Drood

I truly enjoyed this gripping, chilling read. A smart blend of interesting historical fact and a well constructed mystery make Drood - not novels like The Da Vinci Code - a prime example of outstanding historical fiction.

Rather than spend pages talking about what I liked (which were numerous), allow me to be the critic and share the three points that kept me from giving this gem a full 5 stars.

1. At various points throughout the novel, Simmons goes a bit too far in his weaving of history into the plot. This practice normally serves a great purpose; however, when carried too long, it seems as though he is filling pages with long paragraphs of who-wrote-to-whom-in-which year.

2. Each time a puzzling moment came up in the book, Simmons did a great job in having Wilkie confirm my suspicion with some of his own. However, all too frequently, resolutions to those puzzles were never given, almost as if Simmons had forgotten to re-approach them.

3. The grandiose emotion of the book's plot, the sinister, ethereal, and extremely mysterious nature of its villain, and the ever-present sense of doom carry this book to an extreme height. However, this is often a tricky spot to land in, as only the most talented of authors can deliver a climax that stays that high. Drood's ending, while certainly brain-bending and interesting, doesn't carry the same level of excitement that it's plot does.

Overall, this is a book - and an author - not to be missed. Check it out as soon as you can.

I had to give up on this one. I just couldn't get into it. It reads like an actual Dickens novel, and I am not a Dickens fan. And the narrator is so whiny and seems fairly unreliable. I am interested in the mystery about Drood, but the plot moved at a snail's pace. There are so many great books in the world, and I'm just not up to slogging through nearly 800 pages of random exposition.