Review: The Summer of Night
I am a fan of Dan Simmons. I loved the shocking rollercoaster that was Drood and enjoyed greatly the complex Native American lore of Black Hills . I didn't mind too much when he took his time getting to where he was getting because I figured it would be interesting. When Summer of Night took its sweet time, I thought it was par for the course. I also had a flashback to The Terror , a book that gave me nightmares and took too long to even start. I nearly stopped reading once or twice: once because it involved a situation with an animal (which was telegraphed from the beginning) and once because it was boring. Only an early tease prompted me to keep going. In the end, I found it a long trip on a short road. It wasn't bad, but it could have been tighter, which would have made it more intense. A school in a small midwestern town is closing due to low enrollment. However, a child goes missing on the last day of school, and administrators seem...