Drood

by Clare MacGregor

Drood by Dan Simmons is a story of friendship, deceit, madness, and mystery. The narrator, Wilkie Collins, a friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens, begins the tale in the year 1865, recounting the Staplehurst railway accident and the aftermath of the accident. During the accident Dickens encounters a mysterious man by the name of Drood. Deeply intrigued by this phantom-like man Charles Dickens discovers Drood’s whereabouts and insists that Collins come along with him when he visits Undertown. Reluctantly, Collins goes with him, but is only permitted to go so far. Days after this night-time visit to Undertown, Wilkie Collins meets a police officer who enlists him to act as an informant regarding the man named Drood. Drood’s influence seeps deeper and deeper into Wilkie Collins’s life and imagination, but it’s not only Drood who haunts Willkie Collins’s mind, Willkie is convinced that there is another Willkie, one who looks just like him, but is not him, who begins making additions to whatever story or play Wilkie Collins is currently working on. At first Collins is infuriated that “the other Wilkie” who is contributing to the stories while Collins is sleeping; but as things progress Collins begins to rely on his doppelganger more and more. One evening while Dickens is visiting, Collins hears Dickens, Drood, and the doppelganger of himself conspiring against him. As Dickens health begins to decline, Drood assigns the task of writing his biography (a tasks once entrusted to Dickens) to Collins. He adamantly refuses, but Drood will not be dissuaded. Already obsessed with Drood, Collins’s mind and life begins to increasingly overflow with paranoia. A few days before Dickens suffers a stroke, he reveals a secret about Drood.
Drood will appeal to fans of historical fiction, thrillers, mystery, horror, and fans of the movie/play Amadeus as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins have a Salieri/Mozart-like friendship.

Creepy Creatures

by Courtney Hilden
Spoiler Alert!: Some of the endings of the stories are revealed in this review.

Earlier, we here at Recommended reviewed Terror Trips, a collection of horror stories from Goosebumps told in a graphic narrative style. Creepy Creatures is the same basic format: three horror stories from R.L. Stine. Because this is Goosebumps, the stories are meant to still be appropriate for younger readers. "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp" is about a family that moves into a new neighborhood and finds there may be werewolves living in the forest. "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight" is about two siblings whose trip to their grandparents farm is ruined by animated scarecrows. And "The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena" is about a scientist father and his children bringing home Bigfoot.
The artwork is all three stories is distracting. Both "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp" and "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight" have art that is relatively realistic, particularly the latter. The art for "The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena" is much more cartoony, but the eyes are really distracting, with uncolored pupils.
The two superior sections, in terms of storytelling, are "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp" and "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight." In the werewolf story, in the end, the young man and narrator turns into a werewolf, which, considering these stories are meant to be for children (just about no one ever dies), is surprising. "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight" is actually interesting because it depicts one of the grandparents' employers, Stanley, who is depicted as having some kind of special need.
It is this character who is the most problematic. Stanley is the bad guy in the story, who has created zombie-like scarecrows based on things he read in a magic book. People with disabilities are often depicted as stupid, pathetic, evil or combinations thereof. In this story, Stanley is depicted as all of them. He is evil enough to use his scarecrows to threaten the grandparents and the siblings, but too stupid and pathetic to effectively control or destroy the scarecrows. No real motivation is given for his actions; apparently his "inabilities" do that for him. No critique of the family that employs him or society that marginalizes someone like him is given (which would have served for a more reasonable and sympathetic motivation.) Instead, he is just bad. Instead, he is just like his zombie-scarecrows; dangerous and needing to be controlled by the employers (easily read here as capitalists) and the abled.
Creepy Creatures is not as good as Terror Trips, both in terms of art and storylines. Creepy Creatures also has some problematic depictions of those with special needs, which discerning parents might want to shield their children from or at least discuss with them.