Dan Simmons - Drood (Book Review)

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"DROOD" (Amazon: UK, US)
by DAN SIMMONS
Format: Paperback, 816/784 pages
Publisher: Quercus / Little, Brown and Company (Feb 2009, first edition)

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Last summer, I've written a post regarding books we like and how hard it can be to review them – can you remain objective? Should you remain objective? Drood is one of such books and I can't really decide whether I'm infatuated with it or it really is that good.

"Drood", like "The Terror", is neither fantasy nor science fiction – it's historical fiction, but unlike " The Terror", "Drood" concentrates more on 'historical' than on 'fiction'. Our narrator is Wilkie Collins, who introduces us to his life as a writer, one of Charles Dickens' closest friends and a member of 19th century's London upper class.

"Drood" presents Dickens and Collins in the time when they were both already established writers, praised all over England, neither of them short on money or company. Their lives, as well as everyone involved, are subject to their various whims and thus often a fine source of gossip; while Dickens dismissed his wife and forbid her to enter his house again, Collins is unmarried but has two lovers who don't know about each other. While both authors readily cooperate, they just as readily dismiss each other's work as petty, unimaginative or just plain bad writing. The older they get, the wider the gap between them becomes – with a little help from the mysterious Mr. Drood, whose past and skills obsess Dickens.

In most reviews of "Drood" I've read, people mostly complain about "Drood" being too long and mostly just Dickens' biography. Neither of these bothered me. I actually enjoyed how SIMMONS took his time and 'spent' many pages to create a perfect atmosphere and explain the background of the story. Admittedly, this was probably a bit easier for him than if he set his story in a fictional place, because a lot is known about 19th century London and its upper class, but it still takes a certain amount of skill to present it as intriguing and engrossing as SIMMONS did. "Drood" hardly reads as a history textbook or a biography, more as a work of pure fiction. One of the possible reasons to why its length didn't really bother me might lie in the fact that I've recently read a lot of first-part-of-the-series novels, and they rarely left me satisfied because they centered more on action, offering an immediate, but not lasting satisfaction, and less on explanation and wholeness – there is enough time for the latter in one of the sequels. "Drood," though, is a standalone novel, and as such has to offer some explanation, background and so on.

As for the biography part of criticism – well, I can't really say, since in all those years I spent in school, we only mentioned Dickens a couple of times. And when I say mentioned, I mean exactly that – we listed his name along with other writers of his era, but we never got further than that. We never had to read any of his works, and I never knew that Wilkie Collins existed. Because of that, reading "Drood" was in a way like watching a great documentary; biography was just a logical part of the book and I found it more interesting than boring.

As mentioned, SIMMONS takes a step forward from "The Terror" here; by introducing an unreliable narrator, he successfully manages to blur the line between facts and fiction and thus piquing reader's interest. The book starts as a tale of two 19th century writers' everyday life, but slowly evolves into a gripping and unexpected tale, full of suspense. Highly recommended.

~Trin~

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I'm totally out of practice, guys. I don't remember the last time I read so little. I've read maybe 10-20 books since June, which is just SAD. I have written 2 (unfinished) reviews. Sucks to be me, I guess?

In the Limelight - Simmons, Kearney and Abercrombie

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Everybody's been talking about Drood these days. "Drood" is the new novel by Dan Simmons, mastermind behind many prestigious award-winning novels, such as Hyperion (one of my all-time favorites), Ilium, Carrion Comfort, Song of Kali and others. His opus spans genres, from science fiction and fantasy to horror, mysteries and thrillers (often within the same novel). His 2007 novel "The Terror" made a (lifelong) fan out of Trin as well.
Drood is being officially released later today (February 9) both in US and UK, and me&Trin are both eager to read it. If you are wondering about the meaning of the word 'Drood'; "The Mysteries of Edward Drood" is the final novel by Charles Dickens that was left unfinished at the time of his death and thus the fate of the main protagonist remains undisclosed. Simmons' "Drood" draws heavily on historical facts about Dickens to create an engaging narrative, but spices it with fictional elements, just as he did with "The Terror". And the word on the street is that it's terrific.

The other interesting news that I've come across - thanks to our fellow blogger Adam (The Wertzone) - is that Paul Kearney signed a deal with Solaris for two more books set in the world of "The Ten Thousand". Early titles are "Corvus" and "Kings of Morning". This sounds very promising, since Kearny will be given a chance to expand on the sometimes scetchy world of the Macth. At the moment I'm reading and enjoying "This Forsaken Earth" which is the sequel to [...]the very decent, but short of brilliant[...] "The Mark of Ran". A bit of advice for those who don't like to start reading unfinished series , the final book in "Sea Beggars trilogy" was written, but never released, due to the fall out with his publisher at the time. The good news is, though, that Kearny's new publisher, Solaris, supports him to finish the project, but they have to wait for the rights to the books that Bantam US is clinging to to expire, before they can give the green light for the final volume which is to be realeased in an omnibus together with the first two books.

