Review: Drood, Dan Simmons

From the back cover:

“On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, fifty-three-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 London and his deepending obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research … or something more terrifying?”

First off, I love fiction featuring my favorite authors. Considering I don’t like to know much about their lives, that’s probably weird, but I find it gives me a bit of an attachment to them right before I start off, and there’s something about watching them live again that makes it all very enticing. This is even more the case in the Victorian period because this is my absolute favorite point in literature and it just doesn’t get any better. Even more exciting, this book is narrated by Wilkie Collins, who is sadly left off many curricula because I don’t think he’s enough of a “classic” for most teachers. Regardless, I loved The Moonstone AND The Woman in White, so I was all set for this book, and it didn’t disappoint me.

I found the mystery really intriguing. Obviously, there are no ghostlike guys named Drood walking around in actual London, but this works very well as a spooky, supernatural thriller which makes you wonder what parts are real and what parts are made up. At one point, the novel moves seamlessly into a dream and had me going, “OMG!” until the author stepped back a bit and made just what was going on a little bit clearer. I thought the plot was very well-crafted, especially for such a long book. This one clocks in at 773 pages, which is much bigger than anything I’ve read in a while. I will admit that I felt sort of bogged down by its length, but I think that’s more down to my anxiety towards slimming down my TBR pile than anything wrong with the book.

I really enjoyed the characterizations as well. One can easily imagine poor Wilkie standing in the shadow of the mighty Charles Dickens, one of few brilliant authors to achieve greatness while alive, feeling sorry for himself while still admiring his talented friend. I loved describing Dickens as “the Inimitable” and overall I felt that his fictional character here was about how I’d imagined him in my head. Also fascinating were the descriptions of his readings. I’d be really intrigued to know how close these depictions are to what really happened. We must have accounts of them somewhere. I think it would be truly amazing were he to be so active despite his advancing years.

This novel is just so huge that it’s very difficult to review! I would certainly recommend it though. It’s engrossing and a fabulous way to spend some time. I’d particularly say that you should read it if you love 19th century fiction, though.

Buy Drood on Amazon.

A quick video of Dan Simmons discussing Drood:

Finally, check out the other blogs on this fantastic blog tour!

Keep on reading!:

Nymeth

February 27, 2009 at 11:53 am

I want to read this book so badly! I’m sure I’ll love it. I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it so much.

Kathy

February 27, 2009 at 1:45 pm

I couldn’t wait to see what you had to say about this book. I loved it, but had trouble expressing my thoughts because I had so many of them.

Luanne

February 27, 2009 at 2:06 pm

I loved the story but really loved all the historical detail.

Luanne’s last blog post..Little Pink House – Jeff Benedict

S. Krishna

February 27, 2009 at 4:02 pm

Great review! I’ll get to this one at some point!

S. Krishna’s last blog post..The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

Toni

February 27, 2009 at 4:25 pm

Hi..I agree.
It was a long book to review..so much to focus on! Great Post. Happy Blog Tour day!

Toni’s last blog post..Drood – Blog tour – Dan Simmons

avisannschild

February 27, 2009 at 5:15 pm

This is definitely going on my wish list! Thanks for the review.

avisannschild’s last blog post..Friday Finds (February 27)

Carey

February 27, 2009 at 5:20 pm

Great review Meghan! It is very hard to review such a huge book, I feel a bit better that I was not the only one who struggled with it. My review fell short of what I wanted to say, it was just too much (for me) to consolidate down into a coherent few paragraphs.

I felt like it took me forever to read it, though it was only about a week. Like you, I have other books awaiting and I think that pressure made it seem like it took longer.

Carey’s last blog post..Review AND Giveaway: Drood by Dan Simmons