A review by shawntowner
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

5.0

A book that garners high praise from Stephen King (he calls it one of the three best horror novels of the 20th century) and Guillermo del Toro (calls it a true classic that will shatter your worldview) and the praise is well-deserved. Carrion Comfort twists the convention of vampire fiction, creating mind vampires that feast upon the thoughts and deaths of the their victims. The novel gets its title and epigraphs from Gerald Manley Hopkins' poem 'Carrion Comfort' and the main characters in the novel are, like the speaker in Hopkins' poem, trying avoid giving in to the carrion comfort of despair. Instead of giving in to the despair, violence, and horror around them, the heroes of the novel risk everything to seek out revenge in spectacular fashion. There's even an awesome Hitchcock moment halfway through the novel that prevents things from getting stale, which is always a risk in such a long novel.