Last but not least: a while ago I've written about the fabulous UK cover for "Best Served Cold", the upcoming novel by Joe Abercrombie, one of the most recognizable names of the new wave of epic fantasy writers, due to be released this summer. Every since the US cover leaked out, there have been heated debates over the blogosphere whether they are any good or not (I tend to agree with the argument that the UK cover looks superior by far): A Dribble of Ink: part 1 & part 2, Grasping for the Wind, Fantasy Book News & Reviews, Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews, Pat's Fantasy Hotlist to name just a few. Orbit responded to the tirade in this article, revealing all the pruposed covers, giving insight into their creative process and explaining their pick, which is all very considerate and nice, but that doesn't change the fact the cover doesn't look any prettier for it. I might be too harsh to the US cover, I've seen plenty worse, but when you have something to compare it to, well... you can't help but wonder. But I leave you decide for yourself:
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US Cover -------- vs. -------- UK Cover

Dan Simmons - The Terror (Book Review)

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"The Terror" came as a welcome refreshement after all the fantasy I've read lately. There are absolutely no dragons involved, neither is there any magic or mighty knights strutting out of the pages. Yay! (There are, however, some affluent and snotty snobs, but in the terms of the 19th century England's upper class rather than medieval nobility.) This is one of the things that gives "The Terror" such appeal and a particular feeling of substantiality.
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At first, I've had some second thoughts about buying the book, since I've read a couple of reviews that left me confused and unconvinced. While some reviewers praised the book as if they had been paid for it, others complained about it being long-winded and including too many complex and unfamiliar nautical terms that really bear down on the story.

This last thing must've been written by some ''spoiled'' native speaker, because although I still haven't got a slightest idea who a caulker could be (or more specifically, what his job is), I understood well enough that he has some kind of a professional function on the ship and I'm completely satisfied with that. If English is your mother tongue, you can take your time and look up the unknown words in the dictionary – there really aren't that many in the book. And if you're not a native speaker, you don't need to worry, because not being able to discern different parts of the deck will not rob you of jour reading experience. Besides, everybody knows that constant skimming through the dictionary is a time-consuming activity that usually breaks the flow of the reading process. (I looked up what the hell a 'sperm whale' could be, though, and it figures out that it's the Moby Dick one. I nearly died laughing afterwards. :)
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Secondly, the book is eons away from boring. Simmons' style of writing is brilliant (as I've already induced from reading "Hyperion" and its immediate sequel) and keeps the reader awake and alert – at least until s/he decides that the stuff is getting too scary since it's very, VERY dark outside and maybe s/he should stop reading the book until tomorrow when there's plenty of light. The amount of scary you feel probably depends on your personality and while I don't consider myself the kind of girl who gets scared easily, I really dislike the idea of an unknown evil lurking in the dark (it's always better to know exactly who or what you are up against). Especially since the arctic night lasts for 24 hours a day; it's pretty damn frustrating. I have to admit I was very glad when there was someone else in the room with me when I was reading. That helped to prevent my imagination from going wild, but the book in consequence lost some of its effect.

Another thing I've noticed is how impossibly knowledgeable Simmons is and how much effort he put into researching the book's topic. While explaining just about everything that is of any relevance regarding the expedition (I read a Wikipedia article about it afterwards and it only proved that, excluding the 'evil' thing, "The Terror" follows the recorded facts faithfully, thus being a (partly) historical novel as well as a horror one); he studied and explained the Esquimaux's culture as well. What I also loved is the hommage to E. A. Poe (mentioned in the novel as 'that American writer' – one of my favourite chapters in the book is a tribute to his "The Masque of the Red Death").

When I try to find a weak spot that would mar the book, I seem to fail. Maybe the ending will not be to everyone's satisfaction since it is pretty unusual, but for me presents an interesting alternative to the 'classical' endings we are so familiar with. I actually liked the loose ends left hanging. I'm ordinarily against giving a perfect score – I agree with Thrinidir's take on this point – but at the same time, I don't know what more could I expect from a book of this genre. "The Terror" is a brilliant book, but as I already mentioned, it was otherwise met with mixed feelings. Give it a try, though; I say it's worth it.

A perfect mark (five out of five):

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~ Trin ~