'Drood' by Dan Simmons - Book Review

A daunting task creates a haunting tale. Only a writer with the expertise and perception of Dan Simmons could possibly attempt to rewrite the history and personality of not one, but two world-wide acclaimed authors, and nearly deconstruct their work into something new. Drood is a bold attempt that works for over 500 pages. If only there weren't 300 more.

With Drood, Dan Simmons attempts to tell the story of the end of Charles Dickens' life from the perspective of his society friend and secret rival, Wilkie Collins, author of bestselling works The Moonstone and The Woman in White. He also peals back the layers of Collins' and Dickens' potentially diabolical, creative minds and what could have inspired Dickens to write his last, unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

In the last years of his life, Dickens experienced a traumatic event. One of his life's sins (and the one the envious and even more flawed Collins continues to point out) is how he banished his wife and mother of ten children to carouse with a teenage actress in his latter years and how this choice changed his life forever. On a railway ride with this mistress and her mother, the train goes off the rails, causing the wreckage and carnage of every passenger cart except Dickens'. As he tries to help the wounded and dying, he encounters a dark figure named Drood who will soon take Dickens and Collins into London's underworld, filled with opium dens and occult-influenced murderers.

Collins' narration is wickedly insightful as his jealousy warps how he and the reader listens to and watches Dickens' delving into desire and death. In my first encounters with Dickens' writing as a young adult, I was not a big fan of the author. However, this novel not only made me want to go back and read Bleak House and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, it also made me want to take a look at Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. That may be some of the biggest praises I can give Simmons.

But as for story of Drood, I enjoyed its creepy reverie until the mystery began to lag and lose shape as the novel concluded. In the end, Drood begs the questions: "Do you think Dickens could be so devious? Or is it Collins' envious perspective that shaped everything?"