Maciek's Reviews > Carrion Comfort

Carrion Comfort is a beast of a book. My copy clocks in at 800 pages, and to be fair to mr. Simmons he kept the pace burning throughout the whole text.

There's much to enjoy in Carrion Comfort, and not the least of its good aspects is the premise. In this particular work Simmons tackles on one of the most famous horror creatures - the vampire. What makes it different from almost all other vampire ficton is his approach to the subject.

Carrion Comfort is concerned with mind vampires, people who can enter the consciousness of any person and control their actions completely, like a puppeteer. Complete control, one from which there is no defense mental or physical, is certainly a frightening subject, and the opening set in 1942 Chelmno is pretty much stellar.

The novel spans many years and locations, from WW2 Poland and surroundings to the 1980 USA. The WW2 pieces are seen in retrospect, and are certainly the best part of the novel; the obsession with chess that some characters have couldn't have been used in a better way. Simmons presents a scene that truly is horrifying and memorable in its intensity and eeriness.

However, aside from the general premise and the few WW2 portions, Carrion Comfort is surprisingly short on the horror factor; most of the novel reads like a 80's thriller, complete with black helicopters, secret agents, explosives and multiple shoot outs, which occupy most of its pages. The characters are interesting (especially the elderly Melanie Fuller) but never fascinating, as they ought to be in a novel of such scope and ambition. The allusions to real people are certainly a nice touch, giving the novel some realism amidst all these bullets.


Overall, the books is compulsively readable, but rarely leaves anything unseen, and throughout its enormous lenght the reader will be exposed to as much action as he or she can take. The frenetic, Hollywood-like action can get a bit boring at times, and the true potential of the novel never really surfaces. Still, for such a huge tome it's a breezingly fast read, much more enjoyable that the plodding Summer of Night, although the book certainly did not need to be 800 pages long.