Pretty weird blend of horror and historical, set in Hawaii and featuring unfamiliar mythology. The best bits are the extracts from the diary of a Victorian female adventurer who falls for Samuel Clement/Mark Twain. ( )

Yikes. I am a huge Simmons fan and have read 99 percent of all his published material. But this kind of threw me out the window. The story is good enough, well plotted and well thought out. The research that went into this must have been daunting. This is one of the things that makes Simmons stand out above others. His meticulous manner of combining real historical characters in situations that could very possibly be real situations. This story was unique from his others in the sense that he split the times up and gave Clemens life in a journal entry from another person. Very well done.
But the language was a huge turn off. Foul language does not really bother me (I am a retired Sailor who spent many years at sea) But this is a huge distraction when you are trying to wrap yourself around a story. From the start of the book I thought I was reading the script to Scarface or something similar. I count Simmons as one of my favorite writers. Much of the language was centered around Trumbo. Sure he was made to be despicable and he was, almost to a comical level. The book gets better as Simmons makes his paces. I feel that this book as with most of Simmons work, not only makes us smarter, because he opens up the doors to past events and gets us to approach them from his special angle, but weaves a manner that allows us to understand that we as readers are never too far removed from them in our own life. (HUGE RUN ON SENTENCE) ( )

Simmons did some impressive research for this book…not only the names but the histories and psychologies of the various Hawaiian gods, goddesses & demons. The story is captivating, thrilling, and humorous at the same time. The two volcanoes are erupting and demons are loose today, just the way it's recorded as happening in the heroine's great-aunt's diary from 1860’s. And then we add on Samuel Clemens and we get side-documentary from America's all-time master of sarcasm. This is not a gruesome, bloody, chain-saw-massacre horror story (close, but…) and we learn so much about Hawaii in the reading. Which leads to one of my minor gripes: Simmons could have appended a pronunciation appendix. My infatuation with Israel Kamakawiwoʻole gave me a lot of help in this area, but it would have been a really nice added touch to the book.

The only other weakness(?) I found was that the action all takes place in one of the smallest venues imaginable. The whole “Big Island” measures 93 miles at its widest, holds about 200,000 people today, with about 260 miles of road (almost none of which factors into the story). The trade-off is that the mountain volcanoes are 3 & 4 miles tall! The point I’m making is that the entire story takes place in a very circumscribed area and I started to get a little “reader’s cabin fever”.

With all that said, it’s still worth the “trip”. The bad guy, by the way, is a Trump wannabe who is so evil he serves as some well played comic relief; and we even get a time-slip with the diary carrying us back 130+ years to meet a very plausible Mark Twain. ( )

Dan Simmons is a good writer. However, that is only hinted at in Fires of Eden. The story started well, but I found it growing growing increasingly tiresome as the pages wore on. The villain was cartoonishly greedy and vulgar. Another primary protagonist was barely more believable. And Simmons attempts mixing horror and farce with the result being neither scary nor funny.

I like Dan Simmons because many of his books betray deep historical and literary research on his part (e. g. the Franklin Expedition in The Terror, Greek mythology in Olympos, Charles Dickens in Drood). The research behind this novel involved Hawaiian mythology, but the writing accompanying it sometimes seems so pulpish that I was tempted to think in spots that Simmons had only done the book as a toss-off to justify his research trips to Hawaii as a tax write-off. (Glaring example of sloppy writing: in one instance a security man asks whether he should consult with the local police and "Five-O." Doesn't Simmons know there is no such thing as "Five-O" except in a television show? The security guy might as well ask whether he should send for Magnum P. I.)

Having spent some time on the Big Island of Hawaii myself, I enjoyed Fires of Eden inasmuch as it made me nostalgic for my sojourn there. Simmons describes the setting well. But unless one wants to engage in similar nostalgia, I can't really recommend the book to anyone else.
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This book just didn't live up to other books I've read by Dan Simmons. ( )