It’s good to be ambitious. You might be a giant gorilla who crashes though the jungles of a remote island, where you are worshiped like a god by the natives and wrestle with dinosaurs. But then you might see Fay Wray and think to yourself, “I want some of that.” If you’re ambitious, you might succeed. Or you might find yourself on the wrong side of the Empire State Building with Fay Wray in one hand, and swatting at airplanes with the other. If you don’t try sometimes, you’ll never know what you can really achieve. The problem is that when you get too ambitious things can get out of hand. I think Black Hills suffers from too much ambition.
I’m a little reluctant to review this book here because it’s almost more historical fiction than horror or speculative fiction. There are ghosts and supernatural happenings in this book, but nothing remotely creepy or eerie. Black Hills follows the life of a Native American man around the turn of the century. As a young Lakota boy, he “counts coup” on General George Armstrong Custer at the moment the man dies, and Custer’s ghost invades his body. The boy, named Paha Sapa (the name itself meaning Black Hills in his native tongue), can also sometimes see the futures and pasts of people he touches. We follow Paha Sapa as he grows up and into old age. Being historical fiction, the book involves what was really happening in the United States at that time. Namely, Native Americans were being pushed onto reservations and/or killed. A visit is made to the famous White City of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, and later Paha Sapa works as a dynamite layer for Gutzon Borglum as he creates Mount Rushmore.
Although there are happy times in Paha Sapa’s life, Simmons chooses to focus on those times which are most tragic and the book is sometimes horrifyingly sad. We watch as Paha Sapa tries to kill himself, directly or indirectly, several times, both as a boy and an old man. Because of his ability to see the future from touching people, he accidentally witnesses the funeral of his future wife on the day he meets her. Don’t get me wrong – just because a book is sad doesn’t make it a bad book. I can name any number of sad books that I think were masterpieces. For the record, I think that many who read Black Hills might have a contrary opinion and really enjoy the book. I wasn’t won over.
For one thing, the haunting of Paha Sapa by the ghost of George Custer is unusual, and so a reader might think that it would play a large part in the goings-on of the plot. It does not, however, and for me the ghost ended up being meaningless to the story. We wait until halfway through the book before Custer and Paha Sapa finally speak to each other, and to me it seemed like they failed to develop any sort of relationship, even at the end. Instead, strangely, we are treated to Custer’s memories of having sex with his wife, Elizabeth, a lot. At one point we find them covered in buffalo blood, enjoying acrobatic sex on the back of a trotting horse. These scenes appear between chapters about Paha Sapa’s violently interrupted childhood.
Much later, Paha Sapa visits Custer’s widow when she is ninety, just before she dies. This chapter is written from the viewpoint of Custer himself and he spends most of it belittling her for how old she has become. He goes into great detail describing her wrinkles, deafness, and old lady smell. Of course it could be that I missed the point.
What all these stories have to do with each other is what escapes me.
I think this could have been a book about a psychic Native American who was unwillingly haunted by a famous killer of his people, and how their relationship changed over the one man’s life. Alternatively, Simmons could have written a book about a man’s search for peace after he lost his only son to a foreign war, in which the son fought for those who had brutalized his people and culture. OR a book about a Native American who helped build (and plotted to destroy) Mount Rushmore in the heart of the land his people held most sacred, and the racism he faced every day. OR a book about Custer’s very interesting wife and their relationship, including how they got it on, and then what his ghost might have thought if he had visited his faithful widow many decades later.
I’ve read enough of Dan Simmons and think highly enough of him that I believe he could have written any of the above books and given them the emotional depth and time they needed to be excellent. I think his main fault here is in trying to do too many things at once and as a result not doing a great job with any.
Creepy Factor: 1 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 1 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 1 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 2 out of 5
(As with some other recent books, because this book isn’t exactly in the horror genre, the numbers above are rather unkind.) To his credit, Dan Simmons takes a lot of risks with Black Hills, but I was never won over and did not end up enjoying the book. I do recommend him as an author, however.
Black Hills by Dan Simmons – Reagan Arthur Books – 2010
Buy Black Hills at Amazon
Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book. See you next time!
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Really interesting review. At the beginning it did sound like a book I would like to read but can see why the points you mention would spoil it. Maybe one to pick up if I see it in the library.
Whoa, I’ll steer clear of this one. Thanks!
Horror factor or not, I consider myself lucky to have won a copy of this novel. Really looking forward to reading it. I’m conflicted whether to start with this one or “Song of Kali”, which I also won recently.
Absolutely agree. Not enough focus on what could have been the elements of either a good horror/thriller or a good mainstream. So the book is neither one nor the other. And DROOD didn’t work for me either. Too much overwriting, not enough action/story in that one.