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Swan Song
by
An ancient evil roams the desolate landscape of an America ravaged by nuclear war.
He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan—and destroy her. But those who would protect the girl are determined to fight for what is l ...more
He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan—and destroy her. But those who would protect the girl are determined to fight for what is l ...more
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Mass Market Paperback, 956 pages
Published
June 1st 1987
by Pocket Books
(first published 1987)
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Mar 21, 2018
Emily (Books with Emily Fox)
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
post-apocalyptic
This is one of the darkest post-apocalyptic books I've read in a while... totally satisfied that craving.
I may have had a few bad dreams about it!
What I would have liked knowing beforehand:
- Nuclear war with Russia
- There are fantasy elements in here
- Yes, it's long...
- There's a war going on so if you're not really into military fiction... won't be for you!
- Overall it was almost too realistic...
- Did I say it was really dark?
I would recommend it!
I may have had a few bad dreams about it!
What I would have liked knowing beforehand:
- Nuclear war with Russia
- There are fantasy elements in here
- Yes, it's long...
- There's a war going on so if you're not really into military fiction... won't be for you!
- Overall it was almost too realistic...
- Did I say it was really dark?
I would recommend it!
$1.99 on Kindle today 6-10-17
Once again, thank you to goodreads friends for finding me another book to love!
There are so many people I fell in love with in the book. Also, Mule and Killer! Let's just begin. . .
The book is about us stupid humans trying to bomb each other into extinction, but I digress.
I fell in love with Sister Creep, Swan and Josh. I also loved Artie and Paul and Mule and Killer and . . . . there are so many.
We start out with each person's story, where they are in the world ...more
Once again, thank you to goodreads friends for finding me another book to love!
There are so many people I fell in love with in the book. Also, Mule and Killer! Let's just begin. . .
The book is about us stupid humans trying to bomb each other into extinction, but I digress.
I fell in love with Sister Creep, Swan and Josh. I also loved Artie and Paul and Mule and Killer and . . . . there are so many.
We start out with each person's story, where they are in the world ...more
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 did, although ...more
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 did, although ...more
Jun 08, 2019
Jeffrey Keeten
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
post-apocalyptic,
horror
”The sky was filled with waves of moving, blinking stars. Wheels of light rolled across the darkness over the trailer court, and streaks of yellow fire zigzagged upward into the haze that obscured the moon. Thousands upon thousands of fireflies were passing overhead like galaxies in motion, their signals forming chains of light that stretched from west to east as far as Swan could see.”
It would be pretty, right? All those missiles streaking across the midnight sky. The end of the world wrapp ...more
It would be pretty, right? All those missiles streaking across the midnight sky. The end of the world wrapp ...more
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 possible re
...more
Taking a quick glance through reviews of this book, they seem to have two things in common. One, they all start with a reference to the book's size. And two, they all remark about the comparisons to The Stand.
And now mine is no different.
Holy SHIT, this was a long ass book... but it doesn't at all compare to The Stand, in my opinion.
Was it good? Yeah, good, but for a book this ambitious and huge, I expect more than just good. Part of that is that I think I'd have appreciated it a lot more had ...more
And now mine is no different.
Holy SHIT, this was a long ass book... but it doesn't at all compare to The Stand, in my opinion.
Was it good? Yeah, good, but for a book this ambitious and huge, I expect more than just good. Part of that is that I think I'd have appreciated it a lot more had ...more
Percentage composition of previous or later works of postapocalypse (of a sort) in the DNA of R. McCammon's enormous horror epic "Swan Song":
41% The Stand novel
10% The Road novel (which is actually, in itself, like 7% Mad Max--a source which must NOT go completely ignored)
10% Blood Meridian novel (so about 60% of S.S. can be found in King & McCarthy alone)
10% Lord of the Rings (6% Two Towers battle + 4% magic ring emblem)
5% Lonesome Dove novel
5% Dawn of the Dead films (mall battleground, motorcy ...more
41% The Stand novel
10% The Road novel (which is actually, in itself, like 7% Mad Max--a source which must NOT go completely ignored)
10% Blood Meridian novel (so about 60% of S.S. can be found in King & McCarthy alone)
10% Lord of the Rings (6% Two Towers battle + 4% magic ring emblem)
5% Lonesome Dove novel
5% Dawn of the Dead films (mall battleground, motorcy ...more
I read this book back when it was first published in the ‘80’s. I was still in high school, had big frizzy hair, wore too much blue eyeliner and pretty much hated my life. I spent most of my free time haunting the local Osco drug for the newest horror paperbacks to escape it all. When I saw this huge tome (900+ pages) I scurried back home with it thinking I had just hit the jackpot. And I had. It turned out to be one of the best horror novels I’d ever read and I was reading a lot back then. This
...more
The next stop in my end-of-the-world reading marathon was Robert McCammon's post-apocalyptic epic Swan Song. Published in 1987, nine years after Stephen King's The Stand, the story follows two bands of survivors -- one representing good, the other evil -- as they make their way across what used to be America while a supernatural being no less than Old Scratch himself seeks to undermine the good souls and shift the battle onto the side of evil. Yes, kids, eeriely similar to The Stand. More on tha
...more
So in a month and a half, I finished Swan Song.
