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rashidmalik's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
19minnie's review against another edition
4.0
Alleen in het laatste deel zat er een stuk die ik wat minder vond. Voor de rest een topboek!
apatrick's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this better than Song of Kali. It's about a telepath and how he deals with his grief when his wife, also a telepath, dies. A bit existential, nothing like Charlaine Harris's telepathic waitress, Sookie. Hmm, those books were fun and I kinda miss them....
carriekellenberger's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars
The Hollow Man was a very entertaining read, but I've learned to expect this from Dan Simmons. His ability to write about a wide range of difficult subjects and make it understandable is commendable. He deserves his endorsements from Stephen King and Dean Koontz for this novel!
Jeremy Bremen is telepathic. He can read minds like he knows his own mind. He meets the love of his life and she is also a telepath who helps to shield Jeremy from the thoughts of millions of other minds. When she dies (common knowledge in the book synopsis), Jeremy's mind blows apart and suddenly the minds of everyone around him are open. The neurobabble he hears is excruciating, and his grief from the loss of his wife pushes him over the edge.
Jeremy heads out to an area that is remote where he can be by himself and live off the land for a bit, but he witnesses something horrible and suddenly finds himself on the run.
200 pages in, this story hit WTH territory, and that is where the horror aspect of this story really kicks into high gear. I couldn't put this book down once I hit this part of the story. I burned through the rest of this novel pretty quickly.
Man, oh man. The Cold Room scene - WHOA. WHOAAAAAAA.
This is my sixth Dan Simmons book this year. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it's quite technical. It won't be everyone's cup of tea like some of his other books.
If you don't enjoy reading books that have a lot of science in them or that discuss quantum mechanics, mathematics, parallel universes, and theories about mind-reading, this book is likely not for you.
But, if you are willing to give it a go, Simmons does a great job of explaining certain theories in layman terms. You can't skip over the content though. It's relevant to his story.
It is so hard to decide on 3 stars or 4 stars! I'm basing this rating solely on his other books, and feel that it deserves more than 3 stars, but that would put it on the same level as Song of Kali, which I enjoyed more, so I'm going to leave it at 3.5 stars and say that's worth reading if you love this author as much as I do.
The Hollow Man was a very entertaining read, but I've learned to expect this from Dan Simmons. His ability to write about a wide range of difficult subjects and make it understandable is commendable. He deserves his endorsements from Stephen King and Dean Koontz for this novel!
Jeremy Bremen is telepathic. He can read minds like he knows his own mind. He meets the love of his life and she is also a telepath who helps to shield Jeremy from the thoughts of millions of other minds. When she dies (common knowledge in the book synopsis), Jeremy's mind blows apart and suddenly the minds of everyone around him are open. The neurobabble he hears is excruciating, and his grief from the loss of his wife pushes him over the edge.
Jeremy heads out to an area that is remote where he can be by himself and live off the land for a bit, but he witnesses something horrible and suddenly finds himself on the run.
200 pages in, this story hit WTH territory, and that is where the horror aspect of this story really kicks into high gear. I couldn't put this book down once I hit this part of the story. I burned through the rest of this novel pretty quickly.
Man, oh man. The Cold Room scene - WHOA. WHOAAAAAAA.
This is my sixth Dan Simmons book this year. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it's quite technical. It won't be everyone's cup of tea like some of his other books.
If you don't enjoy reading books that have a lot of science in them or that discuss quantum mechanics, mathematics, parallel universes, and theories about mind-reading, this book is likely not for you.
But, if you are willing to give it a go, Simmons does a great job of explaining certain theories in layman terms. You can't skip over the content though. It's relevant to his story.
It is so hard to decide on 3 stars or 4 stars! I'm basing this rating solely on his other books, and feel that it deserves more than 3 stars, but that would put it on the same level as Song of Kali, which I enjoyed more, so I'm going to leave it at 3.5 stars and say that's worth reading if you love this author as much as I do.
iupiter's review against another edition
4.0
4
(Immediate impressions after finishing the book, not a structured review.)
A bit irregular in quality. At times the mathematical/physics-related technical jargon is overdone. The attempt to mathematically (and I mean, *really* mathematically, with very advanced vocabulary) describe telepathy comes off as overly ambitious and takes on a Dan Brown-esque tone.
Where the book excels however is setting up a hazy, highly philosophical, metaphysical sort of inner "mindspace", shared between Gail and Jeremy (and Robby, ultimately) and combining it with the grit and gore of homelessness, alcoholism, the American Midwest, organized and disorganized crime.
I liked the gore, and I liked the fact that its perpetrators were either caricatures of criminals much like we see in popular culture, or completely animal-like and whose motivations remained unexplained. It mixed interestingly -- surprisingly well -- with the metaphysical tone of the book.
