I can totally see why this book won so many awards and is so well liked in the horror literary community. It’s a beast of a book and because I didn’t want to hurt my wrist reading the paperback, I got the almost 11h long audiobook to ease my travels long distance.

Summary

“We’re about to cross the point of no return. God help us; we’re flying in the dark, and we don’t know where the hell we’re going.”

Facing down an unprecedented malevolent enemy, the government responds with a nuclear attack. America as it was is gone forever, and now every citizen – from the president of the United States to the homeless on the streets of New York City – will fight for survival.

Swan Song is Robert McCammon’s prescient and shocking vision of a post-apocalyptic nation, a grand epic of terror and, ultimately, renewal.

In a wasteland born of rage and fear, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, earth’s last survivors have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil, that will decide the fate of humanity. They include Sister, who discovers a strange and transformative glass artifact in the destroyed Manhattan streets… Joshua Hutchins, the pro wrestler who takes refuge from the nuclear fallout at a Nebraska gas station… and Swan, a young girl possessing special powers, who travels alongside Josh to a Missouri town where healing and recovery can begin with Swan’s gifts. But the ancient force behind earth’s devastation is scouring the walking wounded for recruits for its relentless army, beginning with Swan herself.

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I loved The Stand so much that I read it twice. Unabridged. And read the comic stories. The Stand by Stephen King (2020 Edition). I was so excited to see that there’s a book out there who wants to rival it but instead of unleashing a lethal virus into the world, the apocalypse starts off with a nuclear war between USSR and the USA which leads to radiation poisoning and well-spread death.

Burn your dead

… the signs read where people have attempted to live again. Pestilence, famine, disease and death. Moles growing on faces where taking them out only makes them come back more aggressively. Infected water. And to make things worse, the humans are the deadliest around, inflicting pain and torture and resorting to cannibalism in some areas.

I liked the three stories converging very slowly – a woman escapes the flames in the city, a large man saves a woman, a child and old man in an old store in the middle of nowhere Kansas where the rockets are launched from. A series of survivalist nutters are trapped in a bunker in a mountain and escape to make a military dictatorship. And to make things worse, there’s a greater evil – much like Randall Flagg in The Stand.

The first part of the book – the nuclear war and the fallout – gave me goosebumps. It was amazingly written and the audio interpretation was one of the best I’ve heard in a while.

What follows next kinda dwindled my enthusiasm a little. The writing is still beautiful in spots but the large amounts of time that has passed (which made poor Josh go gray at the temples), you seem to lose the momentum of the first half of the book and it turns into season 6-11 of The Walking Dead. A lot of walking and a lot of talking.

“…the magic place of soul-soothing dreams, where the silken sheen of polished glass under soft lights made her think of how lovely Heaven was going to be.”

It’s a good analysis of what super-powers are capable of and even though it was written nearly 40 years ago, it still rings true. The bold and brassy heads of state are quick to pull the trigger once they’ve taken their families to safety. Not a lot of thought is given to the people. Food rations don’t last long, water becomes a “hot” commodity, especially clean water, bottled water or from deep wells. Toxic fumes prevent anything from growing, and starvation is a problem.

“I judge God, or the power that we know as God, to be very, very weak. A dying candle, if you like, surrounded by darkness. And the darkness is closing in.”

Now the bad parts: very religious in parts, very clichéd Good Vs Evil fight. McCammon’s devil is fairly supernaturally creepy in the early stages of the book as he sits in an untouched theatre in NYC amidst the nuclear wasteland, and during his first encounter with Sister Creep. Later in the novel, though, he seems impotent when confronting Swan, for seemingly little reason. Her ability to wield “forgiveness” had a deus ex machina smell to it.

There’s a few cringe-worthy moments, e.g. when Sister Creep is saved from a pack of wolves, not once, but twice, under increasingly improbable circumstances. And Macklin’s whole shadow-soldier business. It should have been really creepy, but instead it just felt going through the motions to apply the obvious stereotype for a post-apocalyptic warlord: psychologically unstable war vet.

“He blinked. The Shadow Soldier was smiling thinly, his face streaked with camouflage paint under the brow of his helmet.”

All in all, I’d recommend a read but I don’t think I’ll read this again. Maybe head towards The Dark Tower 3 – The Waste Lands which has a pretty good description of a post-apocalyptic town or maybe I am Legend * Robert Matheson.