Children of the Night

By: Dan Simmons

Narrated by: George Ralph

Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

In a desolate orphanage in what remains of post-Communist Romania, a desperately ill infant is given the wrong blood transfusion - and flourishes when he's supposed to die. The discovery of his unique immune system may hold the key to the long-awaited cure for cancer and AIDS.

For a dedicated American doctor, he promises the medical breakthrough of a lifetime, as well as a very special love she's never been able to find. But he also conceals a shockingly intimate link to a clan of vampires and their legendary leader - the fiend the world calls Vlad Dracula, who, for centuries, has triumphed over countless rival tyrants, including death itself.

©2008 Dan Simmons (P)2008 Brilliance Audio

Critic reviews

"Count Dracula kicks off the coffin lid again in this updated vampire tale....the book offers a mesmerizing tour through the ghostly, gray tatters of Romania." (Publishers Weekly)
"Neatly ties the vampire legend into political history to create a new and clever twist to the idea of the vampire's craving for blood." (Library Journal)
"Toothsomely well written." (Kirkus Reviews)

Needs a New Recording

Many reviewers have complained about Ralph's narration, but I think the problem is more with the recording than the narrator. The audio has a faded/muffled quality to it, like it was transferred from an older recording. I had to turn the volume almost to max to hear him. Audible should either refine the audio, or do a fresh recording.

needs a different reader

I read the print version a few years ago & quite enjoyed it. When I got the audiobook, I was looking forward to many hours' worth of chores being vastly more entertaining....but. The audio version bogs down occasionally, such as during the longer, more detailed CDC research discussions (& I'm a biologist & researcher myself!). The real problem with the audio version is the narrator. Mr Ralph has one of those whiskey/smoky gruff voices which I usually like, but his leaves me wanting to cough & clear my throat repeatedly. Also, he never pauses at appropriate spots --such as when between chapters or drastic scene jumps-- and it can leave the listener disoriented for a moment. Worst of all, when he alters his voice for the male characters, some end up sounding just like Rodney Dangerfield. I kept waiting for ex-husband Tom, who shows up a lot, to say "I don't get no respect!" or "Take my wife --please!" Jerks one out of the dark, suspenseful world of the book, to say the least.

Lots of history and violence

Too violent for my taste, but because the episodes of violence were well-researched and based on historical accounts, I stuck with it to the end. Dan Simmons is a master story-teller, so the history-based tale of Vlad Dracula and Romania is woven into an engaging story of the 20th century “family.”

A good book!

this book was really interesting and well researched for a work of fiction. enjoyable listen

Not bad

I absolutely love Dan Simmons, and while this was interesting it definitely isn't one of his best works.

Excellent!

Love the characters and plot, and ending. Appreciate historical accuracy, wonnderful landscapes and plot twits

Gory story meets Chick Lit

This is like two books in one. You got this really gross gory story about Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) and then you have this chick story. They are thrown together, but not very well. I understand that DS has researched his stuff and this is kind of a historical fiction. I was turned off from the start, as DS decides that he must put down rich people who go to foreign countries to adopt children. He insults them several times in the first nine chapters and then his main character adopts a child from Romania! He goes into long boring descriptions of a lot of things. Parts of the book are as dry as reading Scientific America. I guess he wants everyone to know that he actually visited the area or that he can read a map, as there are a couple of parts of the book where they main characters take trips and we get a run down of the seven or eight highways they are going to take and when they are blocked the back roads they must take. There is one good sex scene which takes place between the main character and a priest. Most of the parts about Kate read like something from chick lit, while the parts about Vlad are quite the opposite. Warning when the narrator headlines Dreams of Blood and Iron, beware that a lot of very gross stuff is about to happen. I am always amazed at how cruel humans can be to each other. Vlad, who is several centuries old laughs at Hitler, as he is nowhere near as cruel as Vlad is and I have to agree. I probably should not admit that these were my favorite parts of the book. If he had just stuck to the story of Vlad the book would have been much much better. I never really cared for Kate. The narrator takes some getting used to, he is nowhere close to the late Frank Muller. Sometimes he gets his voice for his characters mixed up and all the males sound like biker dudes.

Good read

Would you consider the audio edition of Children of the Night to be better than the print version?

I haven't read the print version, but I laughed when I read Kelly Howard's review after I finished it because I kept thinking Rodney Dangerfield too. I also felt that the reader didn't pause enough between chapters and scenes and it really left me unbalanced at times.

What did you like best about this story?

It was a new twist on the Dracula story and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Dan Simmons is one of my new favorite authors.

HELL

Ms Cobel*said “The good news is Hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination. The bad news is whatever humans can imagine they can usually create.”

Dan Simmons’ lengthy tome is about 1/2 adventure, murder, plotting, love and romance and 1/2 true tales of human atrocity recounted in Simmons fertile prose.

I actually hated this novel, start to finish.
But I finished it. Dan Simmons is one of the great novelists. His storytelling ability: the diversity of voice, mode and manner, is unmatched.

There is much ( too much) I did not want to know about brutality, particularly the extreme brutality that existed behind the Cold-War iron curtain. I felt compelled to listen to Children of the Night because there are forces at work in the world today acting on a desire to return to the ‘former glory’ that created fertile ground for the atrocities of the Romanian Ceausescu Regime.
We should remember this.


*Ms. Cobel is a character in ‘’Severance’, a current streaming series. Those words perfectly framed this novel for me.

excellent story

Would you listen to Children of the Night again? Why?

I read this book back in the 90's and decided to reread the book, but this time on audible. The story is just as sharp as it was 25 years ago. I loved it. I get odd jobs done I hate to do while listening to good books and it makes the job a breeze. I highly recommend this story.