A fictional account of the last 5 years of Charles Dickens life. I enjoy the storyline, but the book dragged in too many details that weren't applicable to the story. ( )

Drood, a name that strikes fear into well known Victorian author Wilkie Collins. Plagued by horrible bouts of gout, ever on the brink of paranoid delusions, the once famous author pens down his perspective on the last years of Charles Dickens' life. Starting innocently with descriptions of shared Christmas feasts and collaborations on famous works of fiction, the relationship and the health of both writes rapidly deteriorates towards the latter part of Dickens' life. The menacing thread weaving all the events together stares at us from the pages with lidless eyes and a mesmerizing stare. Drood, was the last fictional villain of the king of Melodrama: Charles Dickens. Did he really exist or was he such a vivid part of Dickens' imagination that his closest friend Wilkie Collins believed in his existence?

Even as I was reading the large book called Drood by Dan Simmons I kept being confused as to the point of the book. At the same time I was enjoying the free form and unrestricted writing style that kept me interested in a character who by his own admission is very boring. It must be said that after having finished this work it appealed to me. From the very beginning of the first person told narrative we figure out that our narrator, the famous novelist Wilkie Collins, is very much an unreliable narrator. At first and even much later on knowing that none of what the author through the narrator describes might be real gets to be fairly frustrating. I asked myself: what's the point of taking in all these facts when I do not know if they really happened. In fact, knowing that the narrator did not know himself what was real and what wasn't contributed to the frustrations. Again, after having read the whole novel I must say it is quite a good book.

Through many pages Simmons describes in detail the importance of 'Perspective' At first I thought the novel would go into issues of identity, something that the real Wilkie Collins struggled with. True enough there is much of that in the book and we get a strong sense of Collin's character and how he may have felt towards his friend Charles Dickens. As other reviewers have noted, the book suffers from the same faults as Wilkie Collin's original works. Many details and short trips into irrelevant side stories make this book sometimes difficult to get through. Having said that I sense that Mr. Simmons is learning this particular genre and complexity that comes with the for of narration. As such he's doing a fine job and I think his next works will show great improvements.

My guess is that there are a number of similarities that Mr. Simmons noticed between the life of Charles Dickens, the life of Wilkie Collins and the literary output of both, when researching Drood. He made use of these findings in setting up the main plot devices in this novel. For example, Wilkie Collins was known to suffer from vivid hallucinations and had a friend/enemy relationship with the more accomplished Dickens. In Drood it is suggested that Dickens, who had a known fascination with magnetic mesmerism, had been the inspiration of Collin's The Moonstone in which the protagonist commits a crime of which he has no memory. A theme that re-occurs over and over again in Drood. Utimately it feels as though the author has put too much pressure and emphasis on these links and as such a certain flow and character interaction has suffered.

All in all I must say this was a good book with mesmerizing effects. The use of an unreliable narrator has been put to a use and form I had not seen before and as such makes the work quite original.

As a side note, I did find a couple of grammatical errors in the book. Too much to be comfortable with. ( )

Hmmm. I really, really, really wanted to love this book. I enjoyed The Terror, and this one has some similarities. It's very long! It's very well researched, with a lot of historical detail. And of course it has a horror/fantastical element that, like the polar bear in The Terror, shows up occasionally but is not really the main focus of the book. Drood felt more disjointed, though, more hit-and-miss. I think that's because The Terror tells a fascinating, gripping account about the doomed Franklin expedition. It's exciting and dramatic and scary even without the polar bear. But without Drood, this book is about...two middle-aged Victorian bigamist writers. Simmons certainly did his homework, including an incredible amount of detail. But do we really care about all the luminaries who had Christmas dinner at Dickens' house in 1867? Or the minutiae of the publishing deals in the UK and the US for Collins' "Moonstone"? The scary parts were definitely scary and dramatic, but they were very few and far between.