This epic, apocalyptic story has been a part of my life, forever in the background of my mind for so many days, it will feel weird for awhile to not be continuing on in the journey-but I know that it doesn't really completely go away. Now it's a part of the framework.
I've heard a lot of people compare this book to Stephen King's The Stand.
I have no idea why, other than this is a story that is both apocalyptic and horrific. There is a prolific antago ...more
This epic, apocalyptic story has been a part of my life, forever in the background of my mind for so many days, it will feel weird for awhile to not be continuing on in the journey-but I know that it doesn't really completely go away. Now it's a part of the framework.
I've heard a lot of people compare this book to Stephen King's The Stand.
I have no idea why, other than this is a story that is both apocalyptic and horrific. There is a prolific antago ...more
Sep 29, 2018
RedemptionDenied
marked it as to-read
The Kindle edition is currently on offer: £2.05p in the UK, possibly $1.99 in the States (it's showing as $2.69) - and $1.99 in Canada Considering the price it's usually going for - the current price is more than copasetic.
I bought it eons' ago, and still haven't read it, yet. I'll have to rectify that, sometime, soon. Hopefully.
I bought it eons' ago, and still haven't read it, yet. I'll have to rectify that, sometime, soon. Hopefully.
Well, I approach this review with some trepidation. A large number of readers here love this book, including a "Goodreads friend" whom I usually agree with...(sorry Stephen, Stephanie, Rose). But I just didn't care for it. I found it a "poor man's The Stand". The book is full of stereotypes, cliches and tropes. There are old hackneyed ideas "guns are BAD", if you look nonthreatening your less likely to be threatened, war is evil...on and on. Some of the story telling put me in mind of the old "w
...more
Aug 07, 2011
The Pirate Ghost (Formerly known as the Curmudgeon)
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Every now and then, you come across a book where it seems that the complexities of life have been disassembled from reality and reformed within the pages and text. A story that, sometimes in its simplicity, captures the moving parts and varying angles of spirituality, psychology, physiology and sociology like a prism, separates them by colour, strength and depth. Then uses the differing colours to paint a kaleidoscopic tableau that opens our minds to that which is kn ...more
An epic story it made me reminisce of other epic stories with similar good versus evil characters, like those of Lord of the rings and the dark tower series.
The black Frankenstein, is what he used to be called in his wrestling days, known as Josh and the Bag lady known as Sister creep are two memorable characters that are courageous with plenty of heart. They really made the story that much more great, and obviously Swan a young girl who is a main character through the whole story. She can right ...more
The black Frankenstein, is what he used to be called in his wrestling days, known as Josh and the Bag lady known as Sister creep are two memorable characters that are courageous with plenty of heart. They really made the story that much more great, and obviously Swan a young girl who is a main character through the whole story. She can right ...more
Maybe if I'd have read this one before I had read The Stand or Lucifer's Hammer, I might have given this a full five stars, but epic length and nuclear holocaust doesn't automatically make a perfect book.
However. If you like your dystopias full of a long buildup and full cast and a slow decline into being in the evil camp versus learning you're in the good camp, then I totally recommend this book to you. It's the journey more than anything else that makes this a good read.
And then there's also t ...more
However. If you like your dystopias full of a long buildup and full cast and a slow decline into being in the evil camp versus learning you're in the good camp, then I totally recommend this book to you. It's the journey more than anything else that makes this a good read.
