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. ( )