Mind penetrating psi vampires haunt humankind in the same year Simmons´ ingenious sci-fi fantasy milestone Hyperion was published and revolutionize the horror genre in the same way. King said that Simmons writes like a God and that he is a bit envious and what could exceed this quote? There is a handful of authors who unite the lucky combination of hard, lifelong perfecting their writing and talent and Simmons is in a league I find just some are coming close to. There may be authors just playing in one league that are as good or, regarding the worldbuilding but not characterization, better, but nobody writes works of such quality in different genres. Sci-Fi is totally my thing and I could name very few names of the same greatness as Hyperion, the same for horror and this one. It´s especially how it immediately blows one away, how it never gets boring for just a second, how it´s complexity is never confusing, the characters´ motivations logical, everything slowly escalating to amazing plot points,… And most of his novels are bricks, often with more than just 2 or 3 perspectives, time- and plotlines.There is often so less action, few cliffhangers, nothing one is used to in modern writing to pimp, accelerate, and distract from characterization, plotting, and logical flaws and errors, Simmons is using pure characterization and a complex, interwoven net of protagonists and antagonists to lead the long novel to a culmination of epic proportion. It´s a shame that I am too lazy to investigate which classic elements and tales inspired Simmons in and to his works, because his epic sci-fi novels are both filled with innuendos and connotations to famous ancient works or interpretations of these. Reader of the classics, mythologies, and history might find goldmines I am blind to see because of a lack of special knowledge.One of the cases where I absolutely don´t understand why people don´t like it. In other cases, there are elements that make it completely understandable that one can´t deal with too sciency, too charactery, too world buildy, too whatever elements, but this has everything, it´s the beginning of the career of one of the most talented and underrated writers of the 20th century. So amazingly many pictures of this and Simmons´ other horror novel, Summer of night, that feels like a reinterpretation of Stephen Kings´ It, stay in mind, always a sure sign that the quality of the stuff is so high that it permanently blows ones´mind away and leaves one, wasted, but very happy, afterward.Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...