This will be Hazel's fault, if I read it and dislike it, and Hazel's honour if it lives up to my great expectations. Having hurtled through the first five pages of an Amazon click-inside extract, my first impression is that Dan Simmons has written Wilkie Collins as one of the most priggish, smug and patronising friends with which Dickens might possibly have been tormented.... 
 I'm not much into being somebody's 'Dear Reader' either.