The Mysterious Case of Book Review

Hi,

So this weekend I polished off the brick of a book that is Drood by Dan Simmons. You may remember Mr. Simmons from such books as Hyperion or Illiad or The Hollow Man. Generally he's a top-notch author and a treat to read.

Drood wanders far from the sci-fi and concerns itself mostly with an account of the last five years of Charles Dickens's life and some rather interesting and unreported events concerned with it. Our narrator is not Dickens himself, but one of his contemporaries, Willkie Collins. Mr. Collins is a brilliant author and close friend of Dickens, but he's also an opium addict and well aware that he will always live in obscurity next to Dickens.

The book opens shortly after Dickens miraculously survives a horrific train derailment on his way home from France. Miraculously, his car remains relatively intact as dozens of other cars jump the tracks and plunge over a bridge into a gap. As Dickens rushes down to provide aid to the wounded, he encounters an odd, disfigured man named Drood also helping the victims. Dickens and Collins set out to find this man and their searches take them below the London slums into the crypts and sewers of Undertown.

Slowly, and in different ways, Drood begins to exert a stronger presence in the lives of both men. They also come to the attention of an Inspector Fields who has been trying to catch Drood and shut down his evil organization for decades.

The book is really quite good. Horror and the supernatural keep lurking at the edges of the book and then just past the halfway point, the bottom drops out of everything. It's not exactly Lovecraftian (there are no dread Elder Gods and the terror doesn't stem from some incomprehensible reality), but it has elements that remind you of it.

It's a brick of a book, but it's certainly enjoyable enough and I didn't have much trouble keeping interested. Certainly worth taking a look at.

later
Tom

The Mysterious Case of Book Review

Hi,

So this weekend I polished off the brick of a book that is Drood by Dan Simmons. You may remember Mr. Simmons from such books as Hyperion or Illiad or The Hollow Man. Generally he's a top-notch author and a treat to read.

Drood wanders far from the sci-fi and concerns itself mostly with an account of the last five years of Charles Dickens's life and some rather interesting and unreported events concerned with it. Our narrator is not Dickens himself, but one of his contemporaries, Willkie Collins. Mr. Collins is a brilliant author and close friend of Dickens, but he's also an opium addict and well aware that he will always live in obscurity next to Dickens.

The book opens shortly after Dickens miraculously survives a horrific train derailment on his way home from France. Miraculously, his car remains relatively intact as dozens of other cars jump the tracks and plunge over a bridge into a gap. As Dickens rushes down to provide aid to the wounded, he encounters an odd, disfigured man named Drood also helping the victims. Dickens and Collins set out to find this man and their searches take them below the London slums into the crypts and sewers of Undertown.

Slowly, and in different ways, Drood begins to exert a stronger presence in the lives of both men. They also come to the attention of an Inspector Fields who has been trying to catch Drood and shut down his evil organization for decades.

The book is really quite good. Horror and the supernatural keep lurking at the edges of the book and then just past the halfway point, the bottom drops out of everything. It's not exactly Lovecraftian (there are no dread Elder Gods and the terror doesn't stem from some incomprehensible reality), but it has elements that remind you of it.

It's a brick of a book, but it's certainly enjoyable enough and I didn't have much trouble keeping interested. Certainly worth taking a look at.

later
Tom