Review by Booklist Review
Simmons, who has proven himself equally adept at horror, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery, again tries something different. This is the story of Paha Sapa, who, as a boy, is present at Little Big Horn, where the spirit of a dying General Custer transfers itself to the young Sioux. This event, and the visions that accompany it (one in particular), set Paha Sapa on a course that will find him, decades later, poised to bring the newly completed Mount Rushmore crashing down. The story isn't told in chronological order (evoking Little Big Man); this chapter may be set in 1876, that one in 1923, this one in 1934, then back to 1893. We see Paha Sapa at the beginning of his life and at the end; and we see, in bits and pieces, how he got there. Real people and events appear in the book Doane Robinson, Buffalo Bill Cody, Custer himself and Simmons blends the historical with the fictional so well that it's difficult to see the dividing line. A well-constructed, highly imaginative novel that should bring new readers into Simmons' ever-expanding group of fans.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hugo-winner Simmons, the author of such acclaimed space operas as Hyperion and Olympos as well as Drood, an intriguing riff on Dickens's unfinished last novel, displays the impressive breath of his imagination in this historical novel with a supernatural slant. In the author's retelling of Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn in 1876, the dying general's ghost enters the body of Paha Sapa, a 10-year-old Sioux warrior who's able to see both the past and the future by touching people. The action leaps around in time to illustrate the arc of Sapa's life, but focuses on 1936, when, as a septuagenarian, he plots to blow up the monuments on Mount Rushmore in time for a visit to the site by FDR to atone for his role in constructing the stone likenesses. In his ability to create complex characters and pair them with suspenseful situations, Simmons stands almost unmatched among his contemporaries. 6-city author tour. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
An 11-year-old Lakota counts coup on Custer at the moment of his death at the Little Big Horn. The boy, Paha Sapa (Lakota for "Black Hills"), absorbs Custer's spirit. Thus begins a story spanning more than 80 years, bracketed by the battle and the carving of one of the Lakota's most sacred places into the Mount Rushmore monument. Meticulously researched, like all of Simmons's work (Drood), it tells Paha Sapa's story of pain, loss, recovery, and redemption against a huge historical canvas. Occasional visits with the spirit of Custer reveal a man completely obsessed with his wife, Libbie, often describing their sexual exploits in shocking detail. Verdict Despite the ghost angle and other supernatural elements, this is not a horror novel. Simmons avoids bogging down this compelling read with detail but does succumb to the temptation of romanticizing what scholars of Native America call the "plight narrative," viewing Indian nations as vanished and victimized peoples without a present or future. For Simmons's fans. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/09.]-Karl G. Siewert, Tulsa City-Cnty. Lib., OK (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
At Little Big Horn, Custer's ghost enters the body of an 11-year-old American Indian and commingles there for close to 500 pages. Among the Lakota (Sioux), conventional wisdom has always held that Paha Sapa's life experience was likely to be unconventional. His very name attests to this. Paha Sapa means Black Hills (South Dakota), and Lakota kids don't often get named for real places. Add to this the eyebrow-raising fact that in an intensely militaristic society, Paha Sapa marches to a different drummera Lakota boy with no aspirations to warrior-hood. Not that he's effeminate or in any way cowardlyhe more than holds his own at tribal rough stuff. It's just that, well, he seems to think a lot. And then, of course, he gets those visions. Still, his report of what he experienced as the victorious dust settled over Little Big Horn transcends the merely unconventional. Long Hair's (Custer's) ghost in so unorthodox a body? Sitting Bull begs to doubt it. As does Crazy Horse, and virtually all the other illustrious war chiefs. But what matters most is that Paha Sapa believes unshakably that he's ghost-ridden because in a very real sense this shapes his destiny. Through the event-packed years that follow, pivotal conversations continue nonstop between ghost and boypurely rancorous at the outset, more complex and ambiguous as time passes. These remarkable conversations happen in a variety of famous places: the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, where Paha Sapa's single love affair suddenly blossoms; Mount Rushmore, where his smoldering anger against white exploitation reaches its apex; and where the visionary Indian and the spectral Indian fighter finally come to terms with each other. There are rewards here, but Simmons (Drood, 2009, etc.) buries an appealing protagonist and an intriguing story under the crushing weight of a tome. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