Then there's the fact that Simmons has taken tremendous liberties with both Dickens and Collins. I am no expert, so I'm unclear on fact versus fiction. However, I'm reasonably certain that Collins never murdered anyone, and Dickens did not mesmerize anyone for five years! As a result, this book feels less like historical fiction that Real People Fic. (IYKYK.) And I just don't like Simmons' characterization of Collins especially. I am one of those people who thinks Collins is a better writer than Dickens, and one of the things I love about him is his portrayal of women and of women's issues. But Simmons basically turns Collins on his head, so that for example, "Man and Wife" (which I have not yet read) is not really about a woman trapped in an abusive marriage, but is instead about men being trapped by women into marriage -- ???? Neither Dickens nor Collins were saints, but Collins in particular is so misogynistic in this novel, it's really off-putting.

So the horror element is sporadic and not well-integrated. The book combines minute historical detail with broad artistic liberties. Overall, it's just not very well constructed and is truly a slog to get through, and worse, the ending is confusing and unsatisfying. I had been inclined to rate this four stars, but about 4/5 of the way through, I thought Simmons might end this in a really clever and inspired way that would bump it up to 5. But instead, the ending is such a hot mess, I dropped it to three. There were parts of this book I greatly enjoyed, but in the end I just can't recommend it to anyone. And now I think I will definitely skip his Mt Everest book. ( )

One of my all time favourite books. A fictional account told by Wilkie Collins about on the latter part of Charles Dickens' life which introduces a malignant, supernatural character known as Drood which inspires Dickens to compose his final novel.

A wonderful blend of fact and fiction, with Simmons keeping things cleverly veiled as Collins wonders whether Drood is real or an opium phantasm. A deep exploration of the relationship Dickens has with Collins his mistresses, but also the connection he had with the deeper underbelly of London - which is both haunting and beautifully described.
But what Simmons does best, is bring his historical charatcers to life and Dickens is perhaps his most triumphant achievement in this field, accurately bringing Dicken's eccentric and colourful personality out in way no other fiction or biography has captured.

I love the Terror - a book I rate as one of the all time great novels - and found some value in The Abominable. But, Drood is perhaps the one that clicked the most with. A dark, brooding and gothic masterpiece, it's also a long, slow book which might not click with everyone, but one I felt more than earned its time with me. ( )

I loved listening to this book on a recent trip. While I really didn't desire to know anything really about opium, I loved listening to the reader...great, great voice! Ending a bit predictable. ( )

DNF. Started this because I thought it would be a continuation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, or at least related to that story. Not. At. All. So I was disappointed by that, so much so that it colored my whole reading experience. Why even bring Drood in at all? I think the story would have benefited by naming the Drood character something else entirely, because there's absolutely no connection to the unfinished novel.

I enjoy both Dickens and Collins as novelists, and I know something of their individual and shared histories. In this case, the burden of knowledge really interfered with my enjoyment of Drood. Plus, I just found narrative to be plodding and the characters unlikable. I've enjoyed other Simmons books but this was a miss for me. ( )

I enjoyed the factual items included about Dickens and Collins but felt that the plot could have been tighter. Employing a narrator who cannpt be trusted is a time honored tradition and I loved the idea of using Wilkie collins as such, but was aghast at the result. I admit, I am biased. I remember reading my first Wilkie Collins the summer between 8th grade and high-school and it was such a joy. I object to his portrayal in the book, mainly because it is well researched and I fear people could take some of the fiction seriously because it is couched in so much fact. ( )

On the face of it, a book about the 'true' story behind the unfinished 'Mystery of Edwin Drood' which Dickens was halfway through when he died, sounded interested. The story is narrated by Wilkie Collins, known for 'The Lady in White' and 'The Moonstone', being a memoir which he intends should be read only long after his death in the 1880s. For this reason, he often addresses the 'Dear Reader' he imagines will read this in the future.

One unfortunate glitch early on and throughout is the use of American terms by a nineteenth century Englishman: sidewalk instead of pavement, drapes instead of curtains and various others including gotten, the use of which died out well before the nineteenth century. So that was irritating.

