Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dracula
Written by Bram Stoker

Published: 1897

Synopsis: Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham van Helsing.

My Thoughts: I'm a little embarrassed to say that I haven't read Dracula before. I've seen most of the film adaptations, and I've always been aware of its notoriety as a classic horror text but for some reason I've never gotten around to reading it before. Dracula is a phenomenal book. Contemporary authors really should take the time to study this book, regardless of whether they write horror or not, because it truly is amazing in every possible way. The quality of writing, the ingenuity of the story, the vitality of the characters, the use of journals and letters, the combination of so many delicious genres into one great book...seriously, why hadn't I read this before?!

So the book begins as Jonathan Harker heads out to meet Count Dracula, an elderly client who is intent on moving to England and needed legal help to organise it all. Once in the huge castle it doesn't take long for the easy and enjoyable conversations late into the night to turn to something far more sinister. Harker soon realises that his freedom in the castle is being severely curtailed, and after several late night explorations it is removed completely. At the same time things around the castle starts to get really strange, he witnesses the Count crawling down the castle's steep walls, and he comes across three women who appear out of thin air and encircle him eagerly clawing for his throat. As much as I loved the rest of the book, I think it was this first portion that I loved the most. The action takes place amongst such a wild and mysterious part of the world and the capacity for the supernatural seems all the more likely.  From the early descriptions of the changing landscape to the growing unease of the locals who risk their lives to help Harker avoid the castle to the scene with the Count asleep in his coffin, the pacing and foreshadowing is done spectacularly well and completely had me within its grasp. Then there are the three women/vampires, va va voom! Take note Stephenie Meyer, that's how you write some disturbingly sexy scenes! For example;

"There was a deliberate voluptuousness that was both thrilling and repulsive. And as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal till I could see in the moonlight the moisture Then lapped the white, sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited. ”

The visual capacity for this writing is extraordinary, it's not hard to see how this book led to so many film adaptations and copy-cat writers. As Jonathan struggles to survive in the castle amidst the three women and the wolves, Dracula makes his way across the sea to England and Jonathan's fiancée, Mina, happens to be in the small seaside town he lands in. After Mina's friend Lucy succumbs to a mystery illness, we're introduced to the rest of the cast, Lucy's Fiancée, Arthur, his friends Dr Seward and Quincey Morris, and the absolutely delightful Van Helsing. Because I hadn't read this book before, I'd always imagined Van Helsing as a young BAMF who dominates vamps and other mythological creatures (I think you can blame the Hugh Jackman movie for that) but he's so different! He's definitely still a BAMF, but he's old and sweet and unbelieveably gorgeous character. I just wanted to take him home and keep him in my pocket! He definitely falls under the Gandalf/Dumbledore awesome old guy banner. One of my favourite lines of his is this one he says to Mina;

"There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights"

See! See! So the book is told through a series of diary/journal entries, letters, and telegram accounts which have been collected by Mina in order to help the group in their attempt to destroy Dracula once and for all.  I'm not sure how many books at the time this was published would have used this format, and even though it's fairly common now, it's exceptionally well done and I loved that it added perfectly to "this happened but we don't believe anyone would ever believe us" theme that runs through the book. I guess in a way it's the precursor to all the found footage horror films around now, except given the time the book takes place, it actually makes sense for all of this to be documented in a diary or in long letters to one another.

So yes, I enjoyed the crap out of this book. It's intelligent, funny, heart-warming, spooky, graphic, unique and well worth the attention it's received for over 100 years! Given it's age, it does take a while to get into the rhythm of the dialogue patterns if you don't often read books from that time, but it's not impossible nor difficult once you get into it. There was one character, an old man in the seaside town Lucy and Mina stayed in, that I couldn't understand a word of. His dialogue is written verbatim in a very thick Northern (?) accent and full of idioms and speech patterns unique to that area. It was only about a page in total, but I just couldn't work out more than 1 in 5 words and I simply gave up. It had no real bearing on the story (a touch of foreshadowing if anything) so it wasn't the end of the world, but thank god it wasn't all like that! Anyway, that one blip aside, everyone should read this book asap if they haven't already.

