Review: Drood

Title:  Drood
Author:  Dan Simmons
Review Copy Provided by:  Hachette

About the Book:  On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-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 deepening 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?

My Review:  Let me start by saying that this book intimidated me from the very beginning, because of it's size.  It is a whopping 771 pages long!  I know, but don't let that stop you.  Don't even let the fact that it starts slow stop you.  Once you get into it, you will be stuck!  I enjoyed this book, even though it started out slow for me.  Dan Simmons writes very eloquently and sometimes I felt like it was over my head, but I got it.  This story is set in another country and time period that I am not real familiar with, so I had to wrap my head around those differences in order to understand the story.  It is creepy at times.  Drood is a mysterious character.  I never knew there was such a dark side to Dickens, but now it explains the slight creepiness of A Christmas Carol and others that he wrote.  My favorite character in the story though, was Wilkie.  I just fell in love with and rooted for him.  Yes, he's odd.  Yes, he takes medicine, laudanum, just to function through the day, but he was a lovable character, I thought.  Wilkie is a dear friend to Dickens, thank goodness, because he sure needed one.  I had never read any of Simmons' writing before this, but I know that I will be picking up more in the future.  He hooked me, scared me, mesmerized me, and made me dig dipper into a man that I didn't know much about.  Drood is a must read, just don't expect to read it quickly.  It needs to be absorbed to be understood.

Be sure to visit the other stops on the Drood blog tour!

http://hiddenplace.wordpress.com/
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http://www.bookishruth.com/
http://www.bookingmama.blogspot.com/
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http://dreyslibrary.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/darbyscloset