It's hard to review this book because it encompasses so many things. The core is the relationship between the younger, forty-something, Collins and Dickens who is about a decade older. Despite what appears to be a warm friendship on the surface - the two men went on various adventures together when they were younger and Collins is a frequent visitor to Dickens' home - Collins is eaten up with envy which develops into a hatred of Dickens that eventually becomes potentially murderous. His character is chockful of flaws, including casual racism (possibly endemic for that era so not unique to him) and misogyny - to him, women are animalistic and bovine - and he has a serious laudanum and opium addiction which worsens over time and eventually involves morphine prescribed by his doctor for his rheumatic gout.

Given that he is drinking enough laudanum to kill anyone who hasn't built up his tolerance level, and pays regular visits to opium dens, he is an unreliable narrator par excellence. Eventually it becomes impossible to believe anything he tells the reader because it becomes so extreme. He is also repellent as a character, especially to anyone with sympathy for either animals or downtrodden individuals such as his common law wife or the servants.

Another issue is that the writing is turgid - if meant to be an imitation of the style of Dickens etc, it doesn't come over as that. Whenever he mentions anybody, Collins gives their entire name, multiple times within a scene, and everything is spelled out repetitively, with constant reminders about things already mentioned, as if the author is being paid by the word. All this contributes to a book that is nearly 900 pages long, and has no need to be - it would have benefited from a lot of judicious editing. There are some powerful scenes of action, but most of the story is so overworked that it becomes tedious, especially with the unnecessary background research recounted in practically every scene. The style and info-dumping more or less kill any suspense that might otherwise attend the appearances of the supernatural Drood and his followers. And the scene on the stairwell involving a certain luckless maidservant is more reminiscent of 'Alien' than anything and has no explanation whatsoever.

I checked Wikipedia to see if any of it had a basis in fact: Collins did live with a widow called Caroline and her daughter, and would not marry her, and she did marry a man with the same name as her second husband in the book, but returned to Collins. Frankly, given how in the book he engineers for her to have such an unhappy marriage, that fails to convince, but of course the real story must have been quite different. He also had children with another woman, as in the novel, but Wikipedia disagrees on the number and gender. And the material on the ex-police chief Charles Field doesn't square with the facts, since he died four years after Dickens, not before him, and only had his pension suspended for four months - reinstated by the Home Secretary because he had already given up the private enquiry work to which the authorities objected.

The problem I find most extreme is that, if Dickens' apology late on in the book is meant to be "true" in the context of the story, it's difficult to know what actually does and doesn't happen. This makes the whole story rather meaningless. At the end, having forced myself through the last two or three hundred pages just to find out what happened, it wasn't at all clear if Collins broke the 'spell' he had been under. Given that I found the book so disappointing, I can only give it one star. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2023/11/review-of-drood-by-dan-simmons.html ( )

Wonderfully Written, but not enough story in between the asides to really feel substantial. The ending feels like a letdown. Sadly the first Dan Simmons book I haven't been captivated by ( )

I like Dan Simmons.. I did not like this. I just got really tired of the rambling, opiate induced, untrustworthy narrative. ( )

Ik heb erg lang over dit boek gedaan. Dat lag niet zozeer aan mijn interesse, want ik vind het een ijzersterk verhaal. De plot is intrigerend en vol verrassingen. De karakters zijn niet echt aardig, maar wel zeer interessant. Het verhaal zette me geregeld op het verkeerde been en blijft tot op het laatst mysterieus. Maar het tempo is wat traag en daar had ik zo af en toe wel last van. Dat is de enige reden dat het geen 5 sterren zijn geworden. ( )

I love Dickens. Having read the unfinished [Mystery of Edwin Drood] this year, I decided to try Simmons' take on the mystery and his take on Dickens' writing of it. I didn't much enjoy the last Simmons I read, but thought the subject matter would ameliorate the bad taste that one left on my reading palate. No such luck - Simmons tries to out-Dickens Dickens, to disastrous results. In the process, he sullies the characters of both Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Honestly, anyone who read this one would never go on to try Collins work, which would be a shame. The plot is over-sensationalized and meandering to the point of distraction. Not one character survives with a scintilla of good will. it's just a disaster.