5 out of 5 litres of fresh virgin blood

Audio Book Review: H.P. Lovecraft Volume 1

HP Lovecraft: Volume 1 (Audiobook)
by H.P. Lovecraft

Synopsis: An anthology of some of H.P Lovecraft's shortstories;

The alchemist ****

The festival ***

The beast in the cave ***

Beyond the wall of sleep *****

Facts concerning the late Arthur German and his family ***

The descendant ***

The hound ****

From beyond ****

Cool air ****

The white ship ***

The call of Cthulhu *****

This audiobook has stumped me, It wasn't a personal purchase and I actually don't know how it came to be on my iPod! My last laptop died so I'm currently without itunes so I can't hunt through my files for more info, and because Lovecraft is such a prolific short story there are hundreds of anthologies of his work and I simply can't find this particular one. What I can say though is that many of the stories in my mystery anthology were also part of an anthology titled The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. That anthology was made up primarily with Lovecraft stories which were first published in Weird Tales, a fantasy and horror pulp magazine. One of the few details my audiobook did provide me with (other than the story title) was the date of publication, and while some weren't actually published in Weird Tales, they were written or published in the same era of his career.

Before I even begin to talk about the stories themselves I want to discuss Lovecraft's distinct writing style, or to be more exact his mastery at wordcraft. Lovecraft has an unbelievable ability to write an attractive sentence. I'm not talking about the actual content of the sentence here, simply the sound and the rhythm the words make. Rich and thick like syrup they swirl around your head in the most exquisite of manners. They trip off the tongue with ease and yet they hold such weight. It was extremely hard for me to pay attention to the stories because just listening to the lyric/poetic like quality of his word choices was almost all consuming!

On to the actual stories, overall I found them to be rich and exciting tales that captivated my attention and were filled with that exciting and suspenseful Gothic style horror. All the stories built up their suspense so quietly and so neatly that I would be startled when I realised my heart was beating faster or that I'd stopped wiping down the bathroom counter and was instead frozen listening intently. Of course considering the age of the stories some of the 'twists' and final reveals were almost comical to me but even if I found the end of some (The Beast in the Cave) a little silly or over-dramatic (which may have been the fault of the audiobook narrator) the build to that conclusion was still quite fantastic. As I was reading a few reviews on websites about Lovecraft and these stories for this review I came across a sentence by a Lovecraft scholar named Peter Cannon that I thought perfectly described the tales (though it was written specifically about The Call of Cthulhu), it said the story was "ambitious and complex...a dense and subtle narrative in which the horror gradually builds to cosmic proportions."

 There is a real struggle with the self present in the stories, present I'd imagine because they are all told from the first person perspective and most seem to take a confessional tone. All the narrators confess to a momentous struggle they once fought through or in some cases are still fighting against. The nature of the struggle changes, in some instance it's an actual fight with some form of supernatural being while other times it's a more internal struggle, where they have to fight against the science and reason they've always adhered to which has now been shattered by their sighting of a demon or conversation with an alien. While much of the actual story takes place in the physical realm, the real story takes place in the mind of the narrator, how he deals with it, how he communicates, how he fixes on certain details.

My favourite story was Beyond the Wall of Sleep, in which the narrator was an intern at a mental hospital who relates to the reader his experiences with a particular patient, John Slater, weeks before the man died. During his sleep Slater has fits during which he rants about things that can't possibly be found on Earth, and a mysterious being who wants to hurt Slater. As Slater approaches death the narrator hooks them both up to a two-way telepathy device and finds that a being supremely made of light appears to be using the body of John Slater as a medium for communication. What I loved about this story was what happened next (which I won't describe in detail for fear of spoilers) as the alien/being of light communicates with the young intern narrator which such profundity and emotion that I was completely transfixed. Again I have to return to Lovecraft's use of language, a similar story in the hands of someone who can't manipulate words into such heavy, lyrical and emotive sentences most likely would have failed.

