Reviews - Swan Song | The StoryGraph

1.14k reviews for:

Swan Song

Robert R. McCammon

4.14 AVERAGE

zachhampton's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark hopeful sad tense medium-paced

mabanero's review against another edition

1.0

Dnf at 45%.

Nome of the characters are likeable or interesting enough to root for. I want a survival story, not just people being cruel to one another.

jrobison's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The action scenes in here were so well done. I came to really root for the characters and actually teared up several times reading. I read it way faster than I expected because of how hooked I was. One critique is that the pacing really picked up towards the end and the conclusion felt kind of rushed compared to the beginning of the book.

tom_collins's review against another edition

2.0

Too much of the story is too contrived. Some of it just doesn't make sense. And too many parts of the plot, that never did get explained.

Spoilers below.

Spoiler

For instance, during the nuclear winter, it snows in August in at least the top half the US. But no one tries to go south where it would be warmer. This continues for 9 years.

Also, in those 9 years:
-No plants grow at all, but there are still deer to be hunted (I wonder what they eat).
-There's still canned goods and gasoline to be found.
-Snow has not continued to accumulate.
-Animal mutations occur (because of the radiation) that would not really be able to survive.

By the end
-The purpose or use of the ring is never told, except for a few visions, even though it was very central to the story. The ring might have made the wearer immune from harm, but this is never tested.
-One person has the power to get crops to start to grow in the inhospitable ground, it's a little bit time consuming, and it's implied she has to travel the whole country (maybe even the whole world) to bring the world back to growing things again.
-Some people get these hard masks growing on their face for years, to later fall off and reveal the person even prettier than before, but no explanation is ever told on what this has to do with the story.
-Towards the end, the bad guy seems to be able to travel great distances in a short time (flitting back & forth between cities), but in the beginning can only travel as fast as a human can.

-And too many character threads that were just left dangling and never picked up again.

el_book_dragon's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Loveable characters: Complicated

alicetheowl's review against another edition

5.0

This is a long, intimidating book that starts off really grim, with a nuclear apocalypse killing hundreds of millions of people, and scorching the skies. I'm glad I listened to all of the people who praised it, though, and kept going. The payoff is well worth getting through the depressing start.

While the book never states the year it's taking place, it's clearly an alternate 1987. There are too many cultural markers tying it to that time in US history. This version of 1987 has the cold war escalating rather than fizzling out, and culminating in the launch of every nuclear device on the planet. Many hit their targets, but many fall out of the sky to wreak havoc on US soil. There are survivors, but most are badly burned, and they have to scrabble to find food and potable water, not to mention a reason to keep going.

Within this category of survivors are Colonel James P. Macklin, Roland Croninger, Sue Wanda (Swan) Prescott, Josh Hutchins, and a bag lady on the streets of Manhattan who goes by Sister Creep. Each character has their own struggles in the post-apocalyptic landscape, and the book paints the aftermath in their personal conflicts. Meanwhile, there's an unnamed man often referred to as The Man with the Scarlet Eye who can shift his appearance at will, create fire from his hands, and make people do his bidding. He revels in pain and death and corruption, and makes it his life's mission to stomp out what little hope humanity has left after the events that end the world.

This book is often compared to The Stand, and it's a fair comparison. End of the world, good versus evil, and there's a personification of the devil walking around. The differences don't end with the causes of the end of the world, though. Swan is a far more sympathetic perspective character than Mother Abigail, and The Man with the Scarlet Eye is a much more sinister force than Randall Flagg. He doesn't simply amass a force; he insinuates himself into the very souls of the survivors, so that even good people are led to do terrible things, never realizing the evil of their actions. I also felt that Swan Song has a greater grasp on human nature. What separates "good" from "evil" characters is how corrupted they are, and many characters reform once they have a reason to hope.

In the end, Swan Song is about the endurance of the human spirit, and how we adapt to even the most trying situations. The message is that life is worth living, so long as we're alive, and that there's always something to hope for. Even in the most hopeless and bleak moments within Swan Song, the characters can find beauty.

I listened to this book on audio, narrated by Tom Stechschulte. He has an authoritative sound, well worth the gravity in this book. He also has a good range of accents, so no two characters sounded alike.