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May 13, 2011

Dan rated it:

What if the apocalypse that befell the poor souls in The Stand was nuclear instead of viral in nature and the whole thing was written in a style more like Richard Matheson's than Stephen King's? Well, you'd probably have Swan Song.

Comparisons with the Stand are inevitable. Both are about the survivors of an apocalyptic event and both have a devil type figure walking around stirring things up. Swan Song doesn't have that final battle between good and evil thing going like the Stand More...

7 comments like (45 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2011

Stephen rated it:

4.5 to 5.0 stars. I am a big fan of The Stand by Stephen King and I thought it was the "standard" in apocalyptic fiction...UNTIL NOW. Swan Song is THE BEST apocalyptic science fiction book I have ever read. At over 950 pages, this book could have been a chore to get through but that was not the case at all. I flew through it and never found my attention wandering or my interest waning. A truly spectacular novel with a superb cast of really good peeople and REALLY BAD PEOPLE!! Highest p More...

9 comments like (23 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2009

D_Davis rated it:

I tried to read this a few years ago after hearing so many things about how brilliant it is.

Wow.

I thought it was absolutely terrible, I'd even venture to call it rubbish.

McCammon's prose reads more like bad fanfic than that of an actual "professional" writer. His tin ear for dialog is practically rusted shut; the characters are constantly saying EXACTLY what they mean - there is no subtext or nuance to anything.

I only got about 100 pages More...

25 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 07, 2010

Sizzlin Miss Kenjii rated it:

A massive journey you’ll end up loving or hating. Robert McCammon does not waste time padding his chapters. He sets a rapid enough pace with a story that needs to unfold rather quickly. Characters that need to be introduced and understood fairly fast. Granted, this was written in the 80’s. So no cell phone, iPODs or Internet. Yet he still maintains a vivid connection between characters, worlds’ away.

The beginning is the end and people are bracing nuclear war. Fallout shelters are bu More...

15 comments like (10 people liked it)

May 14, 2007

Brady rated it:

Did you ever read the Stand? When it was over did you want to punch your self in the head hard enough to forget you did? Or were you even a little disappointed?

I remember when I read it I was really disappointed with the end, but so proud of my eighth grade butt reading a 32,000 page book that I didn't tell anybody.

Robbert McHammond has (unintentionally I think) chosen a lot of the same horror staples as Legendary Hack Steven King, and every time he makes King look like More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2011

Maciek rated it:

Now this was a big monster of a book. Swan Song is huge, huge like the Xbox. My copy spans 850 pages and is hard to carry around because of its size - it'll never fit into a pocket and will take significan space when deposited in a bag (why it was released by a publishing house named "Pocket Books" then?).
It's about the end of the world. Written in the 80's, when words like Cold War were used often, it's no wonder that in the novel the relationship between Soviet and American gov More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2011

Eva rated it:

I was really expecting to think this was too long. I haven't read a book nearly this long in a lot of years and fully expected to wish it had been a few hundred pages shorter. That was the case at all - everything felt just as it should be.
The really scary thing, for me, is that it seems like McCammon actually pictured all of this. The way us non-authors like to imagine every book is written but we know isn't the case. I have no doubt at all that he saw every single thing in the book in hi More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2009

Ryan rated it:

When I picked up this book I was filled with the expectations that this would be like Stephen King's "The Stand." Well after the first few chapters nearly all the simliarities melt away. To me this book is much more brutal and real. Of course the book does have its fantasy aspects but the overall setting of a post nuclear American seems very realistic. The characters are very well developed and likable. The book is very fast paced especially for one that is 950 pages or so. I never onc More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2008

Yael rated it:

I wish you could add stars to the maximum 5 this site gives you for reading -- something like 20+ stars would be no more than this legendary breakthrough novel by R. R. McCammon deserves. First published in 1987 and never long out of print since, SwanSong is the story of World War III, and of three groups of survivors of that hellish war into whose hands has been thrust the fate of the world. Taking place over a span of seven years, the story sees Swan, a young girl who may be the salvation of More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2011

♥ Marlene♥ rated it:

Loved it. It was huge and had a lot of resemblance to The Stand but I don't care. Give me more books like this.

