Summer of Night

Horror

First published: 1991
Print length: 555 pagesPutnam, 1991

Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, 1992

Description

In the summer of 1960, five pre-teen boys in Elm Haven, Illinois, expect weeks of freedom and deepening friendship. Their plans change when classmate Tubby Cooke disappears and they discover that other children have vanished from the town before him. The boys trace strange events to the shuttered Old Central School, where ominous holes, the appearance of a mysterious World War I soldier, and a menacing rendering truck suggest that Elm Haven’s familiar streets conceal something ancient. With adults unable or unwilling to recognize the threat, the friends must pool their courage and knowledge before the evil gathering beneath the town reaches their families and community. Dan Simmons combines coming-of-age intimacy with expansive supernatural horror, making childhood loyalty the defense against inherited darkness.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Descriptive · Direct

Pace

Moderate

Tone

Dark · Eerie · Frightening · Suspenseful

Structure

Linear

Focus

Atmosphere · Plot · Relationships

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

Coming of ageCommunityFamilyFriendshipLegacySurvival

About Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons was an American novelist whose career ranged across science fiction, horror, fantasy, historical fiction, mysteries, and thrillers. A former public-school teacher, he first developed his craft in short stories before turning to novels and writing full time. His best-known science fiction, the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycle, shows his preference for large imagined systems, layered narratives, and characters moving through conflicts shaped by technology, religion, and political power. The same expansive method informs his horror. Carrion Comfort connects supernatural predation to organized historical violence, while The Terror places an uncanny threat within the physical ordeal of a stranded Arctic expedition. Simmons’s prose is typically dense, descriptive, and atmospheric, with plot, ideas, and world-building carrying comparable weight. Literary traditions are part of his working material rather than ornamental references: Dante, Eliot, Shakespeare, Hopkins, and the First World War poets recur in titles, names, structures, and themes. His fiction is distinguished by this combination of genre scale, historical texture, and sustained literary engagement.

Series

Seasons of Horror · Book 1

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Putnam
Language: English
ISBN: 9780399135736

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