Book: Dracula by Bram Stoker

[catness]

Title: Dracula
Author: Bram Stoker
Genre: fantasy
Book Number/Goal: 14/52
My Rating: 2/5
Notes: for Coursera Fantasy and Science Fiction course (reread)
Download: Project Gutenberg

Review:
An old-school vampire novel from when vampires were irredeemably evil and did not sparkle.

Technically, it has everything - a gothic castle, bats & wolves, horror & suspense, seduction & mind control, a psycho and a geek, and even a bit of comic relief, though rare. "Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quick, with blood, for that his ship will leave the place, of blood, before the turn of the tide, with blood. ... The captain swore polyglot, very polyglot, polyglot with bloom and blood, but he could do nothing." Van Helsing is hilarious when he tries to make sense of English slang :)

Unfortunately, the writing style is too old-fashioned to appreciate it properly. It's not excessively verbose, but the action is slow and repetitive, and the tension quickly dissipates. Good characters are too perfect, and evil characters are too evil.

Here is a much more exciting version of the story: Shadow of the Vampuss, by Karen Mahony and Alex Ukolov :)