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Summer of Night
By Dan Simmons

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Hugo Award-winning novelist Simmons pens an outstandingly eerie horror story about a group of Midwestern boys stalked by an ancient evil.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A monstrous, timeless entity is devouring children. Adults either refuse to understand what is happening, or are themselves agents for the monster. A group of young boys, in uneasy partnership with an outcast girl, realize they must kill the creature before it devours them all. Simmons ( The Fall of Hyperion, LJ 3/15/90), winner of several prestigious awards for science fiction and horror (most recently a Hugo Award for Hyperion , Doubleday, 1989) ranks with the best the genre has to offer. In outline, this novel resembles Stephen King’s It ( LJ 8/86). The children are well drawn and affecting in their bravery. This book should be in most horror fiction collections. BOMC alternate.
- Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Dan Simmons is the award-winning author of several novels. He lives in Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Better than IT
SUMMER OF NIGHT is Dan Simmons’s take on one of modern horror and dark fantasy’s favorite themes: the coming-of-age story in which a band of 11- to 13-year-olds confronts some form of evil. This theme can be found in many modern dark masters’ work, starting with Ray Bradbury’s classic SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, and continued on with more recent works such as Robert McCammon’s BOY’S LIFE, and two famous stories by Stephen King: the novella “The Body” (made into the film STAND BY ME) and the ponderous novel IT. The coming-of-age theme also serves as the basis for dozens of lesser-known modern horror stories and novels, too many to list here. The theme, when well-played, often produces an author’s most emotional and lyrical work, because the author is clearly looking back to his or her own childhood for inspiration.

In Simmons’s case, he pulls it off with an absolutely deft mastery of language, story, setting, and, in particular, character. The story is set in a small Illinois town in the summer of 1960. Something bad is happening in the town, including the disappearance of a child. The problems seem to be linked to the recently closed Old Central School. A band of boys (with occasional help by an outcast girl) begins looking into the matter, and the tension and horror build from there.

To compare this novel to IT, perhaps the best-known modern coming-of-age horror story: SUMMER OF NIGHT clocks in at a relatively svelte 600 pages in paperback form. Simmons does a great job of escalating the tension and terror every time you think the story might be getting bogged down. Thus SUMMER reads like a book half its length. It’s tough to put down. It’s also one of those books that you’re sad to finish, and to me that’s a sign of a great story well-told.

Stephen King’s IT, on the other hand, is a bloated, self-indulgent 1100+ pages - nearly twice the length of SUMMER; had IT been trimmed down to about 500-600 pages, the novel would’ve been a taught, lean thriller like SUMMER. While it’s not totally a bad book, in my view IT is a textbook case of a novel that is just too large for the story it tells. I have no problem with length in and of itself, but the length of a book has to be commensurate with the story contained therein. Some stories, like King’s THE STAND, need 1000-plus pages to play out; I just don’t think IT is a tale that warrants such mass. (Unfortunately, it seems that once an author reaches a certain level of success, his/her editors stop doing their jobs as ruthlessly as they should - for evidence, see lots of King books, plus several of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, too. Early King books, which many believe are still his best - such as CARRIE, SALEM’S LOT, & PET SEMATARY - tend to be about half the size of his later books.)

Lastly, to compare SUMMER OF NIGHT to another well-known (though slightly less so) novel in the same vein, McCammon’s BOY’S LIFE: I’d rate BOY’S LIFE a little bit superior book in the strictly literary sense (though not by much.) However, BOY’S LIFE is really less a `horror’ story than a fantasy or magic realism tale with some dark undertones mixed in. Simmons’s SUMMER OF NIGHT is without doubt a work of horror in the true sense of the word.

Though I’ll admit that the ending of the story was a bit too over-the-top (it reminded me of one of those recent movies where overreliance on CGI effects makes a futile attempt to replace good characterization and storytelling), I thought that the rest of the book was solid enough, with more subtle & believable horrors in the first two-thirds, to overcome that defficiency; besides, overblown, unbelievable endings are a pitfall that nearly every modern horror novelist falls into from time to time.

If you’re at all into this genre and haven’t read SUMMER OF NIGHT, do yourself a favor and get a copy.

Skinny little book holds 600 pages of horror
I know many will call it blasphemy, but this book put Simmons ahead of King in my mental list of great horror authors. “Summer of Night” is closest in story to “It” only without the haphazard ending (and 400 pages shorter). When you pick this book up at the store, you will notice that it is a thin book, and make the same assumption that I did, which was that I was about to read a 200-300 page story. About 100 pages in, it dawned on me that there was still a long way to go, flipping to the back I discovered that the “light read” I had picked out was actually 600 pages exactly, written on what appears to be rice paper it is so thin, and every page is about to crawl over the margins (if you can call typing to the end of the paper a margin). There is no wasted space in this book either; chapters begin on the same page as the last chapter ended, with only a few returns in between and a chapter heading. Prepare yourself for a lot of reading… now the good news… every page is wonderful.

I compare this book to “It” in the sense that it is about a group of young children, most of which are 10-11 but there is a younger brother at the age of 8. These boys (and girl when she shows up) are the only ones who know that something is terribly wrong in their little home town. The setting is a very rural small town surrounded by cornfields… it takes place in 1960. The boys are all instantly likeable and are very real. I listen to the descriptions of Lawrence, the little brother, and he is my youngest son to a “T.” Each of the boys is different, has different living situations, and none of them are some sort of magical superman who wrestles monsters with superhuman ability.

The tale is patient and brooding, slowly building to a terrifying crescendo; starting with the disappearance of a child on the last day of school, followed by sounds under the beds, faces peering in windows, and growing with ferocity from there. As you read your stomach will churn and your heart will race as you pray for the survival of the children. How can they stand against these dark forces? I read all 600 pages in 2 nights, hating to give it up on the first night, but work forced me to have to sleep. Odds are that you will want to read all 600 pages in one sitting, it’s that hard to put down… you will find yourself worried about those little boys all day until you are able to finish the book. I highly recommend it for anyone who was afraid of the basement, the creatures under the bed, walking through cemeteries, the bathrooms in the basement of dark and ancient buildings, or of the faces in your windows at night.

Sticks with you scary
Starts off slow, almost obvious, working within the coming of age horror subgenre and then the prickles begin. Very successful with creating a world where children are alone in their battle against evil literally in broad daylight. Some very original constructs in an ordinary setting told with ordinary language. I came to the book expecting something as literary as the author’s more recent work but was not, ultimately, disappointed in his continuing ability to weave a tale of the uncanny.

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