More of an Opera than a Song!

When I got this book in a special offer I didn't expect too much from it despite the positive reviews. However, when I got round to listening to it my expectations were far exceeded. Sadly for me several of the existing reviews make many of the points that I would like to make. It is indeed very much like Stephen King's The Stand in many ways. The post-apocalypse setting, the fight between good and evil. It's also similar in the large cast of characters and the depth which the author gives to them. They stand out because they are drawn from all levels of achievement within our existing society. They carry the burdens of how current society treated them into this post-apocalyptic world and some discover the merits and strengths that were buried under its negative judgement.

It's a harsh book set in a harsh world but it carries messages of hope both on a personal and global level. You'll have to listen to it though to find out whether those slender seedlings of hope triumph over the brutal evil of a lawless world.

The narration is very impressive, particularly for a book of this length. As a result of the fine writing and the fitting rendition from Tom Stechschulte the length of the book is a positive without doubt.

Try this one, it has real quality.

44 people found this helpful

Long but worth the effort

This is my second Audible book, and the first time I have been driven to write a review (of any kind). I have to say that this would not be my choice of book to read. Too big and not my normal genre. I have far too many books and not enough time to read them all ( oh woe is me!). I joined Audible to broaden my tastes with something different whilst walking the dogs, and I found that this lengthy (30 hours) story became an evening obsession for a month or so.

Yes, it is a dark tale of a post nuclear apocalyptic America and is sometimes difficult to hear of the destruction and long term suffering...but that really is the point. How can you explore the possibility of redemption and survival without the descent into evil and chaos in the first place?. And it is like The Stand in that it is an exploration of good verses evil, with groups of characters on each side.

But... the similarity ends there.

The author has created a compelling story where each of the 90 or so chapters follows the POV of groups of people on either side of the moral divide. The main characters soon become familiar, and their individual stories inexorably and sometimes painfully progress to a satisfying and exciting series of confrontations at the climax of the book. I liked the ending.

The big thing for me though was the experience of having this book, that I never would have read normally, delivered as a professional spoken performance through my earphones in the Ashdown Forest every day for a month. Really quite surreal!

I was not convinced at the start, but was soon drawn into the timbre of Tom Stechshulte's voice. His vocal interpretation of each of the characters became to be "just right". This is not simply someone reading aloud. (erm Librivox anyone?) This is a proper job! I could not wait for my next daily instalment!

Great stuff....

Now...what to listen to next?

58 people found this helpful

A thoroughly unexpected pleasure

When I bought this book I thought I knew what to expect having seen many reviews which mentioned The Stand and having had a recent binge of post-apocalyptic reading myself. It managed, though, to deliver much more than I expected and something very different from what I expected.

The beginning was, I think I can say without being too unkind, pretty much run-of-the-mill and conventional. There was a brief pencil sketch depiction of the main characters we were going to follow in their lives before the outbreak of Nuclear War and I have to say at this point the novel felt like the start of any disaster "B" movie and I worried that I had made a big mistake in buying this one, but very soon the author began to bring in some discordant and original notes.

Without risking too much of a spoiler I think that I can safely reveal that as this novel continues it soon leaves behind gritty realism and approaches something closer to gritty magical realism. The themes of Good and Evil become embodied in certain characters and the nature of reality warps around them and the reader in an original and challenging way. I think herein may lie a challenge for some readers: if you buy a fantasy novel with an elf and a wizard on the front you know the extent to which you are going to be expected to suspend your disbelief but you may not be braced for a similar extent of suspension when you buy a novel about the survivors in an American landscaped ravaged by nuclear war. However, once you make this compromise this becomes an incredible journey in which you become deeply involved - I have to confess there was one point I didn't want continue because what little good had been reclaimed from this destroyed world was all about to be destroyed and I couldn't see any way for it to be avoided: that is how involved I had become in the story.

The end of the novel might strike some as a little too neat and maybe a touch glib but I think that having travelled so far with the author and these characters we have all earned some kind of closure and not a cheap opening for book two. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will come back to it again (and again, quite possibly). I will recommend it whole-heartedly to certain of my friends and if you want to know whether I would recommend it to you I would say that if you enjoyed The Stand and or The Passage then this book is probably for you or if you enjoy a little fantasy in your reading but don't like it too feel too childish then this is the book for you too.

I can not leave without a little word about the narration. Tom Stechschulte manages to portray a wonderful array of characters, accents and emotions with consistency and flair. He is a truly talented gentleman and who made a tour-de-force performance with this novel.

13 people found this helpful

Swan Song

I was disappointed at first, extremely slow to start but about 5 hours in I got hooked and had to finish it. Have only read one other book by R McCammon the Wolf Hour and loved it so was hoping this would be as good.

12 people found this helpful

Loved it

I've read most of Robert McCammons books and loved them. This is no exception. Tom does a really good job of the narration as well so double bonus. Not sure why the previous reviewer put what they did it's a post-apocalyptic tale - what did they expect!! Love that the characters are all so different and each have their own story to tell

11 people found this helpful

Loved it.