2 bones!! ( )

Whoa. I have read quite a bit of Dan Simmons over the years, and truly enjoyed much of it, but this ... is dire. Really, really dire. The characters are flat, the action forced and preposterous. Everything is just that much too much, and in (to me) entirely muddle-headed directions of much-ness. Reading it, I feel like I'm wading through an Indiana Jones movie -- but one of the not-very-good ones like, say, Temple of Doom. No subtlety, no sense of truly *felt* reality. Can printed words be made with unconvincing CGI?

A small example is when, early in the book, narrator Wilkie Collins stops for a meal and tells the reader "[t]onight I decided to dine relatively lightly" -- then proceeds to list a ginormous number of dishes, courses, etc. Oh, ha, ha, ha. Very subtle humor: thump, thump, thump on the top of the head. Now imagine 800+ pages of such subtlety. It makes the MCU look positively urbane by comparison.

I have to put this one down and go over to my library to pull out something artful.

What happened here, Dan? ( )

It's been some years since I read this book, but it's still one of those that I remember quite well because I liked the story so much. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens was never finished and this book tells about how Charles Dickens become obsessed with the mysterious being called Drood. It's a thick book, but well-written and fascinating to read. Simmons capture the atmosphere of the late 1900-centery very well. The story is dark and mysterious and keeps you captivated. ( )

After being directly involved in a train accident in 1865, Charles Dickens is never quite the same. Claiming to have come into brief contact with a dark fellow by the name of Drood while assisting with the aftermath of the accident, he shares his story with fellow writer and friend Wilkie Collins. However, it is Collins who seems to carry the tale of Drood with him, day in and day out, haunting both his daytime and nighttime dreams. Told from the viewpoint of Wilkie Collins, the reader never quite knows what is real and what is fabrication or delusion.

I'm familiar with Charles Dickens of course, but I've not actually read any of his works. Ditto with Wilkie Collins. Thus, I've not read the Mystery of Edwin Drood. And so I'm certainly not the best person to review this book. However, I recently read another book centered on Drood (Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens), and having this audiobook by Dan Simmons on my shelf for quite some time, I thought it might be a good follow-up to my previous read, as some details from that still stick in my mind.

I confess to not really knowing anything about Wilkie Collins other than that he wrote The Woman in White. So I didn't have any background on the man himself going in. I was frankly appalled by his characterization in this book -- very unlikeable in general and chauvinistic toward women (though I get that this was likely a characteristic of that time period). Also a laudanum and opium addict. Were all of these qualities true of the real Wilkie Collins? I suspect perhaps yes, though I don't know that for sure. Anyway, it was hard to feel any sympathy for him as the narrator. I did have trouble getting into this book. It seemed long and slow-moving and overly detailed. But again, that's typical of Victorian literature, and though Dan Simmons is a contemporary writer, I do feel he captured the time period well. There was creepiness in this story and a bit of the macabre. And I was never certain if Collins was retelling fact or if he was going mad and/or under the influence of laudanum. It was all a bit murky, though I'm sure it was purposefully written that way in order to keep the reader guessing. I'm sure I would've appreciated this novel more had I been familiar with Dickens' story of Drood, so I'd definitely recommend reading that prior to diving into this one. ( )

I wouldn't have kept going if it wasn't such a fun read, but I do feel a bit cheated. I wonder if Wilkie Collins really imbibed so much laudanum, and that's as close to a spoiler as I'm going to get.
Fantastic period detail and oh my, the squalor. So much squalor.
( )

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Title: Drood
Series: ----------
Author: Dan Simmons
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Horror
Pages: 725
Words: 281K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia & Me

The book is a fictionalized account of the last five years of Charles Dickens' life told from the viewpoint of Dickens' friend and fellow author, Wilkie Collins. The title comes from Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The novel's complex plot mixes fiction with biographical facts from the lives of Dickens, Collins, and other literary and historical figures of the Victorian era, complicated even further by the narrator's constant use of opium and opium derivatives such as laudanum, rendering him an unreliable narrator.