And then there's also t ...more
Feels like The Stand, only with greater amounts of mysticism and nuclear war instead of disease.
Not quite sure why McCammon needed to jump 7 years into the future. Further degeneration of societal breakdown? Need to age the lead characters? What was he thinking? If the nuclear winter lasted 7 years, I think there'd be almost no one left--there's only so much scavenging one can do for canned food and gasoline. Shelf life, people, shelf life. That jump tested my patience. Fairly believable until ...more
Not quite sure why McCammon needed to jump 7 years into the future. Further degeneration of societal breakdown? Need to age the lead characters? What was he thinking? If the nuclear winter lasted 7 years, I think there'd be almost no one left--there's only so much scavenging one can do for canned food and gasoline. Shelf life, people, shelf life. That jump tested my patience. Fairly believable until ...more
I have read some 15 years ago The Stand by Stephen King. There are some parallels that could be drawn between that story and Swan Song. Both novels are dealing with the collapse of civilization following an apocalyptic event (virus infection in one case, nuclear war in the second) , both are set in the North American Midwest and follow the struggles of scattered bands of survivors. And both books feature supernatural beings as avatars of the forces of Good and Evil fighting for supremacy.
Stephen ...more
Stephen ...more
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 governments has det ...more
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 governments has det ...more
'All that was is lost.' The trees are burning in Central Park. Grand Central Station and the Empire State Building - gone. Mountains of ruined debris tower over everything. Wait . . . the electric lights on the marquee at the Empire State Theatre are still merrily twinkling, the movie house itself seemingly untouched. Currently showing is the film 'Face of Death', while a lone cinema patron sits in the front row giggling manically.
Swan is a little girl with an old soul and a knack with growing ...more
Swan is a little girl with an old soul and a knack with growing ...more
Here's the bottom line: Swan Song is one of my favorite books of all time. It stills impacts me every bit as much as the first time I read it.
Swan Song is very dark, and it's scary, but it's also one of the most beautiful and hopeful books I have ever read.
Weighing in at 956 pages, it's a huge story in every sense of the word. There are characters you will hate and fear as well as characters you will fall in love with and care about long after you've finished reading. There is magic, evil, goodn ...more
Swan Song is very dark, and it's scary, but it's also one of the most beautiful and hopeful books I have ever read.
Weighing in at 956 pages, it's a huge story in every sense of the word. There are characters you will hate and fear as well as characters you will fall in love with and care about long after you've finished reading. There is magic, evil, goodn ...more
This is copy 252 of 650 signed numbered copies.
I came close to liking this. Look, the dialog is...awful. There are weird factual errors. For example, wolf packs roaming the I80 corridor near Hazleton Pennsylvania. I live here. I can tell you...not even close. But I have a bigger problem with this text.
Okay, so here we have a writer that takes Chekhov's 'Loaded Gun' postulate, tears it out with his teeth, rips it up, craps on it, then puts it in a burning paper bag, drops it on your porch, knocks on the door and runs away. What do I mean? Wit ...more
Okay, so here we have a writer that takes Chekhov's 'Loaded Gun' postulate, tears it out with his teeth, rips it up, craps on it, then puts it in a burning paper bag, drops it on your porch, knocks on the door and runs away. What do I mean? Wit ...more
Jul 16, 2010
David
rated it
it was amazing
Recommends it for:
Magical girls with magical green thumbs, Randall Flag-I mean, the Man with the Scarlet Eye
Okay, I have to say this up front; in many ways, Swan Song is a very stupid book. It's highly derivative of Stephen King's The Stand, to which everyone compares it to, for good reason, and Robert McCammon is no Stephen King.
When I say it's derivative, I don't mean I think McCammon was deliberately imitating The Stand, though I can't imagine he was unfamiliar with King's novel, and assuming he was, it's kind of amazing how many obvious similarities there are that he didn't see fit to alter a smid ...more
When I say it's derivative, I don't mean I think McCammon was deliberately imitating The Stand, though I can't imagine he was unfamiliar with King's novel, and assuming he was, it's kind of amazing how many obvious similarities there are that he didn't see fit to alter a smid ...more
this was fantastic! I listened to this for a buddy read. I never would've picked this book out myself. I'm not really into the apocalyptic scene. but I'm sure glad I joined them! it's so intense through most of the book.
listened to this again in 2017 and loved it just as much this time as I did the first time.
listened to this again in 2017 and loved it just as much this time as I did the first time.