Great story which is superbly read. I found myself building a relationship with every main character - good and bad - and thoroughly enjoying every moment of the book. As previous reviewer posted, I would expect a certain amount of "nastiness" in a post-apocalyptic environment and thus it didn't bother me. In fact, I think it helped creating the right atmosphere. Definitely a keeper!

10 people found this helpful

overlong, overwraught...just over it

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

not unless they thought Stephen King's characters were just too subtle and nuanced.

If you like your good and evil laid out very clearly, and sledgehammered home at every opportunity, this is the book for you.

Also, where on earth was the editor?! there are errors in this book, eg one character saying to another they've definitely decided to go somewhere then a few chapters later, claiming not to know where to go and all of a sudden, the distance to said place has shifted by about 5 to 10 miles.

Maybe the editor / proof-reader lost all will to plough on at that stage. I don't really blame them.

Has Swan Song put you off other books in this genre?

Apocalyptic novels are not really my chosen genre, I only bought this one as I'd liked McGammon's Matthew Corbett novel (1st one), so I'm not sure I can be put off something I never really went for in the first place

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Quite a good performance but sometimes he voiced the characters with a very low voice that was difficult to pick up on headphones

Was Swan Song worth the listening time?

If you want hours and hours of mindless, meandering, vaguely interesting chat, then by all means. It's not brilliant, kind of the literary equivalent of chewing gum...starts off fine then is very same-y then very bland then you keep chewing (not knowing why) and in the end, you don't mind if you spit it out and never think about it again.

8 people found this helpful

Post apocalyptic misery and hope

This is a well-conceived tale of what could happen when the world's leaders finally lose the plot.

As much as I shudder at the brutality of it all, it's probably exactly what would happen after the bombs when it comes to survival, ie: "he who has the biggest gun wins". A return to the wild west, but with modern left-overs and absolutely no boundaries to morality. Hope is a mere seedling, which is regularly uprooted....but somehow it does endure, and this is ultimately what this book leaves us with.

There is a slight supernatural theme running through this tale, which is never fully explained, but just like a good Stephen King novel, the lack of explanation is just part and parcel of the whole.

It's long, atmospheric and brutal, but at the same time the story of friendship and loyalty is also quite lovely.

The narration is fully in keeping with the emotion and tone of it all. A well spent credit.

7 people found this helpful

A brilliant, post-apocalyptic adventure tale!

How is it that this book has been off my radar for so long!? Seriously. I love epic, post-apocalyptic tales of survival and so this book should have been on my list from the moment of its release. Okay... maybe not that far back as I was two years old when it was originally released. No. This book was so good that even then I should have had it on my wishlist.

This book is a must read if you are a fan of Stephen King's The Stand or Justin Cronin's The Passage. I happen to be a huge fan of both and Swan Song is a bit like the love-child of these works.

It has a whole bunch in common with The Stand. The survivors of the apocalypse (which takes the form of a nuclear strike instead of a government-engineered plague) fall into two camps of Good vs Evil. There's a "dark man" figure who is decidedly evocative of King's Randall Flagg, and there are many religious undercurrents to the narrative.

King's work was first published in '78 so it pre-dates Swan Song. Even though the argument could be made that McCammon's work is derivative, I actually don't care. I see it more as one great piece of fiction inspiring another. While King's work is definitely superior, McCammon's story is still a wonderful read. Whole bunches of books have been inspired by great predecessors, and just because they don't measure up to them, doesn't mean they can't be great in their own right.

I guess there was a lot about this book which reminded me of other books, and I know that's not necessarily a good thing. However, in this case I honestly enjoyed every aspect of the book. The situation was gripping, the characters were realistic and the premise was epic. This is one of those books that I'd recommend to people after they'd read and loved The Stand. It's not as good as that, but it's damned decent as a follow-up read! A fab not-so-little read!

15 people found this helpful

A gripping story, let down by a few poor elements

It was tough to give this a 3/5 rating as more of the book than not was excellent. The opening, as it built up to nuclear war, was immediately gripping. Then the war itself was brutal but fascinating. The aftermath let us know the characters better and got their individual stories in motion. I found myself growing genuinely attached to the main characters, even the ones who were clearly evil. It's mainly a genuinely thrilling story of survival in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, and then in the nuclear winter some years later.

The author paints a very vivid picture through his descriptions and Tom Stechschulte is probably the best person I've heard read an audio book. I never had any trouble differentiating the characters, even those that could have sound similar, and there are a lot of characters. He also sounded a bit like Charlton Heston at times, which can't be a bad thing.

So why 3/5? Because, unfortunately, there are also some fantasy elements in here and they really don't work. The 'strange and transformative glass artifact' mentioned in the description is easily the worst part of the entire book. The story gets dragged down to a crawl every single time it puts in an appearance with endless descriptions of how pretty it is. It's basically a McGuffin that brings together the main characters, thought that's something I feel could have been done differently anyway.

It sets up two human characters as the villains of the piece and then introduces a more fantasy villain. The trouble is that the two human characters, who are much more interesting, are sidelined by this fantasy villain, who is just evil and therefore actually rather dull.

To make it even worse, both of these elements don't really amount to anything in the end. The other elements of the story do build up to a fantastic conclusion and, although I felt satisfied at the end, it really could have been better.

6 people found this helpful