Collins narrates the story of how Dickens met a strange fellow named Drood at a railroad accident. Dickens is convinced that Drood is some sort of evil incarnate while Collins is pretty sure Dickens is just being Dickens.

As time passes however, Collins is no longer so sure that Dickens was wrong. Dragged along by Dickens in his quest to find Drood and uncover the mystery of who he is and what his goals are, Collins becomes a pawn of the mysterious Drood. Drood is King of the Underworld and a practitioner of dark arts lost since the times of the Pharoahs. At the same time Collins is also wooed by one Inspector Fields, a former head of Scotland Yard who is convinced that Drood has killed over 300 people and plans on some sort of supernatural takeover of London.

Caught up in his own literary world, Collins must contend with Drood, Fields, the success of Dickens and his own increasing use of drugs such as laudanum, opium and morphine to combat the pain and hallucinations brought about by syphilis and the scarab beetle put into his brain by Drood to control him. With the death of Dickens, Collins is sure that Drood will leave him alone, even though Dickens revealed to him that everything that had gone on before was a combination of mesmerism, hypnotic suggestion and drugs, all as an experiment on Dickens part and making use of Collins.

Collins knows better though and even though he outlives Dickens by many years, the shade of Drood haunts him to the end.

My Thoughts:

I went into this completely blind. I was hoping for a completion of Dickens' unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This was not that book. This was the syphilitic hallucinatory ramblings of an opium and morphine addict.

There were times that the narrator would talk for a whole chapter and then at the beginning of the next chapter you realized that the entire thing had happened in his head, or in his opium dreams or was just a wish fulfillment on his part. It was disturbing to say the least and by the end of the book I was having bad dreams. I didn't realize it, but this WAS horror and it affected me as such. Not your gruesome 80's slasher kind of horror, but the invisible dread that hovers over your soul kind of horror. While I've read some of Simmons SF, I'd never sampled his horror offerings. After this, I won't be trying out anything else by him.

With all of that, this was fantastically written, kept me glued to the pages and even though an unreliable narrator tends to send me into the screaming heeby jeeby rants I never once thought of stopping. Simmons kept me reading page after page like he had inserted a magic beetle of his own into MY brain. And that was disturbing to me too.

I think that some familiarity with Wilkie Collins' works, at least his Moonstone, would help a lot. Since this is a fictionalized account, I'm not sure that too much knowledge would actually help as the confusion between fiction and reality would make this even more of a psychedelic read. Unless you LIKE having your mind messed with, then by all means, dive into this head first and see what happens.

As a completion to The Mystery of Edwin Drood this was a complete failure. As a standalone horror story, it was a complete success. I shall try my hand again at finding another “ending” to the Mystery. I have my eye on one by David Madden but considering it was never released as an ebook, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a hold of it. If you've heard of any other books or authors who tried to complete the Mystery, let me know please.

★★★★☆ ( )

Possibly the most unlikable characters I have encountered in a book in a long time. There were no positive or likable characters in this book. Not one.

I've never been a Dickens fan and am always prepared to be disgusted when he pops up in any discussion or review. This book only deepened my dislike of the man and his works.

However. The book is told through the eyes of one character. Wilkes is disgustingly snobbish, possibly psychotic, definitely hallucinating, a junky, and he is completely unreliable both as a character and a narrator. He is utterly repulsive. The lower he sinks into addiction and hedonism the more his delusions and narcissism floats.

He will now sit on a shelf next to Patrick Bateman. Bravo to Dan Simmons for creating him.

The settings for the book were well written, as was the plot. The plot is the very tricky bit and it's handled wonderfully. The book is very readable. Everything moves along nicely, the action is layered with a deepening disquiet and darkening of the settings.

Really liked this one! ( )

This is an ambitious book, even by Simmons' standard - indeed, probably by anyone's standard. Like most books that try to acheive so much, it is flawed, but by setting the sights to such a long range Simmons fires his book so far ahead of the majority of perfectly realised but narrowly circumscribed books that he can be forgiven for not quite hitting the _target. So what was he aiming for and how close did he get?

