Flame of Eden (Kadokawa Bunko) (1998) ISBN: 4042711057 [Japanese Import]

By Dan Simmons

Book Overview

By overdeveloping Mauna Pele, a resort on the Kona Coast of Hawaii, billionaire Byron Trumbo has unwittingly reopened a centuries-old battle between Pele, goddess of volcanoes, and her immortal... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback Bunko
• ISBN: 4042711057
• ISBN13: 9784042711056
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten

Customer Reviews

Not his best, but still good

Knowing what I know of the writing of Dan Simmons, I expected this to be a science-fiction novel when I picked it up a couple of years ago. I never even read the synopsis, and promptly forgot I owned it. Turns out I was about as far off as i could be. I wouldn't exactly call it fantasy, and I wouldn't exactly call it horror, and I wouldn't exactly call it an environmental novel (though that's probably closest to the truth, with shades of such ecodisaster scenarios Prophecy, the Godzilla movies, and suchlike running through it). It has aspects of all of them, but never turns into a full-blown anything, preferring to defy categorization like many of Simmons' best books do. Byron Trumbo is a billionaire with an attitude, a pending divorce, two young lovers who don't know about each other, and a money-pit Hawaiian resort he's trying to palm off on a group of Japanese investors who want to make it into a golf club. The problem is, people keep disappearing at Mauna Pele, and pieces of them turn up at the worst possible times. Add to this two intrepid adventurers who have come to Mauna Pele for different reasons (spoilers, again...) and who band together to try and solve the murders, an overly curious treehugger art curator who was hired after threatening to sue Trumbo for bulldozing over duck ponds, a crazed, murderous Hawaiian separatist, and a dimwitted pair of security guards, and the scene is set for a rollicking good time. All of the major characters are well-done and believable, if a little over the top sometimes (while I'm not usually one to balk at such things, the seemingly constant use of profanity in the book threw me for a loop; I could have done with less of it). Add cuts where we read sections of the main character's great-great-aunt's diary; the main character, Eleanor, is following in her aunt's footsteps, recreating a journey Aunt Kidder took with Samuel Clemens to the volcanoes on the Big Island (back when Americans knew Hawaii as the Sandwich Islands). This was one of the conceits that annoyed me in the book, and it wouldn't have annoyed me if it hadn't been done so many times: we find ourselves at a cliffhanger and the diary narration takes over again. The first time, I liked it. The second time, I liked it. The third time, I liked it a little less. And so on. However, that was the only real mark against the novel, and I have to say it certainly held my interest up to the very last page. Definitely worth looking out for.

You will not regret reading this book!

I found this book at a Borders just after I finished Children of the Night by Dan Simmons. The man is such a brilliant author. This book is fascinating and worth looking for. Mark Twain pops up as a main character. After reading this book, I can't help but watch a Discovery channel program about volcanoes and Pele. Simmons is mesmirizing and hypnotic. Read any of his books. This book is over 500 pages and I finished it in 3 days, I could not put it down!

Great research, good storytelling.

While this story is certainly well crafted, and is the best modernized version of Hawaiian myth I've ever read, its ending is awfully formulaic for a writer who's created such masterpieces in the past. Simmons does prove here that he can tell a "double story" as well as anyone, skipping back and forth between the present and the past.