Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Swan Song

Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon

6 reviews

ssummar's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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erebus53's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.25

Sometimes going in blind to a book is not the best idea. I think much of my disappointment with the book was because I went in thinking it was dystopian science-fiction but instead it was a Christian Morality-Tale Horror.

When I was 10 I wrote an adventure story that involved interesting ideas that were not physically possible. The storytelling was fun but the content was childishly inaccurate and embarrassingly naïve, and that this book reminded me of that story, more than once, says a lot about the delivery. I wanted to be able to root for the survivors but, their world was inconsistent. The people were living out of cans, and all the crops were dead, but yet there was a horse? What was it eating.. nothing much ever went in its front end or out the back.

Once I had reconciled myself to science not quite lining up, I could sit back and enjoy the supernatural bits. My favourite part of the story was a tarot card reading which was, at least vaguely accurate in how they work. I got the impression the author cracked a book for that one. There are also a few objects that are used as scrying implements, which lead the stories of two people to meet up. I tend to like things with clouded prophecies so this hit the spot.

The psychology in this was just... bad. You have a child who starts off twisted, and gets worse. There is a war vet who is obviously addled, a bag-lady who has repressed the memory of a traumatic event, a woman with recurring nightmares and hallucinations about her own trauma, and an escaped megalomaniacal asylum inmate who is crazy like a fox. In the effort to create monsters I feel like the author has made ridiculous caricatures that don't reflect reality. If only it was fun I might forgive it, but no. This is not Batman. Oh well.

The book is one of juxtaposed horror and hope. I wish it were that simple, but the horror runs deep in the psychology of 1987. There is so much unintentional horror that leaks through; Pro-Wrestling, pro-military, sex-shame, fat-shame, drug fear, casual Racism, lack of consent, casual misogyny, the criminally insane, male effeminacy as monstrosity...

CW:
When combined with the intentional horror that (in no order) contained, homelessness, neo-Nazis, nukes, torture, insanity, infanticide, pedophilia, racial slurs, slavery (and sexual slavery), body horror, mutation (things with extra heads and legs), mutilation (corpses and living people), maiming, senseless violence, cannibalism, animal death, Grooming, rape, child death, starvation, just more and more death, war, more war,
and their tanks and their bombs, and their bombs and their guns.
Have I mentioned how much I dislike battles? I'll say it again for those in the back.

Our constant companion in all this, is an evil shapeshifting being who is unnamed, but hinted about all through the book. The recurring use of Biblical quotes would have been amusing for me but often explained overtly. I had a chuckle when it was subtle but rolled my eyes hard every time I felt like the author was saying "you see what I did there!?" and it felt like he was explaining the joke. At one point a character is given a coat of many colours and I was glad that he didn't explain that one.

OK, this was published in 1987 and I'd like to give it latitude because things like The Walking Dead and even McCarthy's The Road, have done it all better since, but really it's not that well written. The unspoken wish from the get go is "Please, Mr President, don't nuke us!", which is the most honest wish of the 1980s even if Reagan is never mentioned by name. Also.. this book is too damned long to be this lame.. why am I a masochist? I'm going to have to slam this like that Whale book.

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