Drood is written as if it is a memoir written by Wilkie Collins and then sealed until after his death. The memoir deals with strange events in the lives of himself and Charles Dickens, during Dickens' last five or so years of life. These events are connected to the mysterious Drood, who shares a name with the titular character of Dickens' unfinished final novel. The memoir attempts to keep to the known history of the period and of Collins and Dickens. It also attempts to mimic the "sensational" style of story told by Collins in his novels, plays and stories. The book is a mystery - just as Collins' pioneering The Moonstone is - and also a study in character creation. It's a historical novel and a supernatural story, too, and an examination of creative rivalry, friendship, hatred, madness and the works of Collins and Dickens.

Starting with the failures, Simmons sometimes uses words or phrases that are anachronistic or foreign: "Gotten" appears once - I think this had faded from use in Britain before the 1850s, though it appeared in Defoe's Moll Flanders in the previous century. "London Times" appears once, though "The Times" is used in every other instance - I blame the editor, who should have spotted the inconsistency. "Drapes" and "sidewalk" haven't appeared in any genuine Victorian fiction I've read and I doubt anybody used the phrase "city blocks" either but the worst, most horrible, glaring offence against accurate usage of the place and period is when Simmons mistakes Britain for England and thereby makes Sir Walter Scott English. Harumph! This occurs very early on and it sensitised me to the whole issue of accurate usage which didn't help Simmons' cause. Now Simmons is an American, so the audacity required to attempt to write a book not merely from the perspective of a Briton, but a Victorian Briton, too, is enormous and he gets it right far more than he gets it wrong but still, the errors stand out to a British reader: I would love it if the author would introduce a second edition of the novel that corrects these distracting errors.

An issue that many might consider a theme of Simmons' writing is, in my view, becoming a liability; this is Simmons' urge to pass off literary criticism as fiction in his books. It's not entirely absent from any of the Simmons books I've read (approx. 10) and in some cases it becomes a bore and throws one out of the story altogether. Usually this lit. crit. is put convincingly in the voice of characters but in some cases it descends into obvious authorial voice opinion expression seated unnaturally in dialogue passages or reveries. In this case, there is one passage about Dickens' Our Mutual Friend that really should have been saved for the lecture theatre. I am also developing something of a feeling that Simmons might not be celebrating literature so much as showing off about how well-read he is. Some of your readers have read some famous books, too, you know, Dan! That said, Simmons books do usually leave me with an urge to read one or more of the authors he has been discussing (unless it's Proust, in which case he just makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs and never go near a copy of any of his works).

The central mystery of Drood is pretty mysterious but I was disappointed to find that I was fairly close to being correct when the revelation finally came. There were also periods when the book became a little dull as nothing apparently relating to this central mystery seemed to be occurring.

So that was the bad: here's the don't knows: Simmons obviously wished to write believably as if Collins was the author, i.e. to mimic his style and I cannot judge how successful he was in this, apart from the general slip-ups mentioned above; nor do I know how historically accurate the verifiable events are. I also do not know if his depictions of the historically real characters correspond with opinion expressed at the time.

Moving on to the successes:
The "sensational" passages of the story are truely delightful; the early scene of the train crash and the first visit to Undertown are excellent and a number of other scenes stand out. (Wilkie vs. The Entity is another personal favourite.)

The characterisation is excellently realised - Collins and Dickens are as real seeming, complex and believable as any denizens of the pages of novels. The relationship brings to mind that of Salieri and Mozart and shows how it is possible to both love and hate a friend at the same time - this is a real triumph of the novel, as is the depiction of a man slowly going insane (or possibly just more insane) without properly understanding why or even fully recognising that it is happening.

A favourite aspect of the book for me is that the explanation of the central mystery (i.e. Drood) does not actually explain all of the weird occurances in the book. The reader is left to figure out some of them from clues in the book and still others one has to make a determination about without much evidence one way or another as to the solution. I have my own theory and I'll keep it to myself so as to keep the spoilers down to the trivial level.

