Drood by Dan Simmons

 If you are a lover of Victorian literature, Drood is a novel not to be missed.  The year is 1865.  Charles Dickens is at the top of his career and is secretly traveling with his mistress, Ellen Ternan and her mother by train to London.  The train engineer suddenly sees with horror that the tracks ahead over a river have been removed for repair and the warning signalman is too close to give them adequate time to stop.  The train continues off the tracks and into the river below. Dickens was in the only 1^st class car that didn’t smash into the river.  He becomes a hero by rescuing many people in a horrific scene, but also meets the mysterious man Drood that seemingly takes the lives of the people he reaches.

Dickens is forever changed by this incident and it haunts him for the rest of his life, until his death five years to the date after the accident.  Dickens narrates the tale of the horror of accident and his meeting with Drood to his good friend and collaborator, Wilkie Collins.  Together they journey to the Drood’s lair in the sewers deep beneath London.  After this secret meeting, Wilkie Collins chronicles Dickens and his own obsession with Drood and descent into madness.  During this time period Collins wrote his most famous novel, The Moonstone, and the Dickens started work on his last unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Drood is written as narrated by Wilkie Collins writing it as a Victorian memoir to be read 125 years after his death.   This narration is brilliant.  Collins is addicted to drugs and finds himself slipping further and further into his addiction as the novel proceeds.  He is an unreliable narrator which puts a great twist on the novel.  Are the events real or are they the twisted imaginings of an opium addict?  While being friends with Dickens, Collins also had a great jealousy of him.  While his novels, A Woman in White and The Moonstone have more readers than Dickens’ novels during the same era, Dickens is by far the more famous personality with much more critical acclaim.   I loved in the narration when Collins used terms like “Dear Reader” that one would see in a Victorian novel.

Drood was a wonderful historical fiction novel that also combines great elements of mystery, suspense, and horror.  I finished the book yesterday and I’m still thinking about the ending.  The history in it was great.  I just read Jane Smiley’s biography of Charles Dickens in December and this book dovetailed nicely with the facts I know about Dickens and Wilkie Collins.  The description really set the mood for one to believe that you were in Victorian England.  It was also great to have another view on how The Moonstone and The Mystery of Edwin Drood could have been inspired.

Both Dickens and Collins were represented as great fully released three-dimensional characters.  They both had flaws, but were both creative geniuses.  They were definitely the power house characters in this book, but the secondary characters were also wonderful including Dickens’ daughter (and Collins’ sister-in-law) Katey Dickens Collins, Inspector Field, Detective Hatchery and the mysterious villain Drood. 

Drood is a very large novel (my version is 770 pages), but it was a great meaty read and well worth the weeks I dedicated to reading it.  The plot was tightly woven and the length was needed to tell the entire story. Sadly it made it so I didn’t have enough time to read Oliver Twist in February, but I hope to still read that novel as part of the Victorian Challenge this year.  We read Drood as part of my Kewaunee Library book club, and I’ll admit that none of us had it finished by the time we met, although we were all intrigued with it. 

I must admit I was most intrigued with the details of the underground adventures of Dickens and Collins as they searched for Drood in the sewers of London.  It was an Indiana Jones like adventure in a setting that intrigues me.  I design sewers for a living so the history of the crypts, sewers and sanitation in the Victorian era was very, very interesting to me.  Such quotes as “I may have mentioned earlier that Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the Board of Works, had proposed a complex system of new sewers to drain off the sewage from the Thames and to embank the mudflats along the shores.”  I need to look this stuff up – I’m fascinated!

Overall, Drood is a novel not to be missed.  It is a unique look at the Victorian period of history during the last five years of Dickens life told through the opium addicted author Wilkie Collins.  This book will definitely be one of my top books of this year.

Drood was not only my Kewaunee Library book club read, but I also read it as part of the Victorian Challenge 2012 and Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2012.

Book Source:  I won this book in a giveaway two years ago.

