Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

The classic vampire tale of Count Dracula, forming the foundation for all the vampire mythology that was to follow. A gothic, dark classic telling the story of Count Dracula as he moves location from his castle in Transylvania to England in a bid to find new prey and fresh blood. 

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

Okay, so I am officially a lover of Dracula. From the very first page, I was hooked. Usually it would take me longer than a week to read a 400 page book, but I was using every spare minute I had to race through this book. I was reading it while blowdrying my hair, while waiting for the kettle to boil... that's when I know I'm digging it! Bram Stoker was a genius - well of course he was, he was Irish *smug face*. Dracula is a masterpiece, end of.

The gothic scenery depicted in Dracula is stunning. It makes me want to go back and live in that time period, inhabiting a huge castle (without the blood-sucking). The atmosphere Stoker creates is simply outstanding, and the constant sense of foreboding - I felt on edge a lot whilst reading this. I loved the format of the book, with the story being told via letters and diary entries, I really feel like it helped the flow of the novel as I kept telling myself "I'll just read this one entry and then go to sleep..." *four diary entires later* SHIT MY ALARM IS SET FOR 5.40AM. The characters were mostly awesome, although Lucy sometimes got on my nerves. Her storyline was just tedious at times - how dumb was her mother too!? Dracula himself was as enigmatic as I had hoped, so mysterious and frightening. Mina was a favourite too, as was Van Helsing. 

Although I'm raving about how much I love Dracula, it's not without its faults. The misogyny at times was making me roll my eyes so hard I thought I was gonna go blind! Oh, Mina can't be part of the initial plans to take down Dracula because she's a woman?! That crap won't fly with me, Stoker. But then I remind myself that such an attitude is indicative of the time and I manage to let it go. My other complaint is the length, 50 pages or so could definitely have been cut out, some parts just kept rambling on and on. 

It also annoyed me how so many people were able to transfuse blood to the one person without any issue - after a bit of research (soz, that's my job), I realised blood types weren't discovered until 1901... so Stoker gets a pass here, but it still irritated me. I can't help it!!

Yet those complaints didn't really affect my overall enjoyment of the book. A big fan of Dracula now - it gets 5 stars out of 5 from me!

Johann

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