 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review in this series, which I kind of started last year, but we were moving the moving offices, having this one built, hence all the new, you know, backgrounds and everything you've been getting used to. But I did one for Stephen Laws, The Worm, which I'll probably end up refilming now that I have the background set up the way that I like it. But today we are talking about Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. This one is an all-time favorite of mine. The the best part about this book is it is a coming-of-age story about a group of kids fighting a supernatural evil that doesn't feel like Stephen King's it. There are so many times I would say the same thing about boys life, even though there's not much supernatural about that one. Maybe a little bit here and there, but it's it doesn't feel like Stephen King's world. And so often you come across, you know, damn near anything with kids is going to be labeled, you know, if it's done right is going to be labeled, you know, Stephen King Light or any of that nonsense. Well, with this one, you you get a completely different sense of the the evil and the kids. And of course, there's always going to be similarities with the with the kids interactions and whatnot. But in this one, I feel this one stands wholly and completely alone by itself. It's rare that you come across those where a coming of age feels so wholly original. The rendering truck in the book is one of the scariest parts of the book. And that's one of the things that sticks out the most for me. The thing that the number one thing that sticks out that I always remember is the death of a major major character. It would be something like if in it, Bill or Ben, or even Bev dies, you know, very early on in the book or have about halfway through the book, this is a chunker. Let's see here is about 600 pages 590 some odd pages. I have not had great success with some of Dan Simmons other horror novels. I love song of Kali, one of the most disturbing endings ever. I wasn't a fan of the what is it the abominable. That one was goofy. Druid was good, but I don't consider that one much of a horror novel. There are some creepy sections. The terror is one of my favorite all time favorite horror novels. But this one, the I think I gave this one 4.5 stars. I can't remember if I gave it a full five or not. There were certain times when it lulled. But you're going to find that in any novel that's over 300 pages. There are people who think any book over 300 pages is a waste of time anyways. I think what they're talking about is the slice of life moments when you get really deep into the characters. Some people just don't like that. Me, I'm on the other side of the fence. I absolutely love it when that happens. My favorite character in the book was Dwayne. The evil was very, very cool, very well done. I especially like the utterly insane, bombastic, epic ending at the school. Now, here's the thing. I don't remember certain key aspects of this book. I don't remember what the evil was. So that's another thing that that I think it stands out more often than not. When people talk about it, they talk about Pennywise, the entity known as it. In this one, they talk about the kids more often than not. I think that speaks once again to the uniqueness of this book. I've not read anything else from Dan Simmons that is quite like this book. Maybe I'm missing some stuff. I've skipped quite a bit of his stuff like flashback. I couldn't finish. There was the one, what was it? Black something. I can't remember what that one was. And then Children of the Night, which gets confused with this one, is his vampire story. I've absolutely no want or need to read vampire stories from him because I didn't like carrying comfort. I feel that there was a huge missed opportunity with that book. You can read my review on Goodreads if you want to know. But this one is a favorite that I go back to. I've read it I think three times at this point. I might even start it this year. But there's so many new horror books that I want to get to. Especially Stephen Graham Jones' My Heart is a Chainsaw. That'll be coming up on the channel very shortly because I just got in the mail. But this one, I'm not sure if I'll have time to reread it this year. But ever since I read it the first time, I read it two more times. And I've enjoyed it every single time. And that's hard to say about a 600 page book. I do like chunky novels. My favorite book of all time is It by Stephen King. This one, I don't tend to recommend this one to people who, and I see it all the time, if you like it, you'll like this one. I don't see it. The only correlation that I see is the supernatural and it's a group of kids. But there are thousands upon thousands of books like that, especially in the horror genre. Coming of age is one of the most popular genres to the point that some people are just sick and tired of it. You hear it a lot when people talk about stranger things, anything with nostalgia, anything that goes back to the 80s or any farther back. There are people who just won't read it because they're worried about, hey, you remember this, hey, you remember that. And some authors do it well like Stephen King. And some authors don't like Ernest Cline. But Dan Simmons captured a special moment. I feel this is a piece of magic, not on par with it, but like I said, it stands alone. It is so much fun to read. Once again, I want to bring up that character death is a punch in the gut. I don't know that I liked the rest of the book as much as I liked up until that point. But I think that's why I gave it 4.5 stars. I don't know. I haven't read my review and that was the review after the first time that I read it. So I might actually contradict myself. I do this quite often and people pop up and go, hey, you said this back then. I was like, yeah, but that was years ago. My opinion is going to change. I'm not always going to update my reviews. It happens. But yeah, so this one, I'd love to talk to you guys about it. I would love to see your opinion about whether or not you feel that it is good to compare these two books, you know, Stephen King's It and Dan Simmons' Summer of Night. Do you think it's a good thing to compare books in general? I'd like to have that discussion with you down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E. You have been U. This has been one of my favorite horror novels. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!