slowly builds up to a climax. In many ways, it is a classic setup with a group of kids riding their bikes around the village, noticing strange occurrences while the adults remain oblivious. There are a lot of familiar character archetypes like the “leader”, the “foul mouth”, the “nerd,” the “bully”, the “drunken dad” and the “white trash family”, amongs others.

There is a striking resemblance between Summer of Night and Stephen King's IT. Since Summer of Night was published in 1991, five years after IT, it is possible that Simmons was influenced by King's work. However, this book stands on its own merit and is by no means a weak imitation of King's masterpiece, earning a rating of 4.5 stars.

Rating: 3.8 leaves out of 5
Characters: 4/5
Cover: 3/5
Story: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Genre: horror/thriller/mystery
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Yes

Summer of Night was the first pick in my Horror Book Road Trip around America. Before this I hadn't read a Dan Simmons book and was kind of worried about the 22hr long ride, but it was really worth it. I know it gets compared a lot to IT but at least I finished this one, IT was just a mess wrapped up in a book.

I really enjoyed the characters and was super sad when Dwayne(?) was murdered. My jaw dropped. I was also uncomfortable about the way a grown man explained a naked 12 year old girl, or partially. It just didn't sit right. As for the monsters/creatures there weren't too bad.

Was is scary? No. Creepy? Yes. It reminded me of Hardy Boys but make it adult.

This was a pretty long book, but I feel like it kept up the pace pretty well. However, the first and second halves kind of felt like an exquisite corpse exercise, let's say pre/post Duane's death as a good dividing point. The first half is more a town mystery with kids banding together to face it head on. The second half becomes more of a supernatural/demonic battle and that's why so many have compared it to King's IT.

I did thoroughly enjoy this book. Simmons is a great writer. However, I did have some issues with it that keep me from giving it 5 stars. If I could do halves, I'd give this a 3.5. The first issue I had was one character's gratuitous use of the n word. Now, I know that this type of language was probably pretty common in the time and place, but it does nothing for the plot or exposition. The story the character tells essentially goes nowhere and isn't brought up again until one of the kids 200 pages later mistakes another character for being black. That leads into my next issue with the book which is that the conspiracy plot essentially goes nowhere. It builds up and then immediately goes in another direction. We're led to believe that there's this deep-seated secret society and then find out there's like a mold that can bring people back from the dead and...worms? And the worms go from like small and ingestible to 20' long for some reason?

My other huge issue came in the second half and it involved a sexual encounter with one of the main characters. Keep in mind, these kids are like 10-11 years old. Now, a lot of the theme of this novel is growing up, but this particular scene just felt unnecessary and creepy. Kids are at a birthday party, they get a bit touchy-feely. Way too much description of the kids' body parts. The female involved is barely mentioned before or after this. The entire birthday party could've been erased from the story and wouldn't have had the slightest impact.

So yeah, having said all of that, I get why people compare it to SK's writings in that he loves gratuitous racial slurs and sex scenes involving children. Both of those things are my biggest criticisms of King's works. But I will say this: Simmons was a lot better at delivering dialogue and sticking the ending.

This was a very fun romp overall. I definitely enjoyed the first half more. I wish Simmons would've went more one way or the other when fleshing out the story of the “Bell.” Its mystery just kind of went away but it wasn't even really that necessary to begin with. The kids were all great and had their own distinct personalities. The adults were all dumb and useless. Sandlot meets Night of the Comet meets IT yadda yadda yadda. Thanks for reading all of that (or skipping to the end).

I think 3.5 stars would be my ideal review. Not a perfect book, but highly enjoyable and, indeed, creepy. Plus, it ties in with the Borgias, which is fantastic. I should reread all of ‘Cantarella' now, because it makes total sense–but I digress again.

Basically a boy disappears on the last day of school, and crazy, creepy stuff starts happening, and a crew of eleven-year old boys (and one girl, who is actually pretty hard core) fight to stop it. They're clever lads too. It's an engaging and fun, creepy read.