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Book Summary and Reviews of Drood by Dan Simmons

Drood by Dan Simmons

Drood

by Dan Simmons

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  • Feb 2009, 784 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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?

Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), Drood explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, Drood is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, Drood is Dan Simmons at his powerful best." - Publishers Weekly.

"A lively entertainment, reminiscent of Nicholas Meyer's Seven-Percent Solution - and a worthy rejoinder to Dickens's swan song." - Kirkus Reviews.

"Starred Review. This rip-roaring adventure is a true page-turner. Enthusiastically recommended for all popular collections." - Library Journal.

This information about Drood was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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TheTerryr

Dude, too much Drood
First of all, I love Dan Simmons. His earlier horror novels and his recent The Terror were wonderful. Unfortunately, I can't say the same About Drood. Though it is a great idea and very well researched, Simmons is undone by his constant repetition, an untrustworthy narrator, and a seeming lack of an editor. This would have been a wonderful 400ish page thriller, but at 941 pages(paperback), there is too much other stuff to slog through - constant walking tours, constant referrals to drug use, constant repetition of plot points, constant referrals to Collins absolutely boring home life.
And at the end, what do we get??? A very obvious realization by Wilkie of his stature as a novelist compared to Dickens.
Get an editor!!!

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Author Information

Dan Simmons Author Biography

Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest. Since his first published short story won the Rod Serling Memorial Award in the 1982 Twilight Zone Magazine Short Fiction contest, Dan Simmons has won some of the top awards in science fiction, horror, fantasy, and thriller genres, as well as honors for his mainstream fiction. He lives along the Front Range of Colorado.

Dan Simmons won the World Fantasy Award for his novel Song of Kali. Notable books include the Hyperion series (four science fiction novels) (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion,and The Rise of Endymion) and more recently Illium and Olympos

In 1995, Dan's alma mater, Wabash College, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions in education ...

... Full Biography
Link to Dan Simmons's Website

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