It is an amazingly well done book. Dan Simmons took the last few years of Charles Dickens life (1865 - 1870), added accurate and beautiful descriptions of Victorian London, created a mystery with an air of ghosts and mysticism to create a book that is a historical fiction/mystery told through the eyes of novelist Wilkie Collins.
The reality of daily life in London as well as Dickens and Collins' lives are not sugar coated. Dickens was a workaholic and adulterer and Collins was a drug addict. They were best friends, collaborators and competitors. While Dickens becomes more and more obsessed with corpses and crypts, Collins loses his mind and all his money in the underground opium dens of London. The pages fly by as Simmons takes us from the sewers to the countryside of London and as Dickens and Collins' reality becomes blurry and they seem to go mad we wonder if it is the drugs, sickness, or real life ghosts.
Read this book! Don't let the number of pages disuade you - by the end you will be wishing for more. Publishers Weekly and others are reporting that Guillermo Del Toro will be directing the film version of this book. It may end up being 6 hours long!
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