I want to read more books about after the Apocolypse. Books like The Stand and Swan Song. Anyone has any recommendations? would be very much appreciated.

I know I am going to re-read this book in 10 years from now. :)

10 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 16, 2011

Miss Kim rated it:

Warning: there may have been wine involved (imbibed)during the writing of this review.

First off, there are a ton of 80’s references in this book that I loved. I grew up in the 80’s, and it just grabbed me. None of these were out right specific, but I felt them.

• Nukes! Fear them every day
• Russians are BAD.
• The movie Red Dawn
• Mad Max
• Kmart
• Nukes!
• Terminator
• Of course I must mention King’s The Stand

I loved this More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2008

Matt rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 21, 2011

Gertie rated it:

This is one of very few books I have actually bothered to reread; it is a LONG book at around 900 pages, but it whizzes by because of a constant desire to see what develops next.

I really enjoy apocalyptic fiction (what's up with that, anyway?), and this one is one of the most entertaining ones I've read. It is not particularly realistic, as it has some supernatural elements, but the characters are quite interesting, as well as their storylines, and the characters you don't love, you lo More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 12, 2011

Cyneva rated it:

Whew, this was one long, LOOOOONG book. Initially, I was a bit impatient at how long it took for everything to transpire - but the further along the story took me, the more I realized that it wouldn't really have worked well otherwise. For a novel of this magnitude, for readers to truly feel *involved* with the characters and be invested in what happened to them, the lengthy nature was necessary. The author did an excellent job on character development and the plot was well-executed. I'd like to More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 30, 2009

Mischelle rated it:

I love this book!! I still have the copy so that I can read this again.
My sister read this when it first came out and she told me all about it. At that time, I didn't think to read it because she told me the whole story. So, in 2004 I picked it up and loved it. If I read this in the 80's while the U.S. was in a Cold War with Russia, I would have been really scared. I am always thinking about how the world end. How the earth would be destoyed and all that kind of disaster. I read this More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2008

Teresa rated it:

This book is always compared to The Stand I am a diehard Stephen King fan...... B U T..... as much as i hate to admit it, I liked this better.

7 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 22, 2010

Waven rated it:

It seems most reviews for this book are practically glowing but I can't say I really enjoyed it. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great, either. I read it a few years ago and was so completely unimpressed I forgot all about it until I ran across a mention of it in relation to another book. (And I certainly make no habit of forgetting books I enjoy.) If you're stuck on a trans-continental red-eye flight and need something to read, this would suffice for sheer length, but try not to buy it in More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 20, 2011

Roberta rated it:

Robert McCammon è un famoso autore americano di romanzi horror. Questo Tenebre è stato paragonato a L’ombra dello scorpione di King. Da un certo punto di vista il paragone regge, ma lo stile dei due è alquanto differente. Se la prosa di McCammon è sicuramente più “lucida” e diretta allo scopo, King del resto affianca ad una trama più complicata un affresco sociale mirabile, come in tutti i suoi romanzi.

Tenebre ci propone gli Stati Uniti devastati da una guerra nucleare contro gli Stati More...

0 comments like

Jan 05, 2011

Brian rated it:

6/27/2004 - 5/10

Swan Song was very similar to Stephen King's The Stand. Both are about most of the Earth's population dying, a supernatural evil trying to destroy everything, and groups of people congregating to rebuild society or destroy it. Swan Song was an easy reading page-turner, but it didn't live up to expectations. The set-up of nuclear aftermath had a lot more potential. I thought the plot wasn't great, it was kind of schmaltzy at times. The whole thing about 'true faces' was prett More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Erik rated it:

No doubt this book can be compared to The Stand by Stephen King but after reading it I thought the survivors in The Stand had it pretty easy compared to the survivors of Swan Song. Yeah dying from a super flu sucks, and being killed by a nuclear bomb not much better, but surviving is where the hardship begins. in The Stand the survivors were left with a world that was pretty much unchanged food, vehicles and shelter were easy to come by. In Swan Song there was almost nothing left no food, no cle More...

