I finished reading The Hollow Man in mid February. Whenever I read a book by Simmons I wonder why I don’t do it more often. He never fails to please. I’m not sure exactly why I liked this book, but I did. I don’t think it was quite as good as The Terror (which I thought was wonderful). But something about The Hollow Man grabbed me and drew me into the story.

The novel is the story of Jeremy Bremen, a mathematician and a telepath. And, although we don’t know it when the book opens, he’s soon to be a widower. The book is told in third person, but we spend so much time in Bremen’s head it feels like first person. In the course of novel we witness both Bremen’s disintegrating life and his past, as the book chapters alternate between Bremen’s present and a somewhat more distanced view of his life with Gail (his wife).

I tend to think of Simmons as a science fiction author & this book may qualify as SF; but many of his books would likely end up on the horror or dark fantasy shelves. The Terror was primarily a fictionalization of a doomed expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1845. Not my usual cup of tea, but I thought it was absolutely riveting. (It also won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel and was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, so I suppose it wasn’t quite a simple historical novel.) The Hollow Man is from the early part of Simmons career. His first book, Song of Kali (which I must have read not long after it came out and also really enjoyed) was published in 1985, just seven years earlier.

Anytime I see a new book by Dan Simmons, I buy it. And I’ve even read a few of them (9 of 27). Maybe I’ll read another one soon.