Black Hills by Dan Simmons (audiobook)

Black Hills is a rich, engrossing historical drama that is also a bit of a ghost story.

As a young boy, Paha Sapa (or Black Hills in English) grew up happily in the American West with his adopted father Limps-a-Lot as part of his Sioux (or Natural Free Human Beings) tribe. Paha Sapa had a gift in that he could see peoples’ past and future histories through touch. With this gift, he is able to see the future tragedy of Crazy Horse, and unfortunately picks up General George Armstrong Custer’s ghost at the moment of his death at the battle of Little Big Horn. Fortunately he doesn’t understand Custer’s English for awhile and doesn’t get to hear the pornographic stories that Custer loves to tell about his wife, Libby.

In the future, a much older Paha Sapa is working as a dynamite expert on the Mount Rushmore project. The Black Hills are considered sacred by his people, and Paha Sapa is determined to take action against the project, by blowing the entire Mount Rushmore project up on the day that Franklin Roosevelt visits to dedicate the Jefferson head. This plan is riveting and provides some great action toward the end of the novel.

The book swings back and forth between Paha Sapa’s past and future, with the history of Paha Sapa himself, and of the Native American People overall. Paha Sapa lived through riveting times including the Battle of Little Bighorn, Wounded Knee, the assassination of Sitting Bull, the Chicago’s World Fair, traveling with the Wild West Show, and the Dust Bowl. I loved the detailed description of these events.

Indeed, there were several thrilling sections in this book, such as when Paha Sapa tries to outrun a massive dust storm in his truck and the beautiful description of the Chicago’s World Fair. The love story between Paha Sapa and Rain at the Fair was beautiful, and I also loved the relationship between Paha Sapa and his son, Robert.

This book so enthralled me in these sections, that it had me sobbing in the car while on the way to a meeting over the death of a main character, which was followed by a flashback of a young Paha Sapa discovering the remnants of his village after it had been destroyed by the American Calvary. I have never had that reaction listening to an audiobook before. It was a couple of very powerful scenes.

Unfortunately, this book had the potential to be a great book, but it is only a good book. Where the book failed was in having some crisp editing performed on it. The first bit of editing would be on General Custer. His ghost liked to write pornographic letters to his wife in poor young Paha Sapa’s head. The cut to these sections was jarring and served no purpose in the story . . . except to make me laugh. In particular when Custer details the “best one minute of his life” and somehow having intimate relations with his wife while galloping on his horse through the plains. I thought to myself, love scenes by men are very different than love scenes written by women. Simmons had a compelling and sweet love story with Paha Sapa and Rain, but Custer and Libby’s story fell flat.

There was also a long section in the middle of the book where Paha Sapa travels east as an old man to visit an elderly Libby. He goes to see the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. I am an engineer and love to hear and read about infrastructure, but even I was bored by this section. It did not further the plot at all and seemed really out of place in the story.

The third section that sadly cried for an editor was the end of the book. The book had a great ending . . .but then continued on for at least one more CD as Paha Sapa’s spirit as a raven flies over the past and future earth detailing things that had been and were to come. I was almost bored to tears during this section. I would consider this section a fantasy/science fiction too in detailing what was to come in the future. I could see what Simmons was trying to do with this section and appreciated the vision, but it dragged on for too long.

Black Hills made me really think about the treatment of Native Americans in North America again. I know it was a tragic history, but the book does a good job of trying to display both sides of the tale. It was a sad story, but also fascinating.

Simmons did fantastic research and wrote a very powerful and rich historical drama. I really enjoyed listening to it, and will definitely try some more of Simmons’ novels (I have Drood on my “too-read” pile). I just wish an editor had gotten a hold of the manuscript and had convinced Simmons to chop out the parts of the novel that did not advance the story. Paha Sapa’s tale was enthralling, heartbreaking, and a true American Adventure.

Audio Book Source: Review Copy from Hachette Book Group. Thank-you!