0 comments like

Jan 18, 2012

Alex rated it:

When I picked up Swan Song from Audible I didn't realise this was horror sci-fi so was taken by surprise in that regard. Actually, it crosses between sic-fi and fantasy as it is post-apocalyptic, but deals with super-natural themes. I was expecting aliens or something. That said, I really enjoyed it and couldn't put it down. The book is very long but fast paced. The audiobook narration is outstanding, but the swearing is more confronting when read aloud. For a horror, however, I found neither th More...

0 comments like

Jan 13, 2012

Anna marked it as to-read

To me, Swan Song was a hard novel to plow through. The setting, from almost the beginning, is grim and the future presented as bleak until the very end. In the book, there are some religious overtones (such as Job's Mask, the changing of faces, and Swan's "gift") which just kind of irked me -- it was like, here's this post-nuclear world where everyone's struggling for survival and said survival relies on the magic of one girl and the seeming will of some god. In the same tones we meet More...

0 comments like

Nov 25, 2011

Rich rated it:

The best review I can come up with for this book is "not bad". Many of the reviewers who wrote positively of this book try to state emphatically that this book is not a rip off of "The Stand" by Steven King, and I will maybe cede the point that they were written close enough in time that both authors maybe had the same idea at similar times. That being said, if there was a battle between post-apocalyptic books with a devil antagonist, its safe to say King's "The Stand" More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 22, 2011

Robert rated it:

This was my first and probably last Robert McCammon book. Firstly, the positive: the book did hold my attention. It was exciting in a horrible kind of way. You know how our eyes are drawn to gory sites? I think it is a pathology of the human condition. I mean why would we read books of this ilk in the first place. The book starts with nuclear war and two superpowers exchanging missiles. It then quickly shifts to the aftermath and three or four subplots that intersect as the book progresses and c More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 28, 2011

Sheila rated it:

First published in 1987, Robert McCammon’s Swan Song passes the test of time with flying colors. The story starts in a cold-war world of East and West, politicians driven to the brink by misunderstanding and the world falling over the edge of nuclear disaster. But that’s just the beginning. Post-holocaust there’s a powerfully depicted dystopia, as real and scary as any imagined in more modern tales. The monsters may not be vampires and werewolves but they’re every bit as disturbing. Changing sce More...

0 comments like

Sep 07, 2011

Checkman rated it:

Two and a half stars.

I don't have much to add here. Many many others have come before me so I'll just give a few personal opinions. Really isn't that what a review is all about anyway?

In my opinion the comparisons between Swan Song and The Stand are valid. The two stories do have much in common.

The "big baddie" in both books are similar to each other. They are both described as having a sense of humor (of sorts) and they seen to be shape shift More...

0 comments like

Jul 18, 2011

Chris rated it:

I'm starting to think that this summer should be called my Summer of the Apocolypse. Books I've read or have on my shelf to read include the Stand, The Passage, Robopoclypes, and I just finished Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon. I have a difficult time reviewing this book due to the fact that the investigation of mass death and the misery that goes along with that doesn't seem to settle with me as much as it might have when I was younger. The point of these books are to make you uncomfortable More...

0 comments like

Jun 08, 2011

Carolina rated it:

I had never heard of Swan Song until it was recommended to me, by someone whose opinion I valued, due to its similarity to Stephen King’s The Stand. Indeed there are several similarities between these two novels, but there’s also enough differences to make them each unique.

Swan Song starts out with a nuclear holocaust, a fear even more relevant in our times than it was when Swan Song was written twenty years ago. Like his previous novels, McCammon introduces several characte More...

0 comments like

Feb 03, 2011

Massquatch rated it:

I bought this book in paperback shortly after it came out. I honestly thought it would be nothing more than a ripoff of Stephen King's The Stand, and there are similarities, but this book definately stands on its own.
I lent my copy to a friend and didn't see it again for almost two years. He lent it to everyone. When I got it back, the front and back cover were missing and you could tell it had been thru alot of hands.
He said that almost without exception, everyone (he estimated abou More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 27, 2010

Harmonybites rated it:

Published in 1987, the back cover praised this book as "prescient" but its nuclear holocaust scenario, involving the Soviet Union and blaming the "Star Wars" initiative struck me as "dated."

That said, the depiction of nuclear destruction, particularly the part set in my own New York City, was chilling. And that only takes you about 100 pages into this 850 page doorstopper.

The book centers on three groups. One is a group of survivors from Ne More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)