Some of the metaphysical gets collapsed (like a wave function... hardy-har-har) into more unsatisfying or anticlimactic conclusions (Jeremy's whole fear of telling Gail that he had fertility problems coming down to him being deeply afraid of fatherhood, for example) but in other ways the story almost reads like Siddhartha: it's the story of a man being confronted with life itself, as he learns to navigate through the world, learning about pain, helping others (the terminally ill children at Disney World), physical strain, being fascinated by money (during the brief time he gambled).
Developing the above mentioned events would perhaps have made the story a bit stronger because they would have made Jeremy's "journey" (literal and figurative) more explicit, but in a way I do appreciate that the author strayed away from taking himself too seriously and making the "moral" of the story about the deeper meaning of life. Indeed, in the end, there is really no moral to this story, and the ending demonstrates that it is perhaps more so an ode to family and to love.
(Immediate impressions after finishing the book, not a structured review.)
A bit irregular in quality. At times the mathematical/physics-related technical jargon is overdone. The attempt to mathematically (and I mean, *really* mathematically, with very advanced vocabulary) describe telepathy comes off as overly ambitious and takes on a Dan Brown-esque tone.
Where the book excels however is setting up a hazy, highly philosophical, metaphysical sort of inner "mindspace", shared between Gail and Jeremy (and Robby, ultimately) and combining it with the grit and gore of homelessness, alcoholism, the American Midwest, organized and disorganized crime.
I liked the gore, and I liked the fact that its perpetrators were either caricatures of criminals much like we see in popular culture, or completely animal-like and whose motivations remained unexplained. It mixed interestingly -- surprisingly well -- with the metaphysical tone of the book.
Some of the metaphysical gets collapsed (like a wave function... hardy-har-har) into more unsatisfying or anticlimactic conclusions (Jeremy's whole fear of telling Gail that he had fertility problems coming down to him being deeply afraid of fatherhood, for example) but in other ways the story almost reads like Siddhartha: it's the story of a man being confronted with life itself, as he learns to navigate through the world, learning about pain, helping others (the terminally ill children at Disney World), physical strain, being fascinated by money (during the brief time he gambled).
Developing the above mentioned events would perhaps have made the story a bit stronger because they would have made Jeremy's "journey" (literal and figurative) more explicit, but in a way I do appreciate that the author strayed away from taking himself too seriously and making the "moral" of the story about the deeper meaning of life. Indeed, in the end, there is really no moral to this story, and the ending demonstrates that it is perhaps more so an ode to family and to love.
crono101's review against another edition
3.0
I think the concept of this book is really strong, but perhaps the middle of the book is filled with too much stuff that doesn't really relate to what the book is about. It would have worked better as a short story, maybe.
cheekimonkey's review against another edition
5.0
I need to read this again. It was a beautifully woven story about a man who can read minds but can't control the invasion of the thoughts of others. He's at wits end when he meets a woman who also reads mind and when he's around her, she blocks the maddening onslaught of other people's thoughts. This much is on the back of the book, as is her fate which sends the main character on an intense journey. This book captivated me and I've never been able to shake the feeling of what it was like to read it.
henryarmitage's review against another edition
4.0
I've read a bunch of Dan Simmons... The Hyperion/Endymion series, Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night. You don't hear much about this book, but it totally knocked my socks off.
There's a cool math and science premise having to do with quantum physics that the author has obviously researched pretty well.
I wouldn't call this a romance exactly but there's a decent romantic sub-plot around the protagonist and his wife. As a married guy I appreciate fictional married-couple romance. The typical fictional romance ending with the characters making that commitment 'and they lived happily ever after' offers nothing for me to really relate to.
There's a reasonable amount of action.
The ending is a little disturbing. I wouldn't hand this book to someone I knew to be unstable.
There's a cool math and science premise having to do with quantum physics that the author has obviously researched pretty well.
I wouldn't call this a romance exactly but there's a decent romantic sub-plot around the protagonist and his wife. As a married guy I appreciate fictional married-couple romance. The typical fictional romance ending with the characters making that commitment 'and they lived happily ever after' offers nothing for me to really relate to.
There's a reasonable amount of action.
The ending is a little disturbing. I wouldn't hand this book to someone I knew to be unstable.
cheekimonkey's review
5.0
I need to read this again. It was a beautifully woven story about a man who can read minds but can't control the invasion of the thoughts of others. He's at wits end when he meets a woman who also reads mind and when he's around her, she blocks the maddening onslaught of other people's thoughts. This much is on the back of the book, as is her fate which sends the main character on an intense journey. This book captivated me and I've never been able to shake the feeling of what it was like to read it.