Three and a half stars.Black Hills is another intelligent marathon of a book by Dan Simmons. It's actually a bit shorter than his last two, The Terror and Drood, at 500+ pages. It is also not quite as good at his last two novels but still an entertaining and impressive read. In Black Hills, Ten year old Sioux Indian Paha Saba touches General Custer at Little Big horn at the time of Custer's death and causes the boy to be haunted by his spirit. The novel follows Paha Saba throughout his life culminating in what may be his destiny at Mount Rushmore.
I found Saha Saba to be a worthy protagonist in this epic tale and instantly likeable. Yet the way Simmons tells this story is quite fragmented. He slips from one period of time to another and back. I felt I didn't have all the information I needed at times to have empathy for Paha Saba and therefore some of the book dragged. Also Custer's "ghost-voice" was not all that significant at times and often over-shadowed by Paha Saba's other psychic abilities which were more germane to the plot. Custer was also a bit of a whiner, unfortunately. As usual, Simmon's incredible research makes the novel real, especially in his depiction of tribal life and life in the Western frontier. I also found the background on the making of Mount Rushmore fascinating. Not so much the building of the Brooklyn Bride since it seemed to be research for research's sake and not all that important to the rest of the narration. Mostly though, I found the bigger-than-life Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum to be a bigger catalyst to the tale than the elusive Custer. When Borglum takes center stage, so to speak, the room lights up. By the end of the novel, I found Black Hills to be very moving, get-out-your-handkerchief material.
Overall it is a fitting addition for your collection if you like either fantasy or fictional works about American history. If not on the par with most of Simmons' other books it is still way above most literary fantasies.