My feeling is that this book is worth the time (and effort on occassion) for anybody who was able to enjoy Simmons' most famous SF novels and who also reads widely beyond that single genre - I suspect that if you know the works of Dickens and Collins you will gain more from it in some ways than I did. The imperfections are irritating but, coming full circle, few books this ambitious are without some and they are not so deep as to undermine the book in its entirety.

Some final thoughts: Salieri and Mozart is an obvious comparison, so is Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman; but the latter has completely different aims and is, astonishingly, far less ambitious and far more nearly perfect. ( )

"I did what any writer would do in such an emergency: I drank more laudanum, took my nightly injections of morphine, drank more wine, bedded Martha more frequently, and began a new novel."

It is finally over. I honestly do not know the last time I was this relieved to reach the final page of a book - this has tested even my motto to always finish a book I've started. But I did it. Somehow.

Truly, I expected this to be good. Not only is Guillermo del Toro interested in making it into a movie, but Simmons' Carrion Comfort was not only one of the best books I read in 2018, it's definitely one of the best books I've read... ever. But this.... this was a disappointment. I think it might've been an okay story if it was 300 pages or so less, because honestly.... it's Wilkie Collins rambling for about 400 pages and barely 100 pages of, y'know, action and things actually happening. What seems like an attempt to set a certain mood and setting only caused agony; rather than feeling like I could picture each scene in my head... I just wanted it to stop.

Perhaps what will haunt me the most is just how unlikable Wilkie Collins is. I'm not necessarily a believer that main characters, or narrators, must be good or liked but... Wilkie is the most hypocritical, boring and awful character in a long time - perhaps partly because there is absolutely nothing to counter it. The irony behind a lot of his rambles is noticeable but does little to change this. In all honesty, this made me feel like I never want to read a Wilkie Collins book, let alone hear his name ever again.

I think it's most disappointing because the story could have been so good. The premise is exciting and mysterious in a way that makes you want to read it, but once you start reading.... I'll give Simmons this though; he did a swell job at nailing the historical aspect of it. Wilkie's narrative often made me forget that the book isn't actually written by an English snob in the late 1800s. For better or worse.

I read this so y'all don't have to. Please don't. It's not worth it. I'll be happy to summarise it for anyone interested in the main story. Read Carrion Comfort instead. Thank you. ( )

"His imagination was always more real than the reality of daily life."

Drood commences on June 9th 1865 when Charles Dickens, at the pinnacle of his writing career, was making his way to London with his mistress when the train that they are travelling on becomes derailed. Dickens is uninjured and goes to the aid of the crash's survivors in the process spotting another mysterious character apparently giving succour to the victims, Drood.

Recalling the meeting to Collins Dickens describes Drood as “ cadaverously thin, almost shockingly pale, and stared at the writer from dark-shadowed eyes set deep under a pale, high brow that melded into a pale, bald scalp. A few strands of graying hair lept out from the sides of this skull-like visage.” The creature has virtually no nose, only “mere slits opening into the grub-white visage” and “small, sharp, irregular teeth, set too far apart, set into guns so pale they were whiter than the teeth themselves.”

Dickens becomes obsessed with Drood imagining him as a ghoulish ruler of London’s subterranean city populated by society’s poorest and most abject citizens, Undertown, with legions of minions. Such is Dickens’ obsession with Drood that he takes soon Collins into this subterranean cess pool visiting heroin dens to meet it's overlord. In turn Collins also becomes obsessed with this malevolent character but does he actually exist?

Collins’ obsession with Drood becomes intertwined with his obsession with Dickens as the two former friends become gradually estranged due to Dickens growing success and Collins’ resentment of his friend’s achievements coupled with his self-administration of ever larger doses of laudanum. This in itself creates a problem for the reader, one can never be sure if any of the events within are real or imagined by either man.

