Book #43: Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker
Dracul by Dacre Stoker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a book I was wanting to read since last year, having seen it advertised as a prequel to "Dracula". My assumption is that the book's co-writer, Dacre Stoker, is a descendant of Bram Stoker.
I was expecting a kind of origin story, but it isn't that at all. Set in 19th Century Ireland, it tells a fictional account of Dracula author Bram Stoker's life. The fist section of the book is set during Bram's childhood, at a time when he is very sick with a fever. His nanny, Ellen Crone, is quite mysterious, and it becomes apparent early on that she herself is a vampire.
The book also throws in a subplot involving a man who apparently murdered his family, which becomes more significant later.
The book skips forward to Bram's early adulthood, when Ellen reappears in his life, and he first meets Dracula, who has apparently been turning his sister-in-law into a vampire. I won't mention too much about the plot, to avoid spoiling it, except that it also has a few similarities to "Frankenstein".
Most of the book feels very true to the original novel, written primarily in the form of journals (mostly from Bram's point of view) and letters, although some chapters are also written in third person, and present tense. During the first two-thirds, it also flashes forward to some time in the future, describing events that make sense later on. It is suitably gruesome at times, and some chapters will probably put off anyone with a phobia of creepy crawlies.
I enjoyed this a lot, particularly as the book played with my expectations; I'd think I understood what was going on, but then the book would throw in multiple plot twists that would change my perspective completely. It made me want to read up more on Bram Stoker to find out how many of the events were based on fact.
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I thought about whether - at a stretch - this could be seen as "a book about a period of maturing", and thought, "yeah, why not?"
First off, Bram grows up quite a lot in this book, and secondly it is a book about how Dracula develops into the monster that most horror fans are familar with.
So, I'm close to getting "bingo" on two separate rows now in the ljbookbingo summer challenge.