My only real complaint has nothing to do with the actual books but the audiobook narration. With each monster/alien/creature came  a new 'voice'. Some of these voices were fine, they were deep or reverberated but were easy to understand. Others were insanely difficult to understand even the smallest of words. The worst was probably the voice used in Beyond the Wall of Sleep which sounded like a possessed Scooby-Doo, I couldn't understand a word of it, and actually had to re-listen to the last half of the story about 3 times before I got the gist of it. Because the monster's speeches are often quite profound and some of the most interesting parts to the story it was a real shame to not be able to understand everything they were saying, especially when what they were saying was also crucial to the plot (or that was the feeling I'd get anyway). I had wanted to physically read the stories anyway since so much gets lost when you listen rather than physically read but because of these voices I'll definitely have to read them so that I can piece together a couple of the stories that don't seem to make complete sense to me.

It is easy to see the impact these tales and Lovecraft himself had on horror writers like Clive Barker and Stephen King and listening to these tales gave a great insight into the foundations of the horror genre as well as being extremely captivating and enjoyable. I highly recommend these to anyone who enjoys horror but isn't necessarily looking for a scare, for while the tension builds and there are frightening images they most likely won't stop you from getting to sleep at night.

4.5 out of 5 calls from Cthulu I won't be returning.

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Synopsis: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.


My Thoughts:  I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this novel, nor how exactly the zombie storyline would be woven into the original tale. For the most part the splicing of the old with the new worked fairly well although there were the occasional zombie reference or alteration of the original text that I found to be a little messy and awkward, but I guess that would be expected from a feat such as this. It did seem to remain fairly true to the original, however I haven't read the original (past chapter 2), I've only seen the BBC adaptation (which I believe to be quite close) and I certainly recognised not only scenes but entire chunks of dialogue from the series in the book.

Before I began reading I had wondered about the author's intention with the zombie plot, whether it'd seem contrived or gimmicky, the result of a guy merely trying to cash in on the zombie trend and make the most out of the freedom of public domain texts. Surprisingly though I thought it worked quite well in reinforcing Austen's original character traits and themes (again this is an assumption made from the BBC series and the general talk I've head). I thought this was so especially regarding Elizabeth, she now has a superior external strength, talent and ruthlessness to her character which I think better exemplifies her qualities of uniqueness, strength and courage that Austen had originally depicted her with.

It was missing some of the subtlety of the original which is to be expected when you chuck zombies into the mix, but overall I thought it quite a charming book. My favourite parts were definitely when the zombie inserts were juxtaposed with some of the more heavily focused aspects of the novel such as propriety and manners which I thought was brilliantly done in the scene at the first ball. An attack from a horde of zombies force the girls into the "pentagram of death" "stepping outward in unison- each thrusting a razor-sharp dagger with one hand, the other hand modestly tucked into the small of their back," (page 14).

Often having seen the movie, or in this case series, before reading the book ruins my ability to visualise the characters how I'd like to, however either it's been long enough since I've seen the series for it not to overshadow, or the slight alterations Seth Grahame-Smith made to the characters were great enough to change them from their depiction in the series. I had no problem letting the book spark my imagination in terms of character appearance and accent etc except in the case of Mr Darcy. Perhaps because of the universal acknowledgement that Colin Firth is Mr Darcy, I couldn't visualise anyone else and it was only his voice I ever heard saying Mr Darcy's lines. This wasn't a problem though, it actually added to the comedy quite substantially to imagine Colin Firth running around in a suit and top hat decapitating zombies with a katana.

I did enjoy this book, but at times I did really have to force myself to keep reading, setting myself page goals I had to reach before I put it down. I think this was close enough for me to grasp the intentions of Austen without having to fall asleep one more trying to read it. I've heard complaints from Austen fans that they found this gimmicky and didn't feel like they needed to read the whole thing and I'd say they'd probably be right. If you know the story and read it often the addition of the zombies might seem quaint and comical at the start but it doesn't alter the plot enough for it to really engage someone who knows the book well, or at least that's how I (the Austen novice) feel.

That said the book is well written and for the most part I though Seth Grahame-Smith did an amazing job seamlessly combining his words with Austen, although once more I have to remind you I haven't read the original so an Austen fan, like a Trekkie critiquing the latest Star Trek film, might be completely insulted by the additions made in this edition. The zombies gave it that push of action I really needed so that I could get through it because this is a book from an era I tend to steer clear of, in a writing style I tend to dislike on a subject I can't stand, so the fact I got through it (even with the help of zombies) is quite remarkable indeed.

 3.5 out of 5 etiquette trained zombie hunters.