This is a pretty hefty tome (my copy was 775 pages long) and despite taking its title from the last, and unfinished, of Dickens’ novels, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, this is not intended to be seen as Dickensian. Instead it is devised as a mixture of literary biography, detective story, and posthumous memoir written by the author Wilkie Collins to a "Dear Reader" about his literary and personal contacts with his friend, collaborator and rival Charles Dickens only to be released 125 years after his death.

Simmons is a new author to me and as I was given this book I wanted to like it, the concept seemed to be a fairly original one, the real facts far enough in to the past to allow a little tinkering. However, it just didn't work for me. There are some very good set piece elements. The initial crash scene was pretty scary whilst the first descent into Undertown made my flesh crawl. I also enjoyed some of the literary oneupmanship between the two great authors but overall felt that far too many elements of the book were just muddled and repetitive. Did Drood actually exist? Did any of the events actually happen or were they merely the result of mesmeric suggestions fuelled by opium and a hyperactive imagination? None of these questions are answered, its left the reader to decide.

Overall I felt that the book was just far too long with some parts repeated almost to ad nauseum but ultimately my biggest issue with this book was with the two main characters. The fact that we only see Dickens through Collins's drug addled mind certainly doesn't help but quite frankly I found both Dickens and in particular Collins to be little more than two conceited crushing bores. Whilst this would not put me off reading another of the author's works it also wouldn't have me rushing to the nearest bookshop either. ( )

A two star rating from me means a book which I did not enjoy, but others might. Although frankly, I don't see who could enjoy this book. It is dreary. The attitude of the narrator is cowardly, a person you might think is your friend, but instead stabs you in the back in such a way that you are long dead before you know what he has done. I would rather get a well done biography of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and read all their novels than read this book for information. There are great loads of info-dumps, wormed into snarky, driveling passages of the narrator's "remembrances." After 200 and some pages, I couldn't face 500 more, and quit reading. Life is too short to be in this kind of poisonous atmosphere. This is not to say that the writing is poor. I believe that if the book had been a 200 page novel, I could have gone with it for the imagination and insight into the times. So there you have it, try it if you like, but it didn't work for me. ( )

I suspect DROOD is the Marmite of novels set in the Victorian era. Like all Simmons' recent work, it is meticulously researched, but there also lies the problem, for he cannot stop himself from showing us that research on the page - not only the bits that are pertinent to the story, but too many of the bits that are merely interesting, but flow-stopping. As in another Simmons exploration of a literary figure, that of Henry James, in THE FIFTH HEART, we get details of dinner parties, lists of famous literary guests, and explanations of public buildings works that do nothing to further the story.

That said, I enjoyed the book enough to give it four stars, for as a writer, it is a fascinating glimpse into how we tell stories, both to ourselves and our audiences, and also how such stories take shape and form - and a certain degree of reality.

It also touches on something a lot of writers know but don't talk about - the almost crippling at times green wave of envy and self loathing that comes when one of your friends has wild success. They're still a friend, you still love them, but there's that little voice, deep down, willing to commit murder in the face of their happiness... or maybe that's just me. :-)

Simmons' control of point of view and the mechanics of the writing itself are as masterful as ever. The narrator is a fully realized character, although I doubt the real Wilkie Collins was quite so unreliable as portrayed here, for the prodigious quantities of opiates consumed would surely have left a man quite unable to write such great works as The Moonstone and The Woman in White.

His friendship with Dickens, and the way it affects Collins and his work, are nicely depicted, and there are some glorious set pieces, in a train crash, in the sewers under London, and in the descriptions of Dickens' live performances.

You don't need to have read either Collins' or Dickens' work to appreciate this book, but it does help to have done so, to provide context for a lot of the conversations between the writers, and also the final mystery of Drood himself.

I did like it, and it might have got five stars, if it had been two or three hundred pages shorter and tighter. ( )

Like the Terror, so much could have been trimmed from this book. But now that I'm done, I realize how much I actually liked it. I'm wondering if some of the quirks — verbosity, some early-peaking plot elements — were a critique of sorts of Collins's real writing? Maybe. ( )