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Drood

Drood by Dan Simmons

I decided to try another Dan Simmons book. After reading the Hyperion Cantos I knew nothing would top that series, but I was curious about this eerie historical fiction about Dickens and his obsession with an apparition named Drood.

 

This story is narrated by Charles Dickens’s best friend William “Wilkie” Collins, a fellow writer and long time confidant. A lot of the historical references in this story are true, including the tragic train accident that Dickens endured on the Staplehurst route in 1865. His train derailed and all but his car veered off into a ravine, tragically killing many. Dickens and his “mistress” and her mother were the only ones in their first class coach. Their coach was teetering on the edge of falling with the rest as they escaped the wreckage.

 

The aftermath was very traumatic for Dickens as he went around from car to car helping the injured with water he put into his top hat. The imagery portrayed at this part of the story is very vivid and true to Dan Simmons’s style. While Dickens attended to the injured he saw a man in a black cloak, a top hat, and a very frail frame, walk from person to person. This man introduced himself as Drood. From that moment on Dickens was obsessed with finding out who this man was and he dragged his long time friend and fellow writer Wilkie Collins along with him.

 

This book gets very dark at times while digging into the twisted author-mind of Wilkie. Set in the mid- to late-1800s, Simmons describes London with every possible detail, all the way down from the stench of the dead bodies in the sweltering summer months to the disgusting London Underground where opium addicts and mass murderers roam.

 

The adventures of Dickens and Collins became outlandish and absurd, but I found myself wanting to know the outcome of every debacle.

 

I recommend this twisted and dark historical fiction to anyone who likes a little history, mystery, horror and adventure all in one book. Again, it does not even touch the mastery of Hyperion, but I am again impressed with the talent of Dan Simmons.

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