Like The Terror before it, Simmons has taken a shard of 'real' history and crafted a work of speculative history (?) that is fascinating, terrifying, and even convincing. This time it is about the dark final days of Charles Dickens, who, at the height of his fame and fortune, was involved in a horrible train wreck that changed his life for the worst and apparently transformed the writer in an isolated, moody and much darker man who became obsessed with death, and with what would be his final (unifnished?) work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And to add a whole 'nother later, Simmons has this strange story narrated through a recently unearth "journal" authored by Wilkie Collins, a real, live writer and friend of Dickens whose The Woman in White and The Moonstone helped to invent the entire mystery/detective genre ... though this petulant and jealous characterization just adds even more sweet ambiguity to the story, from its very first pages.
Simmons changes genres with a head-spinning ease and authenticity, and though this is a long, long book by today's standards -- just like The Terror before it -- it's worth every minute.
