David > Recent Status Updates

Second day in a row I forgot to update after reading and only did it right before bed. I like the book but the treatment of dogs really bothers me. I absolutely hated the puppy scene that went on with Wilkie.

Geez, Dickens turned into a d**k the last few pages. I'm wondering if this means he and Wilkie are having a falling out or if it was just Dickens way of escaping Wilkie so he can go see Drood by himself.

It's hard to tell how I feel about the book. Any time something interesting happens (such as the sudden illness of one character being revealed as someone else's fault), the scene then changes to something uninteresting (the pointless "attack" on Undertown).

The last hour of reading has been mostly pretty slow with a large chunk of those pages describing a boring "hallucinating" but things certainly picked up when an unexpected character was brutally murdered and Wilkie is forced to realize he may have been wrong about the existence of Drood.

Getting pretty interesting. I love the way Simmons uses a lot of actual historical moments in the novel. It's amusing the way Wilkie constantly shifted the name of the book he was writing, only for Dickens to suggest a different name entirely. This version of Dickens is a very interesting character.

Even though I still have no idea where the hell this novel is heading, I'm getting more and more interested in "Drood." I just read a scene that was hard for me to get through, though. Even though he was vicious, I have such a soft spot for dogs that I hated the scene in which Dickens had to execute Sultan. That scene alone will probably disturb me more than anything Drood is likely to do.

Simmons' version of 19th Century Britain is intriguing but I'm wondering what the point of the novel is. Right now it feels like well-researched fan fiction involving Charles Dickens, I keep waiting to get to the meat of the story.

Wow. This is first-rate work here. I figured I would like it, but I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I do. Such a dang shame it's only a novella because I would have loved for it to be considerably longer. As it is, in an hour I was able to read over half of it. :(

I'm digging it, but it's surprisingly slow. While I do like reading about life in London in the 1880's, I also want a little more excitement. Thankfully we just found out some information about Drood which, while not unexpected, could lead to some action.

Thus far I like Simmons' writing style and the way it's told from the perspective of an unknown author friend of Dickens' who managed to keep these pages hidden for 100 years, but thus far the plot hasn't been too interesting. I'm sure it'll pick up, though.

Thankfully I should be through with this tomorrow. How many dang times can a knight smote people and shatter their shields?

By today's standards, this is a terrible book (no character progression, no real plot, repetitive battles), yet I find myself strangely enjoying it. Unfortunately it's hard to keep some of the characters straight given that pretty much everyone's only goal in life is to joust with every knight they meet.

I've enjoyed the last few suitcases a lot more than the first ones. I had no idea Christianity played such a heavy role in the Arthur tales. Merlin seems a lot less magical and a lot more Christ-like than I realized.

Man, they sure seemed to look for any reason to joust in this story. "Ho, you walked by me, do as I say or we fight!" At least it's not a boring battle lately.