One of my trusty goodreads friend's recently recommended Robert McCammon to me and I am so grateful she did (thanks Jennifer!). I will be honest though that when I read "Boy's Life" that I zoned out at times because it seemed to become too wordy at times but I didn't find that to be an issue at all with Swan Song. Wow! Robert McCammon is truly a very talented storyteller and I was immediately wrapped up in this dystopian story of survival after a nuclear holocaust.
Most people, including myself, ...more
Most people, including myself, ...more
Talk about 'condemned by faint praise'! This book was okay. It was too long and too predictable.
I enjoyed the first 2/3 of this book but when I realised the author really was going to go for the saccharine ending, the wind was taken out of my sails.. Until then my only real niggling doubt had been the plausibility of some of the story line. Would there really still be so much canned food and fizzy drink lying around after 7 years? Would they really still have gas left for their vehicles? Would t ...more
I enjoyed the first 2/3 of this book but when I realised the author really was going to go for the saccharine ending, the wind was taken out of my sails.. Until then my only real niggling doubt had been the plausibility of some of the story line. Would there really still be so much canned food and fizzy drink lying around after 7 years? Would they really still have gas left for their vehicles? Would t ...more
This was far more engaging than The Stand and better written. That is my opinion. I was engaged from the first chapter. I might have cried a little at the end of the book. My heart was in my throat at the beginning of the novel with the vivid description of a nuclear holocaust. There is no war, it is just the end of everything. The various stories of survival of our characters, "good and "bad", kept me reading. It touched my claustrophobia in a way that I had to stop reading for a few minutes he
...more
I enjoyed this, and I feel almost bad giving it three stars instead of two, but there were a few things that bugged me enough that I just had to. There has been a nuclear holocaust (seems to be the theme of my reading lately) and we see the aftermath through the eyes of what eventually become two main groups. Simply put, the good guys and the bad guys.
Almost every review I've seen compares this to The Stand by Stephen King and there's a good reason for that. In The Stand it's a disease that brin ...more
Almost every review I've seen compares this to The Stand by Stephen King and there's a good reason for that. In The Stand it's a disease that brin ...more
“Once upon a time...”. This book. I want more. I need more. But it’s also perfect the way it is. Review in a couple days.
Seems like everyone, who have read „Swan song“ had compared this book with Stephen King‘s „The Stand“ and has an opinion that it was either much better, or much much worse than the illustrious bestseller by „The master of horror“. I might be a bit unpopular here, but I didn‘t find that much of a difference in quality. True, I still think that „The Stand“ is a better book, but that doesn‘t automatically mean that „Swan song“ is bad – it's just different. Of course, these two are also quite differ
...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading List Comp...: Quotes - Swan Song | 4 | 7 | Jul 15, 2020 02:58PM | |
| Reading List Comp...: General Discussion - Swan Song | 6 | 13 | Jul 15, 2020 01:05PM | |
| Reading List Comp...: Review - Swan Song | 4 | 12 | May 04, 2020 09:00AM | |
| Vampires, Weres a...: Swan Song | 20 | 24 | Feb 29, 2020 04:26PM | |
| What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Post Apocalypse / Nuclear Attack /Survival. [s] | 5 | 27 | Jan 07, 2020 05:03AM | |
| Apocalypse Whenever: Swan Song, general chit chat with SPOILERS | 106 | 376 | Sep 19, 2019 09:11PM | |
| Swan Song vs The Stand | 26 | 708 | Sep 18, 2019 03:28AM |
Readers also enjoyed
Robert Rick McCammon was a full-time horror writer for many years. Among his many popular novels were the classics Boy's Life and Swan Song. After taking a hiatus for his family, he returned to writing with an interest in historical fiction.
The sixth book in his Matthew Corbett historical fiction series, Freedom of the Mask, was published in May 2016.
His next novel, a standalone book called The Li ...more
The sixth book in his Matthew Corbett historical fiction series, Freedom of the Mask, was published in May 2016.
His next novel, a standalone book called The Li ...more
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