Drood: A Novel
Dan Simmons | 2009-02-09 00:00:00 | Little, Brown and Company | 784 | Historical
On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens--at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world--hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.
Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of
Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), DROOD explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, DROOD is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.
Reviews
The positives: A fascinating concept, the inter-action between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, from Collins' opium-addled perspective. Collins' rather exotic personal life in and of itself is novel-worthy.
The negatives: disjointed, repetitive, and lacking a central theme with a clear resolution. MAYBE we are seeing the world through the eyes of someone whose mind is deteriorating over time. Maybe that's why there are things that just aren't logical. Without attempting to spoil the story, let's just give an example. In one chapter there is a clear and unequivocal murder, and in the next chapter the characters are conversing as if nothing had ever happened. There is no attempt to resolve or explain this.
As a Dickens and Collins fan, I came to this book prepared to like it. I enjoyed about the first third, but when it became clear that there was never going to be any resolution to the mysteries posed, I found the entire experience unsatisfying.
Reviews
I really wanted to like this book, because I think Dan Simmons is (or used to be) such a good writer. However, in this book he suffers the same failure of nerve he exhibited in "The Terror", which is a refusal to actually commit to a horror novel. This is a shame, because he can be so effective in that genre; "A Winter Haunting" is one of the best ghost stories I have ever read. However, after wading through more than half of this immense tome, I have given up out of boredom. Unless you're really, really interested in the minutia of the last five years of the life of Charles Dickens, this book will disappoint. Reading it for the few morsels of horror or even suspense contained in it is like being a kid and having to eat the whole box of corn flakes to get the small prize hidden somewhere inside. Not worth the effort, and life is too short.
Reviews
I was sufficiently enthralled with this book to read it in a long weekend but I suspect what I have to say about it in reflection, good and bad, is probably going to mirror what others have already reported.
Drood, with its focus on the inimitable Charles Dickens and the world of his era, is firstly a meticulous immersion into London of the 1860s, complete with sights, smells, sounds, tastes, the customs, morals, manners and personages. In Drood one tromps through graveyards and crypts and opium dens, goes backstage in gas-lit theaters, joins the Dickens household for Christmas dinners, travels on trains and coaches, experiences mesmerism, and gets to know (or at least comes to feel one knows) some of the leading literary figures of the time. What one does not get to do is have the central questions of the tale answered, and I doubt it's much of a spoiler to say that. Drood held my attention and it captured me to the point I did not put it down, even after I realized it was not going to resolve itself in the way I had hoped it would. A brooding aura of gloom and menace is well captured by its author's prose, which usually sounds authentically Victorian and contains many nice moments that contrast the psychological differences in that time and our own.
Alas Drood is also a dreadful slander upon the character of Wilkie Collins, Dickens friend and sometimes professional collaborator, and it is a book which outlasts its quivering plot. Drood also fails miserably when it comes to explaining those central aspects which the book should have been about. I think overall the most charitable assessment of the novel is that it works best when thought of as a long trip toward a destination which stands as less important than the scenic voyage itself.
Drood was not what I thought it would be, or wanted it to be, but I have no regrets about reading it and am still contemplating certain elements within the story that...really have no other explanation beyond the ones intelligently assigned in afterthought. If Drood would have been a "better" work at a shorter length, then it must be said that at 500 pages it would also have surrendered much of its overall impact as a sort of time traveling experience. If Drood turns the drug addicted Wilkie Collins into a thoroughly dislikable soul, jealous and bitter and much like Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, then it also makes Charles Dickens that much human and knowable, and ultimately more admirable for his genius as well as his character.
Drood isn't everything it should have been but it was still a lot of fun to read!
Reviews
Dan Simmons is an author that I really struggle with personally. His Hyperion series is one of the best things that I have ever read, and I always pick up his new book when they come out. In a lot of ways Drood is similar to some of Dan's other recent works: The Terror, Ilium, and Olympos - each of these books are some twist on a tale from history (the Franklin Expedition, the Iliad, the life and times of Charles Dickens) - spun way, way out there into something fresh and creative.
Drood is another fresh and creative semi-historical fiction from Simmons - concentrating on the secret, dark life of Charles Dickens and his relationship with a very creepy individual named Drood. The book is told through the eyes of Wilkie Collins, a jealous and opiate-addicted competitor of Dickens, with some real problems of his own. I think this is a fantastic premise for a book, and I couldn't wait to read this one.
While this book is alright, it is also deeply flawed. I am not exaggerating in any way when I say that 400 pages of this book should have been cut, and it would have been a far greater story. I'm not sure why Simmons feels the need to always write these massive tomes lately, but personally I feel he could really benefit from a more aggressive editor. If you're interested in getting started with Simmons, then definitely do NOT start with Drood. Check out the Hyperion series, I can recommend those books much more than I can recommend this one.
Reviews
Others have already expressed how I feel, so I will only summarize by saying: this book has a fantastic idea and a few chilling chapters, but is otherwise a bore.
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